Designing Housing Systems with User Journeys in Mind

Understanding the Landscape: Housing Providers and Digital Challenges

Housing providers – whether in social housing, supported accommodation, or student housing – sit at the crossroads of increasing digital expectations and longstanding systemic challenges. Many are grappling with the same issues: outdated legacy systems, siloed data, manual admin-heavy processes, and rising tenant dissatisfaction. Layer on top of that the mounting pressures of compliance and budget constraints, and it’s clear that adopting smarter systems isn’t just ideal – it’s essential.

The route to a more effective digital environment begins with a less technical concept: the user journey. By first understanding who your users are – tenants, staff, contractors, and even regulatory bodies – and how they interact with your systems day-to-day, you can begin designing or selecting technology that meets real-world needs rather than theoretical ones.

Common Challenges in Existing Housing Technology

Before we delve into how to design around user journeys, it’s important to recognise the systemic barriers housing organisations face today. These aren’t theoretical problems – they’re the operational realities that I’ve come across repeatedly while working with housing teams:

• Manual processes draining time: Staff are still entering data into spreadsheets, rekeying information between systems, and tracking repairs or compliance in disparate documents or offline forms.
• Outdated legacy platforms: Some core housing management systems were introduced decades ago and haven’t kept pace with modern integration or usability standards.
• Integration gaps: Even when new tools are introduced, they often don’t talk to each other — resulting in ‘swivel chair’ operations where users jump between systems to complete one process.
• Compliance stress: With increasing safety regulations and data transparency requirements, many providers lack the oversight or audit trail capabilities to ensure they are genuinely compliant.
• Tenant satisfaction declining: Residents expect digital touchpoints – the ability to log repairs, see rent balances, or communicate issues online. When those aren’t available or don’t work smoothly, relationships suffer.

These issues can feel overwhelming. But at the heart of every problem is a person – a member of staff, a tenant, a facilities contractor – struggling to move from point A to point B. And that’s why starting with user journeys is crucial.

What Are User Journeys and Why Do They Matter?

A user journey maps how an individual interacts with a system or service from start to finish to accomplish a goal. In housing, these journeys are varied and nuanced. Consider these examples:

• A tenant trying to report a broken boiler during winter.
• A housing officer conducting tenancy reviews across patch areas while managing compliance paperwork.
• An asset manager verifying which properties are due for gas safety checks.
• A finance administrator reconciling rental payments across multiple funding streams.

Each of these individuals is on a journey that crosses digital and operational touchpoints. If systems are not designed with these paths in mind, frustration builds, adoption declines, and inefficiencies multiply.

Redesigning with People at the Centre

1. Start by Observing Real Usage

Before you touch a single system, take the time to watch how staff and tenants interact with existing processes. Shadow a housing officer as they log a repair. Sit next to admin staff as they collate compliance data. Review how a tenant goes about reporting an issue online — if they even can.

In almost every digital transformation project I’ve worked on, this early observational stage uncovers quick wins and critical blockers. It moves the discussion away from “What does the software do?” to “What do our users need to do, and how well can they do it?”

2. Identify Key User Roles and Their Pain Points

• Tenants: Often face limited visibility into repairs, rent accounts, or tenancy status. Communication is fragmented or reliant on phone calls during office hours.
• Housing Officers: Overwhelmed with tasks that aren’t easily accessible via mobile. Spend more time on admin than engagement.
• Repairs & Maintenance Teams: Lack real-time job information. May rely on printouts, creating delays and miscommunication.
• Back-office Staff: Often double-handle data due to poor system integrations or workarounds developed to manage compliance manually.

If any system ignores the reality of how these users work, or imposes extra cognitive or technological effort to complete simple tasks, it will fail to deliver value.

3. Map out Core Journeys Collaboratively

When mapping journeys, keep it simple and collaborative. Use visual tools like whiteboards or digital mapping software. For each major activity — logging a repair, conducting an annual compliance check, issuing arrears letters — draw the path from initiation to completion across users, devices, systems, and potential blockers.

Ask yourself:

• Is each step necessary?
• Are we duplicating effort?
• Where does confusion or delay typically occur?
• What data is gathered and where is it stored?

Only when you fully understand the current journey can you build or commission a system that truly supports it.

Principles for Designing Better Housing Systems

1. Design for Mobile First

A significant portion of your frontline workforce isn’t sitting at a desk. Likewise, many tenants are digital-native and mobile-first in how they interact with services. Systems should be seamlessly accessible across mobile, with full functionality – not just limited ‘apps’ that provide a view-only version.

2. Prioritise Seamless Integration

Every modern housing system should be capable of talking to others — whether it’s your finance platform, asset database, or CRM. Open APIs and integration support are not luxury features; they’re essential. Trust me — the time you’ll save in reduced rekeying and improved accuracy will more than pay for the upfront planning required.

3. Build with Compliance tracking in mind

Too often, organisations have to implement separate auditing tools post-implementation. Instead, systems should make compliance a natural output of doing the right thing — auto-generating logs, capturing required data, and issuing timely alerts without needing manual oversight.

4. Centralise Communication Wherever Possible

Residents get overloaded when texts come from one number, letters from another, and follow-ups are manual or lost entirely. Systems should centralise all tenant communication flows and give staff — and eventually, tenants — a unified history of contact.

5. Give Staff (and Tenants) the Right Data at the Right Time

Nothing slows a journey more than data being hard to find or locked in a system someone can’t access. Design with role-based dashboards, permissioned access, and a consistent data structure that gives each user what they need to do the job — no more, no less.

Success is Possible – But Starts with Fundamentals

At its core, designing better housing technology isn’t about selecting the newest software or chasing buzzwords. It’s about deeply understanding what your users are trying to achieve, how they do it today, and what barriers stand in their way. When systems align with these journeys, they deliver tangible benefits:

• Staff reclaim time for more meaningful engagement.
• Regulatory compliance becomes automated and auditable.
• Repairs are actioned quickly, with fewer missed appointments.
• Tenants feel heard and supported, not forgotten in a backlog.

As a consultant, I’ve seen small teams achieve big operational wins simply by rethinking the way process and technology serve their people. You don’t need an endless budget – just a clear-eyed view of what your users are going through, and the will to make every click, request, and insight more seamless.

So start with the user. Walk their journey. Then build your systems to support them — not the other way around.

If you need help implementing technology into your organisation or want some advice — get in touch today at info@proptechconsult.uk