Rubus
The startup
Connecting Construction Teams, Third Parties, and Home Buyers
Rubus was born out of the lived experience of its co-founder, who, after experiencing the purchase process, saw firsthand the complexity and challenges of customer management in new build housing projects. This experience sparked the idea of how a digital collaboration and communication platform could streamline processes, and improve customer experience, sales, and margins for real estate developments and contractors.
From the outset, I was responsible for defining and executing the founders' vision surrounding all aspects of design and UX as the first full-time employee. This also encompassed leading the cross-functional effort between design and development to ensure needs were translated into iterations and new features that met product and design standards.
What we did
Creating a Service That Provides Actionable Data Overviews
From the start, our focus was finding customers who were willing to work with us to develop our MVP. These early customers and sponsors played a crucial role in this phase. Their insights helped us refine our platform, ensuring it addressed the real customer and industry needs. Alongside partners like BATE, BYBO, and LAB, we conducted pilots, fine-tuning our offering based on user feedback.
Building with users through customer conversations, co-design workshops and open channels
Starting with contextual observations and workshops, I focused on the things said and done, considering, yet challenging existing industry processes. We focused on identifying—who feels the pain?Who owns the problem? and whose role is it?
During research and workshops, in the style of Rob Fitzpatrick's 'The Mom Test,' I always strove to ask rather than tell—to listen, not talk, always asking about specifics based on past experiences, rather than hypotheticals.
This helped us understand real estate construction—its processes, nuances, and the ways real estate developers and contractors worked together, where the interests are, and the margins, et al.
As is the case, in early stage, this phase is what intense and busy.
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What we did
Developing a Modular Platform, rather than a Customer Portal
Early on, during our initial innovation contract, I realised the limitations of our product and approach. I envisioned and mapped out a modular platform, rather than a customer portal. This began with separating Change Management and Aftermarket, and then adding Quality Management. It also involved devising a new two-sided application, for both 'Buyer' and 'Seller,'—this included a new sidebar layout, navigation structure, and a new colour system (an MVP brand guide guide and design system).
The modules and features were built up from the context of the unit, a mental model that real estate developers and general contractors commonly use. This included designing with existing tools in mind, such as Excel and BIM. More importantly, using my knowledge of frontend development and our tech stack, I designed with ease of implementation in mind.
Continued and Ongoing Research
Given time and the deliverables I was responsible for, I took an approach of just enough data (Just Enough Research style). During site visits and user interviews, with we carefully recorded verbatim quotes, noting in short-hand peoples expressions and emotions. On multiple occasions, myself and the CEO always tried where possible, to work in pairs, with one person taking notes and the other gauging commitment - asking follow up questions: 'Cool, what would this let you do that you can’t now?', 'How often would you use this?', 'Do you have a workaround?', 'How long does that take?' etc.
Insights were translated into provisional personas, we I sought to build upon and refine.
Drinking Our Own Champagne
With a focus on first principles, we did our own testing—sometimes structured, sometimes unstructured, sometimes using the Jobs-to-Be-Done framework, and sometimes just reviewing our 'MacGyver' Stats—our internal data reporting tool.
In role-playing sessions, we tried to mimic the use of the product 'in the field'; we assigned roles, including Site Manager, Sub Contractor, and Buyer. This was best done at 1500 on Friday because it could then be accompanied by beers. This allowed those who were not customer-facing to put themselves in the users' shoes and understand the pains, gains, and jobs to be done. Fundamentally, it facilitated our continued appraisal of whether our product was valuable, usable, and feasible for all user segments.
Sharing Our Journey
The CEO and I tried to be active within the ecosystem at industry shows, conferences like PropTech Oslo, First Tuesday, and StartupLab workshops and conferences. I also delivered talks and workshops internally on design and startup culture at company offsites, such as during Christmas 2021, teaching the wider team a hands-on skill through doing it, through practice, and dummy scenario interviews.
The outcome
Building Better Together
A platform to simplify communication, delegate tasks, and ensure seamless collaboration for all parties involved in a project—from options and change requests, to handover and inspections, to warranty cases and documentation—all in one platform.
Impact and Growth
From the time I left Rubus in 2022 to the present, the numbers are as follows:
- 3 x modules and 1 x hybrid mobile app
- Used by 1,700 companies across 500+ projects
- 1 million messages sent
- 400,000 documents uploaded
- NOK 1 billion handled in options and change requests
- 20,000 unique users—doubling since 2023
- Offices in Bergen, Oslo, and Stockholm
- Team growth to 25 FTEs.
Design Legacy
I recruited and onboarded a full-time designer and two contractors, to deliver a key design artefacts and tighten up the existing a design system, from a 'working system' and Storybook - to something that could be built upon.
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Reflections
Too many to mention, however, a few specifics include:
- Iterate from where the product is, not from designs.
- 'Hands-off' hand-offs never work—regardless of prototypes—as a designer in early-stage startups, you’ll always need to chase down and follow up on details.
- Speed is key early on, as are relational sales and strategic partnerships—play the startup card to help this.
- Be the imperfectionist, and know when good enough is good enough.
+36 others. I have a list and I'm going to write an article.
- Don’t start a design system too early, as things will change and you'll tie yourself in knots. Wait for product-market fit and features to stabilise first.
- 'Functionality over form' was the right approach for Rubus. What this means is that for some products, at least in the early stages, it’s about just enough design.The more smoothly a product helps us perform a task, the less aware we are of what it looks like. In hindsight, this focus on the experience that people have when they use the product—they need to feel easy, intuitive, and joyful to use, rather than exhibiting pixel-perfect craftsmanship—was right.
*However, as a designer, I’m still conflicted about this.
- Balancing the urgency to jump to solutions.
- Working with speed, without distributed decision making, as characterised as, 'Maybe, we should wait for what X says?'., working with cofounders come up with solutions to decision making bottlenecks.
There were to many to justify mentioning more than. one.
Again, too many to list:
- Discovering 'Hard is Soft and Soft is Hard'.
- Client tact, giving feedback to stakeholders, colleagues, and team members.
- Communication: communication of design decisions and ideas.
