EXHIBIT · MUSTWANTS

Wren · a concierge with a pulse

MustWants

Buyers fall for a house in thirty seconds, find a dealbreaker, and leave — then do it again for four months. Agents describe it in the language of dating, because that is what it is. Founding designer on a real-estate product that treats a home as a compatibility match, with Wren — a matchmaker with a body — asking the one question the company was named after but never distinguished: what do you need in a partner, and what would just be nice?

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

BRAND SPECIMEN

The product · five moves

A conversation, a match, a date, an honest report, a licensed human.

Everything after this is why. The five moves in source order — each reappears later where it earns its keep.

  1. Wren asking about budget during intake, with the answer already understood
    1Intake
    Wren already knows the range before you finish the sentence.
  2. It's a Match: the Morning-Light Corner Unit at 91 percent
    2Match
    Ninety-one percent, and she asks before assuming.
  3. The date: the house describing its own mornings, unprompted
    3The date
    The house answers for itself. Wren steps off the screen.
  4. Compatibility report: daily routines 94, layout 88, neighborhood 79
    4The report
    Four dimensions, and they disagree.
  5. Handoff to Sona Ellison, licensed in NC, with Wren retiring
    5The handoff
    Sona is licensed in NC. The AI stops here.

01

THE PROBLEM

MustWants began as a listings product for military families — people who relocate on orders, to places they have never seen, on a deadline. A house that fails one requirement fails completely. There is no second spring. Opened to the public, the deadline vanished and the same failure kept happening. It just took four months instead of four weeks. Buyers and agents described homes the same way, and neither noticed. Not 3 bed, 2 bath — but attraction and disqualification. You fall for a house in thirty seconds, a dealbreaker surfaces, you leave, then again. Three to four and a half months. Eight to ten homes. That is not a search problem. That is dating — and it fails the way dating apps fail: the impulse fires before the question does.

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

Who we talked to

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.

  • A day trader we interviewed as part of the research programmeDay Trader
  • A project manager we interviewed as part of the research programmeProject Manager
  • A real-estate professional we interviewed as part of the research programmeReal Estate

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

02

THE INSIGHT

Preferences came in as one flat list. The feed badged everything 100%. The one corrective idea the company was named after appeared nowhere in it. Everyone got the same seven questions, in the same order — and a score that cannot say no is not a score. It is the impulse, automated.

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. A score that cannot say no is not a score — it is the impulse, automated.

V1 audit · what the product shipped before the reframe

02b

WHAT DIDN’T WORK

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 chat pattern fixed nothing, because 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

03

THE MATCHMAKER

Four moods, built from layered gradients — napping, thinking, speaking, and a match state that blooms past her own edges before setting into marble. The rationale is figure and ground: every control is flat, single-tone and still, so she can be 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

04

THE BRANCH

Every answer selects the next question. Say three bedrooms and Wren asks who is in them. Say one and she never asks. The decision that mattered was to ask rather than infer. Three bedrooms could mean kids, in-laws, an office, or nothing yet. Guessing is wrong more often than right — and guessing family status is the mechanism 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

05

THE MECHANIC

Essentials and luxuries are different data types, not two flavours of preference. A home clears every essential or it gets no number at all. Extras become the score. Nobody thinks their wants are wants, so the fix is arithmetic made visible — inventory collapses live as each essential lands. Which hands Wren the moment that defines her: that is five essentials and four homes left. Which would you actually walk away over? An assistant that never contradicts you is a servant, not a matchmaker.

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 — it would only drift toward 100.

Two data types, one honest arithmetic

06

THE VOICE

Wren steps off the screen entirely and the house answers in the first person. Quiet. By seven the sun is through my east windows, and the kitchen goes gold. Then, asked for dealbreakers: parking is tight, and my windows are single-pane. It is the only voice in the product that volunteers its own weaknesses — which is why buyers believe it about everything else.

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

07

THE REPORT

Four dimensions, scored independently and disagreeing — routines 94, layout 88, neighbourhood 79. The 79 is the most valuable number on the screen, rendered at full weight rather than quietly greyed. 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

08

THE PARTNERS

Both partners complete intake separately and never see each other’s answers — whoever reveals first otherwise sets the frame. Private inputs, public reasoning. Scores are never blended. A home that is 95 for one and 45 for the other is not a 70, it is an argument with a number painted over it. Compromise lives in the extras, never the essentials.

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.

