NAR Mobile App
UX Research · Product Direction · Vendor Partnership · iOS & Android · 2021
Building a mobile experience for 1.5 million REALTORS® — from scratch.
The National Association of REALTORS® had no mobile app. Members were navigating benefits, tools, and industry news through a desktop experience that wasn't built for how they actually work — on the go, between showings, away from a desk.
My Role
Collaborating with NAR’s Research team, I led the UX analysis that defined what the app needed to be, then partnered directly with an external development firm to translate those insights into a finished product — setting strategic direction while staying close enough to shape design decisions throughout.
Four focus groups (28 participants across new agents, experienced agents, managing brokers, and leadership members) combined with a survey of 50,854 REALTORS® — 2,879 completed responses, ±1.82% margin of error — gave us a quantitatively representative picture of real member behavior. Behavioral analytics and a competitive analysis of peer organizations rounded out the foundation.
What the research made clear: 9 out of 10 members rely on mobile apps daily, yet 71% engaged with NAR's online resources only occasionally or rarely. Members wanted speed and simplicity — the top needs were benefits access, education, industry news, and audio content. One member put it plainly:
"We need a national app with 5–10 things that are most important — with instant access."
Design Direction & Build
The research shaped two core experience pillars: Stay Informed — a personalized news feed with integrated audio and video for on-the-go consumption — and Member Hub — a consolidated view of each member's benefits, education, and REALTOR Benefits® program access.
Technical constraints around authentication and benefits data integration required close collaboration between UX direction and engineering throughout the build.
Results
Launched within a year of initial research. Exceeded every KPI target — 85,000+ unique monthly users within six months.
What this project required
A net-new product has no existing behavior to anchor to. The research has to do more work, and early decisions carry further. That's the environment I work best in.