Jade Software

Leveraging Generative AI in a 5-day Hackathon

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Role

Lead Designer

Team

6 People

Timeline

July 2024

As part of a five-day hackathon hosted by Jade Software, I led the design of an AI-powered solution to tackle the challenge:

“How do we help first-time buyers into homes?” Resulting in a win for our team.

Approach & Collaboration

Our team of six, including frontend and backend developers, with myself as the design lead, collaborated to navigate the problem space and deliver a working MVP solution. Following a structured design sprint process, we moved through the stages of Understand, Ideate, Decide, Prototype, and Test across the 5 days.

Challenges

Our team identified several key challenges faced by first-time home buyers:

  • Rising prices: Rapidly increasing house prices and living costs make it difficult to save for a deposit.

  • Stringent bank requirements: Tougher lending criteria have made it increasingly difficult to qualify for home loans.

  • Lack of awareness: Many buyers are unaware of alternative ownership models.

  • Single income struggles: Buyers relying on a single income often face greater barriers to meeting bank requirements and securing financing.

  • Rising prices: Rapidly increasing house prices and living costs make it difficult to save for a deposit or keep up with market growth.

  • Stringent bank requirements: Tougher lending criteria have made it increasingly difficult to qualify for home loans.

  • Lack of awareness: Many buyers are unaware of alternative ownership models, such as co-ownership or fractional investing.

  • Single income struggles: Buyers relying on a single income often face greater barriers to meeting bank requirements and securing financing.

  • Rising prices: Rapidly increasing house prices and living costs make it difficult to save for a deposit or keep up with market growth.

  • Stringent bank requirements: Tougher lending criteria have made it increasingly difficult to qualify for home loans.

  • Lack of awareness: Many buyers are unaware of alternative ownership models, such as co-ownership or fractional investing.

  • Single income struggles: Buyers relying on a single income often face greater barriers to meeting bank requirements and securing financing.

The problem was clear: First-time home buyers need a more accessible pathway to homeownership, as saving for a deposit is challenging amidst rising property prices and living costs.

"If first home buyers have access to alternative financial support, then they will have greater success in purchasing their first home."

— Hypothesis statement

Our Solution

We conceptualised a digital platform that connects first-time home buyers with investors to co-fund property purchases. Buyers could raise capital by selling shares in their future homes, making ownership more achievable. Investors, in turn, would receive equity in the property and benefit from potential appreciation, with the ability to buy and sell shares, creating access for those with smaller amounts of capital. This model aimed to reimagine the path to homeownership by introducing greater flexibility and opportunity for both parties.

Research and Insights

Through competitive audit, we found there was existing co-ownership and fractional ownership frameworks. However many competitors require ownership of an existing property or are managed by private organisations. This insight presented an opportunity to focus specifically on helping first-time home buyers rather than existing home-owners and became our unique value proposition we based our product around.

The application was built using V0's generative UI and Microsoft Azure. It was important to explore use cases for AI technology and how it can improve the buyers experience. Through integrating OpenAi we could utilise property and real-estate data and predict annual house appreciation to provide detailed breakdowns to investors. Other features included an AI chat assistant to support first-home buyers. Through utilising these tools we created a fully functioning prototype in just 5 days.

Results

We successfully delivered a fully functioning prototype in just five days, pitched it live to the company, and were awarded first place. Beyond the win, the project demonstrated the power of generative AI and presented valuable insights for the business to learn from.

A full project recap can be watched in the video below.

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