09

THE HANDOFF

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. The metaphor resolves into an appointment. 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 metaphor resolves into an appointment. Saturday, 2:30.

Licensed human at the point of consequence

10

THE OUTCOME

Measured across the research programme — 198 agents and 14 buyers over nine months — not from shipped telemetry. I pivoted the business model from listings for military families to real estate meets a dating app, ran brand and concept in parallel, and prototyped in the browser rather than Figma so Wren shipped to engineering as a running component, not a redline. I did not own the matching model, the roadmap, or the agent network.

  1. 40%reduction in search time against a 3–4.5 month baseline
  2. 35%increase in active interaction with recommendations
  3. 20%faster agent offer submissions

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

  • Clay — brand…—:1 on canvas
  • Canvas…—:1 on canvas
  • Board…—:1 on canvas
  • Chalk — text…—:1 on canvas
  • Compatibility…—:1 on canvas
  • Caution…—:1 on canvas
  • Match marble…—:1 on canvas
  • Thinking…—:1 on canvas
The system behind the screens

MustWants’ design language

A warm clay reserved entirely for Wren and a dusty teal reserved entirely for compatibility, on a near-black canvas that lets photography carry every other colour — plus one amber for the moments the product has to tell you something you don’t want to hear.

Read live from the running stylesheet · --art-mw-* · checking 23 tokens…

Brand & ground

--art-mw-brandClay — Wren, and nothing else…
--art-mw-canvasCanvas — the contrast baseline…
--art-mw-boardBoard — ground behind the device…
--art-mw-surfaceSurface — cards, bubbles, the house’s voice…
--art-mw-raisedRaised — inputs, sheets…
--art-mw-textChalk — primary text…
--art-mw-dimDim — secondary text…

Semantic accents

--art-mw-fitCompatibility — and nothing else…
--art-mw-cautionCaution — honest low scores…
--art-mw-selectSelect — selection state only…
--art-mw-edgeEdge — interactive boundaries…
--art-mw-lineLine — decorative separation…

Wren’s body

--art-mw-orb-warmOrb core — resting highlight…
--art-mw-orb-emberOrb outer — warm stop…
--art-mw-thinkThinking bloom…
--art-mw-marbleMatch — polished marble…

Shape & motion

--art-mw-r-chipChips, inner elements…
--art-mw-r-cardCards, message bubbles…
--art-mw-r-sheetSheets, device frame…
--art-mw-r-pillButtons, badges, Wren…
--art-mw-ease-breathCharacter loops only…
--art-mw-ease-snapAll interface transitions…
--art-mw-ease-overshootWren’s bloom and match…

Typefaces

Display · Playfair DisplayWhat do you need in a partner, and what would just be nice?Editorial voice — Wren’s prompts and the case study’s H1s.
UI · InterMusts gate. Wants score.Everything the product speaks in — inputs, chips, captions.

System principles

One colour, one job

The teal marked match quality, selection state, and the user’s own messages — three unrelated meanings on one signal, so none of them read. Now `--art-mw-fit` marks compatibility and nothing else.

Filled means tappable

One hairline token was serving as both decorative separator and interactive border. At 1.23:1 it was invisible as an affordance. Interactive boundaries now clear 4:1; hairline means display only.

Wren runs on her own clock

Interface motion is 170–400ms. Her loops run 900ms to 4.2 seconds, deliberately outside that band. On a button’s clock she reads as a loading spinner rather than something alive.

The contract, four ways out

Reading live values from the stylesheet…

Written for humans and machines

Every token above is declared once in tokens-art.css, mirrored in Design.md, and read live on this page — so the exhibit cannot drift from the running stylesheet. The same contract is what the case study renders against.

ContractDesign.md · globals.cssAgentsFigma · Cursor · LovableGatevalidate-design-system.shNo driftbuild fails if any of us drifts

  1. COMPATIBILITY PLATFORM

    Dating-style simulations let buyers test hosting, morning routine, and daily life in a space before scheduling agent tours.

    Persona-driven mobile flows simplified property browsing and raised engagement in iterative testing.

    View presentation →
Paul Banks[ ID: BANKS_P ]

CHARLOTTE_NC //

Paul Banks

Architect of Intent

Designing for humans, engineering for agents. After 15+ years extracting human patterns, I've pivoted from crafting static interfaces to architecting autonomous systems — building the logic that helps agents understand what people actually need.

> INITIATE_DOWNLOAD: PAUL_BANKS_RESUME.PDF> SEE: BRAND_VOICE_WORK