Siddhant - Report Writer Case Study

WIN Home Inspection

SaaS

Jul 2023 → May 2024

Report Writing Ecosystem

Software is easy to replace. Ten years of muscle memory isn't.

This case study shows how we moved 2,172 home inspectors off a decade-old platform onto an ecosystem we built from scratch without breaking a single day of their work.

2,172

Inspectors Migrated

before the sunset date, zero rollback

~40 min

Report Time

down from ~3 hrs on ISN

measured via SmartLook and DB data

1,139

Daily Inspections

conducted over 40+ states across the US currently

TRANSCRIPT

Listening...

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Exterior >> Windows

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Cracked Exterior Windows Glass

One or more exterior windows have a crack or hole in the glass pane. Damaged glass can worsen over time, reduce energy efficiency, allow moisture intrusion, and present a potential safety hazard. It is recommended that a qualified window contractor evaluate the condition of the window and repair or replace the damaged glass as needed.

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THE 60 SECOND VERSION

A quick overview

Why this project existed

In July 2023, WIN Home Inspection made a strategic call: end its dependency on ISN — the third-party platform that had powered its inspections for nearly ten years — and build its own ecosystem.

ISN wasn't broken. That was the problem. A decade of daily use had made it invisible: inspectors didn't think about the software any more than they thought about their ladder. But rising costs, limited flexibility and growing operational dependencies meant the business couldn't evolve on rented ground — and the platform had a defined sunset date.

We started with the report writer, because that's where the business lives. Every inspection ends in a report; the report is the product the client pays for.

The goal wasn't to replace software. It was to replace habits — thousands of them, ten years deep, without breaking anyone's working day.

The situation

WIN had run inspections on a third-party platform (ISN) for ~10 years. Rising costs and zero flexibility forced a decision: build our own ecosystem, with a fixed sunset date we didn't control.

My role

Led end-to-end design for the replacement: research through shipped product across iOS, Android, Tablet and Web - partnering with 8 engineers, a PM, 3 SMEs and the CFO.

Three decisions that defined it

1. Offline-first mobile app as the MVP, accepting sync complexity to match how inspectors actually work.

2. Collapsed 500+ inspection sub-categories into 78 and made search — not navigation — the primary model.

3. Migrated 25% of inspectors first, rebuilt what beta broke, then moved everyone else.

The result

Full migration before the deadline.

Report completion fell from ~3 hrs to ~40 min.

The ecosystem now powers 1,139 inspections a day.

Timeline

July 2023 → May 2024

Jul '23

Aug '23

Sep '23

Oct '23

Nov '23

Dec '23

Jan '24

Feb '24

Mar '24

Apr '24

May '24

Understand the Industry

• ISN Audit

• Surveys

• 1-1 & group interviews

• Competitor analysis

Re-invent a 10 year old workflow

• 500+ sub-categories → 78 sub-categories

• Introduced Abouts

• Search first ideology

• Camera library with customisation

• Information Architecture

• Rapid prototyping & validation

• User flows

• Wireframes

Ship MVP under a fixed deadline

• Design System

• Component Library

• Mobile app (iOS)

• SME Toolkit

• Analytics Integration

• Final Report Output

• 25% users onboard

• Feedback loops

Validate and Migrate remaining userbase

• Usability Testing

• SmartLook Session Replays

• Analytics & feature adoption

• Inspector interviews

• Support tickets & requests

• Iteration and roadmap for v2

Iterate, scale and expand

• Android, Tablet & Web

• Remark Management

• Navigation v2

• Camera v2

• Upload center & sync improvements

• Interactive Reports & add-ons

RESEARCH & DISCOVERY

STRATEGY & DESIGN

SHIP & LEARN

ITERATE & DELIVER

Scroll to see

1.1

Project Process within Timeline

SCROLLER

RESEARCH

First we investigated the source. Then we went to the people who lived in it.

The ISN audit

Before designing anything, we mapped what ten years of accumulated structure actually looked like: 29 templates, 500+ sub-categories, 7,016,823 remarks. Understanding what inspectors would lose mattered more than imagining what they'd gain.

ISN's report writer: a decade of accumulated structure. Every one of these fields is someone's habit.

