Peter Uzzi
Product + Design Leader
Transforming commercial real estate transactions
Background
First American relied on seven fragmented legacy systems to manage real estate transactions, frustrating users who needed to move quickly through high-stakes deals. Underwriters, partners, and customers struggled with inefficiency, redundant tasks, and error-prone workflows. Brought in as design lead mid-project, I helped stabilize the team and introduced a systems thinking approach to unify these tools into a single platform—simplifying deal flow and empowering all users in the multi-sided network to manage complex, multi-property transactions in one place.
Challenge & Task
I joined mid-project to lead a struggling team experiencing significant turnover and schedule delays.
I was tasked with stabilizing the project, mentoring designers and researchers, and hiring backfills while keeping delivery on track.
Took a systems thinking approach to untangle seven fragmented legacy applications and unify them into a single modern platform.
Balanced leadership with hands-on contributions in design and UX research to reset direction and rebuild momentum.
Navigated complex workflows across a three-sided network of insurance underwriters, sellers, and buyers, ensuring all needs were addressed in the platform design.
We audited seven legacy systems to map the system design and understand the key Jobs-to-be-Done.
I led my team in producing a detailed service blueprint during our discovery process.
Planning & Strategy
The team had been iterating on concepts for the client without a data-informed, prioritized approach. I helped reset and align around a strategy of systems thinking and user-centered design to rank opportunity and impact.
Discovery & Research
Conducted 50+ stakeholder and user interviews, heuristic evaluations, and data analysis to uncover key priorities and pain points.
Drafted a service blueprint to uncover and define user journeys and opportunities across our three primary user groups.
Synthesized findings into a unified, data-driven content model and workflow for each user group.
Execution
Collaboration & Systems Thinking
Partnered with business analysts and solution architects on foundational features: document collaboration, elastic search and view/edit workflows.
Designed task workflows, user story backlogs, and UX KPIs to align with roadmap milestones and maintain project momentum.
Design & Iteration
Led iterative design and usability testing for the single-property MVP.
Managed parallel discovery tracks for scaling into multi-property transactions, wire transfers, and collaborative document workflows.
Balanced delivery speed with long-term scalability.
Team Leadership
Stepped in hands-on while mentoring remaining designers and hiring backfills.
Introduced a systems thinking approach to shift from feature-churn to a cohesive, scalable platform vision.
We reduced task times by designing intuitive search patterns, reducing many complex data tables into summaries and visualizations.
We also preserved and optimized tabular data views that are necessary to track complex financial transactions and associated documentation.
Simplifying mobile tasks to the few most critical jobs was an editorial undertaking. Ultimately, our users told us that document review and approval were central to their mobile needs.
Solution & Impact
Streamlined hundreds of tasks into intuitive workflows that reduced steps and minimized training needs.
Internal staff, partners, and customers gained a single platform that supported both simple and complex transactions.
Simplified navigation and usability testing ensured the platform worked for three distinct personas without compromise.
Scaled the system to support multi-property deals worth hundreds of millions, providing flexibility for large enterprise use cases.
Praised by C-suite stakeholders for its clarity and efficiency, the platform restored confidence and positioned First American as a technology leader, while also projecting tens of millions in annual cost savings.
