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Case study:

The RENTR App.

Notification and dashboard design for time-critical, trust-sensitive user journeys.

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The Challenge.

RENTR operates in an environment where missed communication directly translates into wasted time, financial loss and erosion of trust.

I was tasked with leading design across two critical problem spaces:

  1. Tenant cancellations. Ensuring users were reliably informed when viewings were cancelled, often at short notice, and guided toward compliant, low-friction next steps.

  2. Landlord payment oversight. Enabling landlords to identify, understand, and act on overdue rent without relying on customer support.

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Both problems shared core constraints:

  • high user stress and low tolerance for ambiguity,

  • strong need for transparency,

  • a requirement to support self-service at scale.

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Design Strategy.

Rather than treating these as isolated UI problems, I framed them as end-to-end journeys.

Focusing on:

  • when and how users are informed,

  • what decisions they need to make next,

  • how the product takes responsibility when something goes wrong,

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I grounded decisions in existing research and personas, then translated those insights into clear system rules, notification logic, and information hierarchies that could scale.

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Task One:

Tenant Cancellation Notifications.

Designing for urgency, transparency, and trust.

The scenario.

A tenant’s viewing is cancelled hours before it is due to take place. Failure to notify them reliably risks lost time, missed work and immediate loss of trust in the platform.

The objective.

  • reaches users reliably under time pressure,

  • clearly explains what happened and why,

  • guides users toward the best compliant next step.

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Notification System Design.

I designed a tiered notification strategy using behaviour-based triggers:

  • recent app users received push notifications directing them back into the app,

  • non-responsive users were escalated to SMS and email,

  • users inactive in the app were contacted immediately via SMS/email.

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This approach prioritised delivery certainty over channel preference, a principle commonly used in payments and compliance-critical communication.

Impact:

  • reduced the risk of users attending cancelled viewings,

  • fewer inbound support queries related to missed cancellations,

  • increased confidence that critical messages were received and acted on.

In-app resolution flows.

Once inside the app, the experience focused on:

  • clear explanation of the cancellation reason,

  • immediate presentation of next actions,

  • language that acknowledged inconvenience and took platform-level ownership.

 

​Where possible, tenants were routed directly to:

  • similar available properties,

  • or a rescheduling flow with shared availability.

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A secondary transparency layer allowed users to view landlord notes, reinforcing accountability and reducing speculation.

Outcomes:

  • faster recovery from failed bookings,

  • higher likelihood of users continuing their search within the platform,

  • reduced emotional drop-off during critical moments.

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Task Two:

Landlord Dashboard & Payments.

Designing for clarity, accountability, and self-service.

The scenario.

A landlord logs in and needs to understand whether any tenants are overdue on rent, and what actions are required.

Core problems.

Landlords needed to answer quickly:

  • is there a problem?

  • who is affected?

  • what should I do next?

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Dashboard Strategy.

I focused on information hierarchy and escalation, principles common in financial dashboards:

  • late payments surfaced through alerts and colour signalling,

  • notifications timestamped for traceability,

  • direct links from alerts to affected tenants.

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Navigation and layout were designed to support fast scanning and predictable access, reducing cognitive load for infrequent but high-importance tasks.

From insight to action.

From a single alert, landlords could:

  • filter tenants by payment status,

  • view overdue balances,

  • access full tenant context, including history and communication,

  • initiate contact in one step.

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This reduced reliance on customer support and reinforced RENTR as a self-service, operationally efficient platform.

Outcomes:

  • faster identification of overdue payments,

  • reduced time-to-resolution for rent issues,

  • lower support dependency for payment-related queries.

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