Leading 0-1 design for an AI platform running multifamily operations.
Accolade is in active pilot and under NDA, so this page is a high-level overview. Full case studies are password-protected; recruiters and hiring managers will find the password on my resume. Click View Case Studies below, or email me if you need access.
OVERVIEW
​Accolade is an AI-native platform that centralizes multifamily property operations. Leasing, Maintenance, Call Center, Vendor Management, Voice AI, and Residents Experience all live in one system.
​
I led design as both an IC and the lead. I owned the vision, set the roadmap with the CEO, and built the pipeline that moved work from strategy to shipped product. In one year I took the company from rebrand to design system to a product suite in pilot. That work helped secure a $x M pre-seed.
ROLE
Lead Product Designer
TIMELINE
Aug '25 - Present
TEAM
CEO, Director of Ops/Engineering, 3 Product Designers, and 8 Engineers.
CONTEXT
Proptech is a $47B market growing at roughly 16 percent a year, and AI is where the attention is going. Adoption in property management rose from 20 percent to 58 percent in a single year, but only 8 percent have automated a process end to end.
​
That gap is a shift in progress. Property software was built as a system of record, logging the lease and the work order after the fact. Operators now want a system of action, software that answers the resident, routes the technician, and books the tour. Accolade was built for that shift.
FOUNDATION
When I joined in August, the brand, the color, and the design system had not really been set up yet, and you could see it across the product. My first priority was building that foundation.
Rebrand: I led the new foundation for the Accolade brand. Logo, typography, and color, rooted in New York. Its type scale and palette became the base layer the design system was built on.
Design System: Planned and published a company-wide design system, themed to the new brand. Used Claude Code and ShadCN MCP to spin up our own Zeroheight-themed site in days.
PROJECT HIGHLIGHTS
As Lead Product Designer, I set the design direction for the platform and owned every product on it, from the first strategy call to the final handoff. I shaped the design culture and strategy, and vibe coded several features myself to help us ship faster.
Task Assignment: triages every inbound email, call, and text from prospects and residents, nurtures the conversation with AI, and escalates only when human intervention is required.
Maintenance Planner: Maintenance managers turn resident requests into optimized technician schedules. AI matches work orders to the right skill set and sequences them by priority and location.
Technician App: A field app for maintenance techs. See assigned work orders and inspections, handle preventive maintenance, and clock in and out with time-off tracking, backed by an AI agent for troubleshooting complex fixes.
Unit Editor: A single place to manage every unit across communities. Browse by type, check availability and occupancy at a glance, and update details, amenities, and media for each unit.
Call Center: A built-in phone system for leasing and resident calls. Inbound calls route to the right agent or an AI voice agent, and each call is logged, transcribed, and scored, with tools for agent coaching and vanity numbers.
Leasing Agent App: A workspace for agents on the move. Manage tours and follow-ups, take notes, and message prospects across channels
Reports: Visual dashboards that turn platform data into clear, at-a-glance insights. Users track key metrics over time, filter by property or portfolio, and drill into the details that drive decisions.
Document Center: A secure home for every file. Store, organize, and search leases and records in one place, share them internally or externally with role-based access, and collect e-signatures without leaving the platform.
Workflows: A visual builder for automating multi-step processes across the platform. Connect triggers, actions, and logic on a single canvas manually or with AI.
Accolade Intelligence: A conversational layer across every module. Users ask in plain language or tap a quick action, and purpose-built agents draw on a library of skills to carry out tasks end to end.
Resident App: resident portal for maintenance requests, amenity booking, announcements, chat, and the community marketplace.
REFLECTION
Things I learned.
Leading and building at once
I managed the team and stayed an IC on the hardest surfaces. Doing both kept my direction grounded in the actual work, and my feedback sharper for it.
Vibe coding as a strategy tool
Prototyping in code let me pressure-test product scope early and get engineering thinking about the system and the APIs sooner. Design stopped defining the what and started shaping the how.
Culture is built in the details.
I reset how we managed files, ran critique sessions, and worked side by side with engineering in the codebase. Small changes to how the team operated moved things faster than any single design did.
Wearing multiple hats to keep moving quickly.
I switched between design, engineering, PM, and GTM, wrote the PRDs, and presented demos to clients. Covering that much ground is what let a small team ship at the pace we did.
Let's work together.
