This year has been a huge rebuilding period for Yahoo! Real Estate. After sitting in maintenance mode for several years, a solid team was assembled to bring the site to parity and take it beyond. The homepage has been redesigned in a phased approach. The goal of the first phase, version 3.5, was to clean up the interface, remove a slow-loading interactive map, and increase the prominence of the home search box. We conducted participatory design sessions with users to help guide both the first and second phase of the design. After launch, click-through on the search box increased 15.9%.

The second phase reflects a new focus in strategy and engineering is just beginning development. I cannot post any of that work yet, but can discuss and share examples with interested parties. My role has been much more involved in this phase. I have worked with the lead product manager to develop the vision, created multiple wireframes with different approaches, worked with a visual designer to flesh them out, and created flash prototypes for usability testing.