A Deal Management Platform for Healthcare Real Estate Advisory

Project Overview

Our client is a healthcare real estate advisory firm that brokers the sale of healthcare facilities — nursing homes, hospices, hospitals, assisted living communities — to private equity firms worldwide. By 2016, their growing deal pipeline had outgrown their off-the-shelf CRM. They needed a bespoke platform: one where their advisors could manage hundreds of active listings, and where vetted PE buyers could access curated deal flow. I joined as UX Architect and Project Manager to design and deliver it.

Problem Statement

• Outdated CRM unable to scale with a rapidly growing asset portfolio
• No structured way to manage document and photo packages for each listing
• Buyer access was manually managed, with no purpose-built deal flow interface
• Multi-million dollar transactions conducted through generic tooling

Project Goals

• Build a two-sided platform: advisor-facing deal management + buyer-facing listing portal
• Centralize document and photo management for hundreds of active healthcare facility listings
• Give pre-vetted global PE buyers a clean, credible interface to evaluate assets

UX Process

Discovery

Interviews with platform admins, cognitive walkthroughs with the lead analyst, and a cross-functional workshop with the client's sales team and our Technical Product Manager. This produced a detailed platform description, identified core processes and user actions, and surfaced the object-action relationships that would drive the architecture.

A significant discovery came mid-project: portfolio deals — bundles of multiple facilities sold together — were a meaningful part of the business and hadn't surfaced in early conversations. We adapted the design to clearly distinguish portfolio listings from single-asset listings, redesigning the hero and photo section so buyers immediately understood what they were evaluating. The underlying architecture required minimal rework; the visual treatment did the heavy lifting.

System Mapping

From discovery outputs, I built a system map — the central piece of design documentation for the project. It defined scope, gave the full team a shared view of the system, and became the reference point for every subsequent design decision.

Object Mapping & Task Flows

Using an OOUX-influenced approach, I developed an Action Inventory cataloging every user action, its trigger, output, and associated role. This fed directly into a UX Object Map — a visualization of system elements and their relationships that shaped the user-facing architecture. User journeys and task flows followed, pairing user processes with pain points.

Wireframes & Prototyping

We started in Balsamiq for speed. As complexity grew, we moved to Adobe XD for interactive prototyping — used for client presentations, stakeholder alignment, and usability testing.

Usability Testing

Iterative testing throughout, refining interactions and validating decisions before handoff to the dev team.

Design Solutions

The core UX challenge was document and photo management. Advisors needed to upload legal documents, offering materials, and property photography for each listing — with precise control over what buyers could access and when. Buyers needed to navigate and download those packages cleanly, across assets ranging from single nursing homes to multi-property portfolios.

We drew on familiar patterns from document-heavy B2B platforms to reduce cognitive load, while building in enough flexibility to handle edge cases that emerged mid-project — most notably, the portfolio listing format, which required a distinct visual treatment to prevent buyer confusion.

Project Management Approach

• Implemented Dual Track Design process
• Managed risks, especially lack of existing database documentation
• Maintained regular communication with stakeholders, engineers, and visual designers
• Balanced chronology of UX research/design with development risks

To manage this complex project effectively, I implemented a Dual Track Design process, which allowed us to merge Agile development practices with user-centric design principles. This approach involved orchestrating parallel sprints for design and development, ensuring that we could conduct UX research and design without impeding development progress.

Risk management was a key focus, particularly given the lack of existing documentation for the client's previous asset management system. To mitigate this, we initiated early-stage requirements and wireframes for key pages, enabling our development team to explore APIs with specific requirements in mind.

Throughout the project, I maintained a regular communication cadence with stakeholders, engaging them in iterative design cycles. This involved presenting a range of deliverables, from wireframes to interactive prototypes, tailored to various discussion formats including moderated usability tests and formal presentations.

Outcomes and Impact

The platform shipped after eight months and entered active use across the advisory team and buyer network. Inquiry-to-close time dropped 40% — the clearest signal that the platform was doing what the old CRM couldn't: keeping deals moving on assets where speed and credibility directly affect transaction value.

Reflections

This project is where I became a UX designer. As project manager, I needed to give the UI team something structural to build from — wireframes, flows, object maps, interaction specs. The designers didn't want to work through the complexity. I did. That instinct — to reason through a system before anyone touches pixels — is now the core of how I work.

The Object-Oriented UX approach proved particularly effective for a platform this complex. Breaking the system down into objects, actions, and relationships gave us a shared language across design, development, and the client — and made mid-project surprises like the portfolio listing format manageable rather than disruptive.