RDC App Augmented Home Gallery

For the majority of my time at Realtor.com, I was focused on the home details page experience. This included the experience that begins with a user tapping into a home listing from search. That main screen everyone goes to for getting all the info on a home they may be interested in.

Probably unsurprisingly, the most engaged with content in this experience is the image gallery. So work on improving the gallery experience was a huge priority for us. My contribution included initial pitch work for a TikTok like content feed and more tactical usability improvements that would set us up for the future. This case study will focus on those more functional improvements.

Real-Estate TikTok

A quick note on the origin of this project. Working in product design, it’s not uncommon for leadership teams to come up with direction based on products from elsewhere in the tech industry. At some point, most of us have been asked to illustrate what an “uber-fied” feature for a product would look like. At Under Armour, we worked on a “Facebook feed for fitness”. These projects can be fun re-imaginings of features we like to create something that feels new even if it’s heavily inspired by existing experiences.

At Realtor.com we were tasked with figuring out what a TikTok feed of real-estate content could look like.

Working with my product manager, I put together a prototype concept of this kind of vertical scroll feed. I populated it with a combination of video content that our various marketing teams created for other platforms, static gallery images from existing homes, and home video tours from other platforms. This way we had a few options for populating the feed. From existing content to ideas of future content should we get a pipeline for new things.

We did some simple user interview tests where we had them run through the prototypes and provide feed back. It was generally well received, especially for the audience of people that were just using our app to browse homes casually. Which was the majority of our users.

Ultimately, this concept would fall victim to the numerous content and legal constraints it would take to populate an engaging enough live feed. But we did learn more about what constraints we have for working with home images and creating new content. We also got a lot of user feedback on how they like to browse visual information. So we took those learnings and fed them into the more tactical interaction of this project, what we would call the Augmented Gallery.

Augmented Gallery

Background & Opportunity

More than 64% of native app users rely on visual artifacts, mostly photos, when making home-buying decisions. However, the current photo experience lacks context, and quality, leading to lower engagement and user confidence. The Augmented Gallery initiative aimed to enhance the photo experience within the app Listing Detail Pages (LDP) by integrating descriptive content, interactive elements, and usability improvements.

Measures of Success

  • Increasing engagement by driving 4+ listing views per user.

  • Growing monthly active users (MAU) and listing visits.

  • Enhancing user confidence and conversion rates by providing structured photo-based information

Initial Designs

By this point we already had a lot of existing research for how users engage with photos on the LDP. After looking back through our team’s own recent research in the TikTok like feed concept, and previous research done by our web LDP counterparts. I put together a few initial ideas we could explore.

  • Descriptive Content Overlay – Embedding home descriptions within the photo experience to improve transparency.

  • Interactive Photo Gallery – Allowing users to save, like, and share listings directly from full-screen gallery mode.

  • Image Recognition & Highlighting – Using AI to emphasize key features (e.g., high-end appliances, remodeled spaces).

  • Photo History Visibility – Providing a timeline of home images to boost user confidence.

  • Floor Plan Integration – Adding floor plans to listings to enhance content coverage and user engagement.

Typically, I like to propose design directions that cover a range of feasibility. For example, the Descriptive Content Overlay would utilize content and experience logic that our web counterparts had already implemented on the web site image galleries, so it carried the least risk and had the most clear path to production. And then more forward looking ideas like Image Recognition and Photo History included content that was not currently being produced and new technology that hadn’t been integrated yet, so would be more risky and require a lot more resources.

After putting together rough initial designs for each of these directions, I worked with my product manager and engineering team to decide which directions would be worth our time to pursue for production and initial testing. Based on technical, timing and resource constraints, we decided to play it safe and stick with the most simple direction first and focus on the Content Overlay experience combined with the Interactive Photo Gallery. Both of these experiences covered different parts of the image gallery experience and could serve as a good starting point to add more extensive features like Image Recognition in the future.

User Testing & Insights

For user testing, I fleshed out the overlay and interactive designs into high fidelity tapable prototypes in Figma. Then I set up unmoderated user tests using Usertesting.com. These tests had users record themselves following prompts to complete tasks in the gallery experience and provide feedback. Overall the experience was received with 100% positive feedback from the users. All users welcomed extra functionality and details that didn’t get in the way of the photos. The testing did reveal some areas to improve in the final version however:

  • The Toolbar Version was the most preferred design as it provided quick access to key actions.

  • Users would more detailed image information, including appliance brands, renovation dates, and missing home features. (this however isn’t possible until content pipelines for this kind of information is built.)

  • Functional overlays were welcomed but needed to avoid interfering with photo zoom and browsing.

  • Some icons required redesign as users did not immediately recognize their function.

User Test Quotes

On the usefulness of the feature for remote buyers:

“But I've never really seen this, and I think that's an amazing feature and it's really helpful, especially because my next house that I'm looking to buy is out of state, so I can't just go look at it whenever I want.” – User 1

On the importance of interactive features:

“So I like all three of these options. I think they're very useful when I'm shopping for anything, especially for big decisions like homes. The sharing to send to someone to say, ‘Hey, take a look, do you like this or not?’ is very fast, very convenient, especially if they're not around with you at the moment. The save for later is great because sometimes it can be overwhelming and you forget stuff. And of course, the detail screen is just a reminder of what you're looking at. There’s nothing really to dislike.” – User 2

Preference for the toolbar version:

“I prefer this version because it makes stuff more convenient.” – User 2

On easy access to home details:

“I mean, you can just go back to view this information again, but this makes it very useful here to be able to see this again if you needed to instead of having to go back.” – User 3

On the effectiveness of the UI and usability:

“This is great, this is perfect, this is useful. This is very interactive, visually appealing, makes sense what these buttons stand for.” – User 3

On the value of having text details alongside images:

“I like having that text to help better give me some context for what I'm seeing.” – User 4

On balancing options between image focus and interactivity:

“I like that I can have both options depending on if I just wanna focus on the picture or if I wanna add it to my favorites or share that picture.” – User 4

Request for more specific details:

“Other information about kitchens, you know, say is it an instant hot, et cetera, microwave all those, all that information will be helpful, and the more detail, the better. I mean, I'd even like to know how long, how wide are the pipes coming outta here. Love to know that kind of information. Any kind of detail would be great to have.” – User 5

On the importance of sharing features:

“I like these features at the bottom because the buttons, it allows me, let's say I'm with my partner and I wanna send her something that says, ‘Hey, I really like this kitchen.’” – User 5

Implementation & Next Steps

After user testing, I took the results and refined the designs by updating tool bar icons and clarifying some of the smaller details. I also worked with engineering to put together animation and UX specs for iOS and Android.

This approach worked really well for production. Because I used well documented interaction practices from the Apple Hig and Google Material design, our engineers were able to move quickly on implementation. We were also using existing content to populate the new text details content so it was just a matter of hooking it up in a new place.

By implementing the toolbar and the new text detail space in the gallery, this allowed us functionality to build upon in the future. For example we could add more tools, like floor plans, to the tool bar, and more extensive details in the text fields. So it was a perfect first step to a new iterative feature that could grow with the business.

Example of production Figma files for iOS and Android