The morning-light on Elm

MustWants

Wren scores a house, then a licensed agent takes the tour.

MustWants: Wren scoring The morning-light on Elm, 91 percent

Founding designer on a real-estate product that treats a home as a compatibility match. Wren asks what you need versus what would be nice. Tested with 198 agents and 14 buyers. Not shipped.

Role: Founding Designer · Research through UI, brand and prototype
Year: 2024-2025
Duration: 9 months research · 6 months design (team of 7, 1 designer)
Tools: Figma · Cursor · Lovable · Miro · Jira

MustWants started as listings for military families: relocate on orders, to a city they have never seen, on a deadline. A house that fails one requirement fails. Opened to the public, the deadline vanished and the same loop remained. Fall for a house in thirty seconds, find a dealbreaker, leave. Three to four and a half months. Eight to ten homes.

…each preference was a metaphor for each other’s personalities.

Listing agent, research interview · 198 agents and 14 buyers over nine months

Three faces standing in for the research programme: 198 agents and 14 buyers over nine months. Anonymised on the record; here so the numbers aren’t blank.

Day Trader
Project Manager
Real Estate

Preferences arrived as one flat list. Everyone got the same seven questions, in the same order. The scoring model had no way to reject a listing.

V1 intake step four: transport mode, arrival time and an ideal-commute slider, marked 4 of 7 — Everyone got the same seven questions, in the same order.

V1 results feed showing three homes, each badged one hundred percent match — Three homes. Three perfect matches.

V1 audit · what the product shipped before the reframe

If the form is the problem, make it a chat. It knew one fact ("Got it! 2 Bedrooms works perfectly!") and was already flattering. That is the 100% badge in language. The gradient painted over the house you came to look at. And it was still a form: five equal boxes, nothing branching. The pattern was never the problem.

Abandoned direction: a gradient wash obscuring the property behind feature bullets and inventory counts

Abandoned direction: a chat intake with flattering copy and five equal option boxes

Abandoned directions · cut before Wren

Four moods from layered gradients: napping, thinking, speaking, and a match state that blooms past her edges then sets into marble. Every control is flat and still, so she is the only thing that breathes. Her scale tracks her authority.

Wren · match

Splash screen: Wren at full presence introducing herself as the matchmaker — Full presence. The most she ever occupies.

Home feed with Wren reduced to a small strip above two new matches — A strip in the feed. Her work is done and her size says so.

Empty state with Wren occupying the whole screen — And the whole screen again, when there is nothing to show.

Wren’s scale ladder: full presence, strip, empty state

Say three bedrooms and Wren asks who is in them. Say one and she never asks. Guessing family status is what fair housing law exists to prevent. The cost is the progress ring: a tree has no denominator.

Wren · thinking

Wren asking about budget in conversation and understanding the answer without a form field — Intake as conversation, not questionnaire.

Wren asking what would make you fall for a place, with selectable qualities — What would make you fall for a place, asked in those words.

Wren asking who the third bedroom is for rather than assuming — The branch. She could guess, and says so.

Open the intake prototype

Intake as conversation · asks rather than infers

A home clears every essential or it gets no number. Extras become the score. Inventory collapses live as each essential lands, which gives Wren the line that defines her: that is five essentials and four homes left. Which would you actually walk away over?

Wren · speaking

Wren pushing back after five essentials reduce the available homes to four — She disagrees with you, using nothing but the truth about inventory.

Intake summary listing essentials as gates and extras as a count, with no percentage — Gates above, score below, and no percentage. A percentage would only drift toward 100.

Two data types, one honest arithmetic

Wren leaves the screen and the house answers in the first person. Quiet. By seven the sun is through my east windows, and the kitchen goes gold. Asked for dealbreakers: parking is tight, and my windows are single-pane. It is the only voice that volunteers its own weaknesses.

Wren · napping

Match deck card labelled the morning romantic, Corner Unit on Elm — One card, one line, one reason.

On a date: the house describing its own mornings and then its own faults — Wren is absent here. That absence is the design decision.

Open the date prototype

First-person listing voice · the house as source

Four dimensions, scored independently: routines 94, layout 88, neighbourhood 79. The 79 is the most valuable number on the screen, rendered at full weight. Softening bad news is the instinct that badged three homes at 100%.

Wren · thinking

Compatibility report at 91 percent overall with neighbourhood scoring lowest at 79 — Ninety-one overall, and it still tells you where it is weakest.

Independent dimensions, honest weakest link

Both partners complete intake separately and never see each other's answers. Whoever reveals first otherwise sets the frame. Scores are never blended. A home that is 95 for one and 45 for the other is not a 70.

Wren · thinking

Two completed intakes surfacing a single conflict, garden versus garage, with twelve homes matching both — Twelve have both. Three hundred and forty have one. That is a decision, not an argument.

Open the two-buyer prototype

Twelve have both. Three hundred and forty have one.

Wren at her smallest size anywhere in the product: my part is done, say hi to Sona, she knows this block. The agent card is deliberately not clay. Every Wren surface carries that colour, so using it here would imply she wrote the introduction. She did not. Saturday, 2:30.

Wren · napping

Handoff to Sona Ellison, licensed in North Carolina, with Wren retiring to a small strip — Sona is licensed in NC and knows the block. Wren shrinks the moment introductions land.

Tour booked for Saturday at 2:30 with Sona Ellison — The appointment. Saturday, 2:30.

Licensed human at the point of consequence

Measured across the research programme: 198 agents and 14 buyers over nine months, not from shipped telemetry. I pivoted from listings for military families to a compatibility match, ran brand and concept in parallel, and prototyped in the browser so Wren shipped to engineering as a running component. I did not own the matching model, the roadmap, or the agent network.

What we tested

This was a research programme with agents and buyers, not shipped telemetry. The prototype tested the matching conversation and its decision rules; it did not validate a live marketplace outcome.

What isn’t solved

Wren has no screen-reader story yet: her state is carried by colour and motion alone. Reduced-motion coverage is incomplete. Two states in the contract are specced and unbuilt. And a home that misses one scalar essential by two minutes is invisible when it should surface as a near-miss.

9 months research · 6 months design · team of 7, 1 designer

COMPATIBILITY PLATFORM
Buyers test a house as a match before a licensed tour.
Tested with 198 agents and 14 buyers over nine months. Not shipped. Matching model, roadmap, and agent network were out of scope.
View presentation