Simplifying property management with an intuitive, efficient, and scalable solution.
PURE
Property Management
My role
Founding Designer,
Product Design Director
2021-2024
Team Members
Kateryna Moroziuk
Christina Seong
Brenda Perez
Collaborators
VP of Product
Product managers
Front & back-end engineers
Prototypes
Take a look at the 2021 prototype used to help PURE secure $50M in Series A funding, and see how the vision evolved in the 2024 prototype.
TLDR;
PURE’s journey from concept to product was a collaborative and iterative process. By creating a cohesive design system and a suite of scalable, user-friendly tools, we turned a bold vision into a fully realized property management ecosystem. Our work not only secured significant funding but also positioned PURE for long-term success in the competitive property management market.
PURE Property Management set out to transform the fragmented and outdated property management industry by providing an all-in-one, modern platform. As the Director of Product Design and founding designer, I established a clear vision for the team, fostered an inclusive and collaborative environment, and ensured that PURE’s platform was not only intuitive and user-friendly but also scalable and efficient for future growth.
At the heart of this effort was a robust design system, built from the ground up to streamline development, enhance consistency, and improve the overall user experience.
The challenge
From the outset, I recognized that PURE would evolve into a massive, multi-faceted platform—even if the entirety of this endeavor wasn’t immediately clear. To ensure long-term consistency, efficiency, and scalability, I championed the creation of a design system from day one. Without it, PURE risked fragmented UI, redundant design work, and an increasing maintenance burden as the platform grew.
Beyond the technical and design hurdles, one of the biggest challenges was cross-team communication, particularly with engineering. Early on, there was a disconnect between design and development, leading to misaligned expectations, inconsistencies in implementation, and inefficiencies in handoff. Engineers would overlook or be unaware of design’s documentation, and designers lacked visibility into technical constraints.
The challenge was not just about standardizing design but about building a system flexible enough to support:
Scalability, allowing this rapidly expanding product suite - with new features continuously being introduced - to grow without compromising usability or development speed.
Multiple teams, ensuring alignment across design, product, and engineering.
Stronger collaboration with engineering, ensuring seamless implementation and reducing friction in the development process.
Enter, Project: Wonderful Machine.
Approach & strategy
Given the asynchronous nature of our global team, I decided I wanted to create a “manual” of sorts. Something to keep us all aligned and make answers easily accessible no matter what time it was or what country you were in.
I called this initiative Project: Wonderful Machine (PWM). It consisted of the following:
Defined expectations for not just the design team, but also for our partners, the product and development teams.
A process flow listing each step from initial idea, to specific requirements, to designing mocks, and delivery to the development team.
A working agreement to establish best practices in order to improve efficiency and communication, as well as strategies and methods to implement Project Wonderful Machine throughout the platform (including our growing collection of documentation and design library of patterns and components).
Defined the structure of the design system:
Blueprints, our foundational style guide (colors, type, spacing, etc…).
T(h)inker Toys, utilizing Blueprints, is our common-base framework or general component library (buttons, inputs, tabs, etc…)
Domain specific component libraries. Think of these as experience specific component libraries anchored in the same UI and UX found in T(h)inker Toys and Blueprints.
Documentation & Engineering Collaboration
The hard work paid off - thanks to PWM, engineering now had a deeper understanding of our structure and, more importantly, understood its importance in maintaining the overall integrity of PURE’s platform. This opened up opportunities for me and my team to be invited to collaborate closely with engineers to ensure that components were not only visually consistent but also technically efficient. Improving communication between design and engineering was a critical focus, and it was imperative that the design team meet all the expectations we laid out in PWM. We were dedicated to documenting and continuously supporting our Figma-based component library with clear usage guidelines and best practices that the engineering team then translated into Storybook. Our suggested structured feedback loop where engineers could raise concerns and contribute to component improvements, was a big hit and helped us build trust between the teams. This trust laid a foundation of collaboration and mutual appreciation for our newly implemented bi-weekly design-engineering syncs where we could all align on implementation challenges and best practices moving forward.
Impact & Results
It’s one thing to have a design system, but it’s another thing to implement it properly. It wasn’t the smoothest path, but it’s the destination that counts, right? Once we were able to share the importance of adhering and using our design system with the whole team, it became the foundation of PURE’s platform, leading to significant improvements:
Efficiency Gains: boosted design efficiency by 25%.
Consistency: Created a seamless experience across all touchpoints, improving usability and reducing design inconsistencies by 15%.
Scalability: Enabled the platform to grow without compromising design quality.
Cross-Team Collaboration: Strengthened alignment between product, design, and engineering teams.
Improved Engineering-Design Relationship: Reduced miscommunication and built trust, improving implementation speed and accuracy.
Beyond the System: Broader Contributions to PURE
While the design system was a critical enabler, my role extended beyond systemization. I also owned the entire product from end-to-end, some key features being:
User Management: Streamlined admin workflows, reducing reliance on IT for user access control.
Project Management: Reimagined task tracking for property managers, eliminating the need for external tools. Standardized workflows to reduce confusion for property managers and tenants alike.
Leasing & Applications: Improved the tenant onboarding experience, increasing efficiency for property managers and satisfaction for both property managers and tenants.
Reporting: Allowed property managers to digest and interpret information in new ways which, in turn, opened new revenue opportunities.
Reflections & Learnings
Building a design system from scratch is as much about people and process as it is about components. My key takeaways from this project include:
Early and effective collaboration with engineering is essential for successful implementation.
Education and evangelism drive adoption—training teams ensures long-term success.
Design systems are living products—ongoing, collaborative iteration keeps them relevant and effective.
Communication is key—fostering strong relationships between design, engineering, and product improves efficiency and product quality.
PURE’s platform—and its ability to scale—was made possible by a thoughtfully crafted design system that unified experiences, accelerated development, and set the foundation for its continued growth
