RealPage - Leasing, Renewals and eSign
Reframing a Tactical Feature into a Strategic Product System
Role: Strategic Design Lead | Timeline: 2020–2021
Impact: >$8M in savings • UX adoption surge • Org-wide design principles
Overview
RealPage, a leader in property management software, was facing an urgent inflection point. In the wake of COVID-19, front offices for apartment buildings were no longer the designated location that business happened. Required paperwork for renewals was drop off only in most cases, and even in-person leasing had collapsed.
The digital experience to support these essential processes was fractured, slow, and heavily reliant on DocuSign. With digital usage skyrocketing, projected costs was expected to surpass $8M annually for the following year.
Multiple fractured flows and reliance on a third-party contributed to the inflated numbers.
What I saw was a systems-level failure with fragmented experiences, redundant flows, and duplicated efforts across product teams, along side the opportunity to address the immediate and long-term needs simultaneously.
I stepped in as the lead product design partner across two engineering teams, transforming what was initially presented to me as a need to reskin the renewals flows to an updated system UI design into a unified digital leasing experience designed for long-term scale and strategic value.
My Role
Strategic Design Lead across application and renewal product areas
Unified two parallel teams into a shared roadmap and experience
Collaborated closely with a dedicated researcher to drive user insight
Introduced design principles and rituals that scaled across the org
Mentored junior designers and shaped interaction patterns across product lines
This wasn’t just a UI redesign. It was a strategic reset.
The Challenge
Originally scoped as a minor enhancement to support digital renewals, some quick interviews and simple research methods revealed that both leasing agents and renters alike had pains managing the current workflows.
The product was treating renewals and applications as separate journeys,
thus duplicating effort and confusing users.
Meanwhile, internal roadmaps and engineering resources were siloed, making it harder to align on a seamless user experience. Most critically, the experience was still rooted in outdated assumptions about in-person workflows—no longer viable in a remote-first world.
agents and users were expected to have overlapping responsibilities - on forms that scrolled for days
Strategic Insight and Actions
Rather than retrofitting features, I reframed the project around a new guiding principle:
Renewals should feel like pressing an easy button—not starting from scratch.
To support this I put a plan into action that Identified deep workflow redundancies and user frustration tied to repeated inputs and unclear handoffs between application and renewal. Our team synthesized the insights into actionable patterns that shaped not just the product, but how we defined success.
This realization wasn’t based on assumption, though. I partnered closely with a dedicated user researcher to run discovery interviews and usability studies across leasing agents, property managers, and renters. The research uncovered deep workflow redundancies and user frustration tied to repeated inputs and unclear handoffs in the lapse of time between application and renewal. Our team synthesized the insights into actionable patterns that shaped not just the product, but how we defined success.
Strategic Insight and Actions
Rather than retrofitting features, I reframed the project around a new guiding principle:
Renewals should feel like pressing an easy button—not starting from scratch.
To support this I put a plan into action that identified deep workflow redundancies and user frustration tied to repeated inputs and unclear handoffs between application and renewal. Our team synthesized the insights into actionable patterns that shaped not just the product, but how we defined success.
Strategic Insight and Actions
Rather than retrofitting features, I reframed the project around a new guiding principle:
Renewals should feel like pressing an easy button—not starting from scratch.
To support this I put a plan into action that Identified deep workflow redundancies and user frustration tied to repeated inputs and unclear handoffs between application and renewal. Our team synthesized the insights into actionable patterns that shaped not just the product, but how we defined success.
This realization wasn’t based on assumption, though. I partnered closely with a dedicated user researcher to run discovery interviews and usability studies across leasing agents, property managers, and renters. The research uncovered deep workflow redundancies and user frustration tied to repeated inputs and unclear handoffs in the lapse of time between application and renewal. Our team synthesized the insights into actionable patterns that shaped not just the product, but how we defined success.
Research from auditing existing flows, legal compliance, and leasing manager interviews culminated in a matrix that exposed overlaps, redundancies and clear opportunities, not only to simplify but bring value to RealPage's lifetime renter value.
With these findings I was able to advocate for unification of the workflows between applications and renewals into a single, adaptive experience, to capture once, and bring renewals into much more of a review and renew workflow, rather than starting at square one each time.
This both proposed a cultural shift at Realpage from “document completion” to “data-powered decisions” so that we could leverage the reuse of known data and eliminate redundant steps.
I crafted guiding principles to bring the team along on the journey and ensure buy-in.
“Repetition is pain”
If we already know something, don’t ask again. This became a north star for how we approached form autofill, progressive disclosure, and system memory.
“Forms can be fun-ctional”
Forms are product surfaces, not admin tasks. Treat them with care and attention and appropriate cognitive chunking, not administrative overhead.
This informed interaction design patterns used across the portfolio.
These weren’t just slogans. They became decision-making filters for design and product leads across RealPage.
This informed interaction design patterns used across the portfolio.
These weren’t just slogans. They became decision-making filters for design and product leads across RealPage.
Execution
I led the end-to-end experience design, working hand-in-hand with research, engineers, QA, and business across two previously disjointed teams, as well as the skunkworks team put together to replace the eSign experience.