2.1

ISN's Product Sneak-peek

IMAGE

Then, the inspectors

1,031

Feedbacks collected

Survey

To size the pain: which parts of report writing cost the most time, at scale.

Users interviewed

1-1 & Group Interview

To find the workflow beneath the workflow: the notepads, workarounds and personal systems inspectors built around ISN's gaps.

GoPro Inspection Studied

GoPro

To see what nobody reports in an interview: where hands are full, gloves are on, and the phone goes in a pocket.

GoPro

2.2

In the Field

GO PRO RECORDING

SYNTHESIS

The feedback confirmed the risk, and corrected our aim.

The reframe

We went in assuming inspectors hated ISN. They didn't. They hated the friction — the lag, the 500-category scavenger hunt, the web app that crashed on an iPad mid-inspection. The structure itself had become muscle memory they relied on.

That distinction rewrote our brief. We weren't designing an escape from ISN. We were designing a faster body for habits that already worked.

Three themes from 1,031 responses and 74 interviews

Time pressure is commercial, not personal.

Clients expect same-day reports; every hour of writing time is business risk.

My clients want the report on the same day, and it brings a negative impact on my business when i’m not able to do so

1-1 Interview

Zoom

It’s so difficult to train my additional inspectors. I get so many inspections calls but have to turn them down as it takes so long to complete even two in a day.

Survey

Google Forms

The tool loses people mid-task.

Inspectors got lost navigating 500+ categories while physically walking a house.

A Reddit User

r/homeinspectors

I messed around with it during beta testing…hated it. Wasn’t intuitive and it felt clunky. I’m not sure if they worked out the kinks or not

I often find myself getting lost within the application, it becomes frustrating after a point. I have 500+ categories to go through for each inspection report.

1-1 Interview

Zoom

Workarounds are the real competitor.

Notepads, voice memos, photos-now-organise-later. The new product's job was to beat the notepad, not just beat ISN.

I spent almost 2 hours on the inspection site writing issues on my notepad to come back and document it on web app because the app is so laggy even on my iPad Pro that it crashes at inspections

Focus Group Interview

Zoom

One thing that really surprised us was that we were considering the inspectors as not tech-savvy but it changed the minute we entered the first interview.

The workflows they maintained and learnt to work around for over 10 years surprised us.

THE PROBLEM

This wasn't a redesign. It was a migration with no safety net.

A pile-up of contraints

Moving 2,172 inspectors to an entirely new product meant designing inside a tight timeline with feedback loops, onboarding, data recovery and training running in parallel.

I argued for — and we committed to an offline-first mobile app as the MVP.

It was the harder engineering path, but it was the only one that matched how inspections actually happen. That decision came with its own pile-up:

A decade of muscle memory, inspectors had spent over 10 years using the legacy platform. The redesign had to improve efficiency without forcing users to relearn how they inspected homes.

Offline wasn't optional, inspections often happened in areas with unreliable connectivity. Reports, photos and remarks needed to work locally first and sync reliably once a connection became available.

Flexible inspection workflows, no two inspectors followed the same sequence. The product had to support multiple ways of documenting an inspection rather than enforcing a rigid workflow.

Fixed migration timeline, the legacy platform had a defined sunset date. We needed to ship a stable MVP quickly, then improve the experience through production feedback and phased rollouts.

Complex inspection ecosystem, the mobile app wasn't the only product. Every decision had to align with template management, reporting, interactive reports, CRM integrations and future web support.

Multiple stakeholders, every feature balanced feedback from inspectors, SMEs, engineering, product managers and executive leadership, each with different priorities and expectations.

Template & remarks. Our biggest challenge. Managing 29 different templates with remarks from 40+ states with different requirements for each.

THE CHALLENGE

Build one flexible system that serves 29 templates across 40+ states — usable offline in a basement, learnable in minutes by people with ten years of muscle memory, and shipped before a sunset date we didn't control.

THE MVP

We defined the MVP by what it refused to be

Drawing the line

With a fixed sunset date, the question was never "what can we build?" — it was "what can we responsibly not build yet?" Two inputs drew the line: what the market had already solved, and where the field work actually happens.