Client
Duration
Status
May-Sep 2026
Olympus Property Management Ltd.
Olympus
Shipped - Live Site
Team
5 People
OLYMPUS PROPERTY MANAGEMENT . NOVA SCOTIA
Residential, commercial, parking and storage. Four completely different renters, one website. I designed the search that gets each of them to the right space and to the next step once they find it.
CASE STUDY .
Making 1,500+ listings feel
like one clear decision.
MY ROLE
A team of five delivered this site. I was the UX designer from kickoff through the research, the information architecture, the flows, and the testing, and once the structure was settled, I carried those same decisions into the interface.
I SHARED
I came in as the UX designer and stayed through the UI.
Client interviews & synthesis
Competitive teardown
IA & sitemap
User flows & wireframes
Usability test plans & moderation
Search, listing, property & residents UI
Component & pattern decisions
I OWNED
Scope & prioritization with the team
Feasibility & build sequencing with developers
Content & copy review — with the client
“This is the one.”
THE REAL PROBLEM
BECOME
"I'm looking for a place"
The challenge was never putting more properties online. It was designing the distance between those two sentences.
THE INSIGHT
A filter can't hold that difference. So property type stopped being a filter and became the thing that reconfigures the search.
One search can't answer three different questions.
WHERE THE ANSWER CAME FROM
How the Olympus team actually operates: what each property type is, how offers work, who handles a renter after first contact. This is where the four-type problem surfaced and where the shape of the search came from.
I went looking for a pattern to borrow. There wasn't one.
01 · Client sessions
02 · Competitive teardown
The business, not the brief.
They set the baseline for search, filters, maps and listings. But each is built for one kind of renter. None had to make one search serve four.
Four Platforms, one blind spot.
“So I stopped designing
pages and designed a
path.”
KEY DESIGN DECISIONS
Six decisions along the path.
01
Search
02
Narrow
03
Say no early
04
Explore
05
Decide
06
Hand off
01 SEARCH
Search starts before the listings do.
Four inputs instead of a browse everything grid. Each is a question the renter already has an answer to, so the first interaction is never a guess.
02 NARROW
One switch changes the entire search.
Property type is a mode, not another filter. Switching to Commercial or Parking swaps the filter set, the card content and the language of the results.
Residential - Beds & Baths, Home Type, Price
Commercial - Same control, now Square Feet and Commercial Type
Everything else collapses into one All Filters panel. Applied filters stay pinned at the top, and the result count lives on the button that closes it, nobody loses track of why they're looking at 128 properties.
Several
USABILITY TESTING · IT CHANGED DESCISION 02
The property-type row looked clear in the static design. In context, participants scrolled past it.
ROUNDS
I designed it for the top of the page. People were at the bottom of it.
One per major section of the flow
People
~15
Participants in each round
Format
Task-based
Find a space, narrow it, decide
Two rows. Every type visible — but the tallest possible sticky header.
One rows. Type reads as the mode you're in, and the view toggle earns a place.
THE CALL
The client called them limitations.
Renters call them dealbreakers.
Olympus buildings are smoke-free, pet-free and long-term. In our sessions this came up apologetically, as something the website would have to work around. But for someone with a dog it isn't a footnote, it's the whole answer. Finding out three clicks into an application wastes their time and the leasing office's.
The policies moved to the top of the search results, stated plainly. Saying no early is a service, it costs one row of the page and saves someone an application.
03 SAY NO EARLY · FROM THE INTERVIEWS
A
Location isn't a field. It's the decision.
A property can look perfect on paper, then you see where it is. Map and list run side by side: the map gives context, the list gives detail, neither wins. Three layers let renters ask “where is this, really?”
What's around it?
04 EXPLORE
Campuses, transit, groceries, schools and parks, layered on demand a neighborhood becomes legible without leaving the search.
B
How long to get there?
Set a destination, choose how you travel, and see only places within a time that works for you.
C
Draw your own boundary
Some people don't think in neighbourhood names. The search follows a mental map, not an administrative one.
The property page answers the questions a viewing would.
Pricing is grouped by plan and unit, so “from $1,600” never turns into a surprise. Utilities, availability, floor plans and tours sit on the same card as the price. The contact panel names the superintendent, their hours and their number.
05 DECIDE
Renting is rarely a solo decision.
So Save and Share sit inline with the gallery, not buried in an account area, keep it for later, or send it to whoever else has a vote.
A trust problem disguised as a link.
Residents pay rent and file maintenance requests through RentCafe, a third-party portal. Clicking through dropped them onto an unfamiliar domain, and people hesitated. It was the moment the site stopped feeling like Olympus.
06 HAND OFF
BEFORE
AFTER
The call: don't hide the third party. Introduce it before anyone leaves the site
On a phone, the map and the list can't both win
The desktop layout depends on two panes being visible at once. On mobile, that becomes a choice, so the view toggle becomes the primary control, and the search collapses into stacked fields in a single sheet.
RESPONSIVE
Filters move into a full-height sheet with the result count on the closing button, and the policy strip stays above the results; it’s the one thing that shouldn’t need a tap to find.
Homepage search, stacked
Homepage search, stacked
Filters in a full-height sheet
Property page and contact card
The hard part to hand over wasn't the layout.
It was the logic.
WORKING WITH DEVELOPERS
Not every visit starts with a property.
BEYOND SEARCH
Some people arrive with a question, a job in mind, or simply wanting to know who Olympus is. These pages give those visitors a clear path too.
Contact
Making the right team easy to reach.
FAQ
Answering common questions before they become friction.
Our Story
Building trust and introducing the company.
REFLECTION
Three things this project taught me.
01
Test assumptions, not just interfaces.