Key contributions:
Designed and prototyped core leasing workflows (application → renewal → eSign)
Introduced new collaboration rituals: weekly prototyping reviews, and cross-team roadmap alignment
Partnered with a dedicated researcher to ensure usability studies were embedded early and iteratively throughout the design process
Mentored adjacent designers to apply the new UX principles, extending consistency beyond the project
Partnered with engineering leads to audit and simplify decision logic, reducing conditional edge cases in the leasing flow
Outcomes
Business Impact
Approx $8M saved in DocuSign contract costs delivered in less than 3 months by replacing a major external dependency with a native RealPage product experience
24% reduction in time to complete a lease renewal from initial reminder
User Impact
31% increase in user satisfaction across leasing and renewal workflows
Usability score improvement from 4.1 to 6.2 on RealPage’s internal 7-point scale, measured through post-launch studies
Higher user retention and engagement during a critical macro-environment shift
Organizational Impact
Design principles were adopted across teams, becoming core to onboarding and design reviews
Improved cross-functional alignment led to reduced rework and increased design velocity across product squads
Built story-telling foundations for Renter lifetime value
Cultural Contribution
Beyond delivering a high-impact product, this work assisted with maturation for how RealPage now approaches their entire suite
Conducted and improved on repeatable design rituals in a remote landscape that elevated design’s influence upstream
Evangelized the idea of “product as platform” or building experiences that scale horizontally across use cases
Assisted with composition of early iterations in RealPage's Lifetime value storytelling
Execution
I led the end-to-end experience design, working hand-in-hand with research, engineers, QA, and business across two previously disjointed teams, as well as the skunkworks team put together to replace the eSign experience.
Key contributions:
Designed and prototyped core leasing workflows (application → renewal → eSign)
Introduced new collaboration rituals: weekly prototyping reviews, and cross-team roadmap alignment
Partnered with a dedicated researcher to ensure usability studies were embedded early and iteratively throughout the design process
Mentored adjacent designers to apply the new UX principles, extending consistency beyond the project
Partnered with engineering leads to audit and simplify decision logic, reducing conditional edge cases in the leasing flow
Outcomes
Business Impact
Approx $8M saved in DocuSign contract costs delivered in less than 3 months by replacing a major external dependency with a native RealPage product experience
24% reduction in time to complete a lease renewal from initial reminder
User Impact
31% increase in user satisfaction across leasing and renewal workflows
Usability score improvement from 4.1 to 6.2 on RealPage’s internal 7-point scale, measured through post-launch studies
Higher user retention and engagement during a critical macro-environment shift
Organizational Impact
Design principles were adopted across teams, becoming core to onboarding and design reviews
Improved cross-functional alignment led to reduced rework and increased design velocity across product squads
Built story-telling foundations for Renter lifetime value
Cultural Contribution
Beyond delivering a high-impact product, this work assisted with maturation for how RealPage now approaches their entire suite
Conducted and improved on repeatable design rituals in a remote landscape that elevated design’s influence upstream
Evangelized the idea of “product as platform” or building experiences that scale horizontally across use cases
Assisted with composition of early iterations in RealPage's Lifetime value storytelling
Execution
I led the end-to-end experience design, working hand-in-hand with research, engineers, QA, and business across two previously disjointed teams, as well as the skunkworks team put together to replace the eSign experience.
Key contributions:
Designed and prototyped core leasing workflows (application → renewal → eSign)
Introduced new collaboration rituals: weekly prototyping reviews, and cross-team roadmap alignment
Partnered with a dedicated researcher to ensure usability studies were embedded early and iteratively throughout the design process
Mentored adjacent designers to apply the new UX principles, extending consistency beyond the project
Partnered with engineering leads to audit and simplify decision logic, reducing conditional edge cases in the leasing flow
Outcomes
Business Impact
Approx $8M saved in DocuSign contract costs delivered in less than 3 months by replacing a major external dependency with a native RealPage product experience
24% reduction in time to complete a lease renewal from initial reminder
User Impact
31% increase in user satisfaction across leasing and renewal workflows
Usability score improvement from 4.1 to 6.2 on RealPage’s internal 7-point scale, measured through post-launch studies
Higher user retention and engagement during a critical macro-environment shift
Organizational Impact
Design principles were adopted across teams, becoming core to onboarding and design reviews
Improved cross-functional alignment led to reduced rework and increased design velocity across product squads
Built story-telling foundations for Renter lifetime value
Cultural Contribution
Beyond delivering a high-impact product, this work assisted with maturation for how RealPage now approaches their entire suite
Conducted and improved on repeatable design rituals in a remote landscape that elevated design’s influence upstream
Evangelized the idea of “product as platform” or building experiences that scale horizontally across use cases
Assisted with composition of early iterations in RealPage's Lifetime value storytelling
Reflection
This project started with a budget problem, and a singularly focused workflow, but what we solved was much deeper: a fragmented product system lacking coherence and strategy. By identifying the bigger opportunity and aligning the teams around simplicity, we delivered something far greater than a remote leasing feature.
Strategic design means knowing when to question the scope while having the clarity and influence to rebuild it from the ground up.
