Gradstay
Rethinking the rental experience: end-to-end product design from launch to scale.
Overview
Gradstay is a prop-tech platform built to seamlessly connect tenants and landlords. Joining as the founding designer, my objective was to define the product direction from scratch, balancing rapid feature deployment with a cohesive, scalable user experience.
By conducting deep user research and competitive analysis, I translated a fast-moving product vision into a fully realized platform spanning both mobile and desktop.
The Impact
40%
Increase in tenant sign-up conversion through iterative user testing.
7 min
Average landlord listing time, drastically reducing friction.
50+
Screens shipped, including 6 distinct onboarding flows and dual landing pages.
Onboarding
Frictionless tenant onboarding
The core challenge for the tenant experience was reducing drop-off during registration. By conducting qualitative research with 30 tenants and analyzing over 20 competing platforms, I designed a streamlined onboarding flow. Iterative user testing directly resulted in a 40% increase in sign-up conversions.
Seven steps, each asking for one thing: budget, bedrooms, location, then contact.
The same flow on mobile, where most tenants actually arrive, landing through to results.
Landlords often abandon complex property listing forms. To solve this, I designed a structured, step-by-step listing experience. By implementing smart defaults, auto-save functionality, and a seamless multi-image upload system, I reduced the time it takes to list a property to an average of just 7 minutes.
A postcode does the typing: one lookup fills the whole address block.
The landlord landing at wireframe stage. I wireframe fast and in detail, so structure and hierarchy are settled before any visual design begins.
Design System
Building a scalable foundation
As a fast-moving startup, engineering efficiency was critical. I established Gradstay’s foundational design system and component library. This provided a unified visual framework that enabled the CTO and engineering team to ship consistently and rapidly as the platform scaled.
One listing card, built once: price, beds, baths and status all slot into the same component.
The same tokens and type scale carried into marketing, so the site and the product read as one product.