The Folio MVP was created for solo real estate professionals. The goal of this project was to improve the team experience in Folio. Our success would be measured by a boost of engagement and MRR from those that collaborate with others in Folio.

I started this project by talking to customer support, to understand their perspective on teams. They've heard from many users who want to collaborate using Folio and would have topics to cover in my research guide. Next, I wrote and shared my research guide with stakeholders and customer support to make sure I was asking the right questions. Once I had buy-in, I recruited participants and scheduled interviews with 6 real estate professionals that use Folio with their teams.

Some questions to answer:

Who do they regularly collaborate with using Folio?

Why and how do teams use Folio together? 

How do roles affect how they use Folio?

What problems are they experiencing using Folio with their team now?

What parts of the Smart Folder do they want to share with their team?

Above: A Trello board keeps the participants organized for the product team. A short prototype is used as a visual prompt to spark discussion.

Stop suggesting Smart Folders to collaborators

Smart Folder suggestions are confusing to users who are introduced to Folio through a timeline invitation. New onboarding is needed for this type of user to help them understand all the benefits of Folio. Controls to turn off suggestions would be useful to those who use Folio more passively with their collaborator.

Which Smart Folder content is shared?

Many participants were confused about which parts of the Smart Folder (timeline, contacts, files, and emails) are shared. Some wanted to share everything, others wanted to select which content to share with a particular collaborator.

Many teams shared Folio accounts or got by with free timeline sharing

Because of cost and usability issues, many collaborators opted to have one paid Folio account and have the rest of the team use the free Folio website, which has no limits. Closing this loophole that existed from our days as a free product was very low-hanging fruit.

Teams and collaborators are often small groups

All the teams we talked to were collaborating with less than four people regularly. Many seemed to be teams of two. I sent out a survey to all users that regularly work with others using Folio, to get a better sense of the average team size. This would influence how we frame and price the product in the future.

Our goal was to design a simple way for the persona Alex (an assistant) to easily create and share Smart Folders with her boss Alice (agent). While also supporting Tara (Transaction Coordinator), who works with multiple agents at different brokerages. The latter persona, while small, is essential because of their broad reach to other agents, which impacts our viral growth.  I collaborated with the product team and engineers to find a framework that would support Smart Folder sharing for both of these personas with access controls on which parts of the Smart Folder (emails, timelines, contacts, and documents) they share with any collaborator.

To release quickly, we came up with an iterative approach that built off of a current design to reduce build costs. 

This updated version would allow Alex or Tara:

• To create and share Smart Folders with their collaborators easily. 

• Smart Folder suggestions that were causing confusion would be removed.

• More controls like calendar syncing would be added.

• Free loopholes were closed. 

• Sharing the timeline would be view-only, intended for clients (home buyers and sellers). 

• Edit and Smart Folder access now requires a Folio Account.

• 23% added a collaborator to a Smart Folder during setup

• 21% created an account from the timeline website to edit/add dates