Rebuilding the Agent Profile: From Legacy System to Acquisition-Ready Platform

Context - A Legacy System Blocking a Strategic Acquisition
Compass agents managed their profiles through an outdated editor where critical information was missing. Social links, professional designations, and languages spoken were buried in unstructured free-form bio text. This made data impossible to validate, search, or export reliably, and was directly blocking a strategic acquisition partner from retiring their legacy system ahead of a critical deadline.

Approach - Rethinking Both Sides of the Profile
The redesign required rebuilding both the agent-facing editor and the consumer-facing public profile. On the editor side, we replaced a fragmented experience with a modular, tabbed Settings interface covering 10 distinct areas. Every legacy freeform field was restructured into validated, searchable data. On the consumer side, we validated the redesigned public profile across mobile and web using unmoderated Lyssna testing with 20 participants.

Discovery - Two Rounds, Two Audiences
I conducted two rounds of usability research. The first tested the editor and redesigned profile with 10 agents and 2 staff members, using AI-assisted synthesis to identify patterns quickly. The second was unmoderated Lyssna testing with 20 consumers to validate the public-facing profile.

Agent reception was strong — "Big, bold, clean, easy to translate — a huge improvement from what we have today." The consumer testing surfaced one significant pain point: languages spoken was nearly impossible to find, with 15 out of 20 participants giving up before locating it. The fix was straightforward — move languages onto the contact card and reorder the mobile layout to surface the About section before listings, responding to feedback that users wanted to understand the agent as a person first.

Testing also revealed a clear opportunity: users wanted hard numbers — homes sold, days on market, sale-to-ask ratio — which directly informed the Highlights module design.

Outcomes - A Data Foundation for What Comes Next
The redesign was delivered to engineering handoff in late 2025. The new modular system structured 68 professional designations, social URLs, languages, education, and specialties for the first time, creating the data foundation required for the acquisition integration and for future agent branding, SEO, and buyer-agent matching capabilities.

Reflection - What I'd Do Differently
With four PMs, four engineers, and legal all in the mix, alignment was a constant challenge. Looking back, I would have established a more regular cross-functional cadence from the start, structured check-ins across all stakeholders would have caught redundancy earlier, and kept the project moving more efficiently toward handoff.