about me   


As a Design Associate at Community Planning Collaborative︎︎︎, I played a key role in the design, development, and management of a SaaS product that connects homeowners, architects, and jurisdictions to accelerate the development of affordable housing in California.
 


The ADU Plans Gallery︎︎︎ utilizes a Salesforce backend and three unique front-end experiences to accomplish different goals for different users, including:



City/County Officials

Use the Admin Portal to build their local gallery, providing a unique service to their consituents while meeting state law requirements.

Homeowners

Browse, save, and filter ADU plans from a Gallery customized by local building officials, saving them thousands of dollars and months of time.
 

ADU Designers

Use the Designer Portal to add and edit their designs, creating a source of free marketing and access to an emerging market of pre-designed and pre-approved plans.





But what does it actually do? 


I animated a video that explains just that!




Process


Building a fully-functioning product required wearing lots of hats. Here are some of the things I did or played a major role in:

Research


  • Policy analysis so our product would help jurisdictions meet state mandates.
  • Interviewed ADU designers and homeowners to inform product requirements.
  • Data cleaning of existing plans to understand future database structure.
  • Initial user journeys to define project scope.


Prototyping & Design


  • Interface design in Figma.
  • User testing with ADU designers and homeowners.
  • Diagramming and system mapping to document and refine user journeys.
  • Brand standards to unite distinct-but-related products.


Development  & QA


  • Worked closely with developers to meet key milestones.
  • Identified, diagnosed, and tracked more than 500 bugs and their fixes. 
  • Wrote, edited, and mantained more than 40 user support articles.


Marketing & Administration


  • Weekly LinkedIn posts, resulting in  >100% follower growth.
  • Designed print collateral, slide templates, and an animated explainer video.
  • Internal-facing user journeys for better account management.
  • User support and community management to drive our growing database of ADU plans.


Credits

Design of the ADU Plans Gallery was led by Bowen Close (Project Manager + Creative Director, CPC). Development was led by Franklin Joyce (Salesforce Developer, Electric Baby/Public House). The initial idea for the product was created by CPC and designed and developed by Bowen for the Napa Sonoma ADU Center.