McGrath — Sean Valadao Duarte

Sean Valadão Duarte

Sean Valadão Duarte is a Senior Product & Experience Designer based in Lisboa, specialising in clear, scalable digital products across UX research, strategy and systemised UI. Outside of work, he can usually be found watching Arsenal on the weekends, making ambient tunes in the evenings, and practising his questionable Portuguese whenever he can.

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Exceptional ALIEN
Venues NSW
McGrath
Optimize Mind Performance
Novii
Constantinople
Sportsbet
Invocare
Finstro (Coming soon)
Redback (Coming soon)
Powershop (Coming soon)

McGrath

Index

Role: Lead UX/UI Designer
Industry: Real Estate
Time: 12 weeks
Delivered: Website build

Delivering an optimised, inspiring and data-driven experience for real estate customers, talent and partners.

Overview:
McGrath engaged us to optimise and redesign their real estate website, with the goal of identifying which existing content and features should be retained while benchmarking against local and global competitors. Our focus was to uncover best practices and feature opportunities that could inform both an MVP launch and a scalable future state experience.
Task:
Deliver an MVP and future-state website design that integrates market-leading features, tailored to serve a broad set of users, including buyers, sellers, vendors, agents, property managers and investors.
Problem:
Once a market leader in Australian real estate, McGrath sought to reclaim its position by strengthening its perception among key audiences: customers (buyers, sellers, and owners), talent and investors. A key priority was to elevate the agent experience, empowering them with better tools and visibility to increase competitiveness in a saturated market.

ApproachReading the market

We conducted a competitive analysis of the Australian and American real estate markets to identify opportunities for McGrath’s MVP and future-state designs. The discovery phase focused on creating a meaningful experience for customers, talent and partners.

Statistics
Statistical depth emerged as a key driver of confidence. Leading platforms provided clear insights into agent and office performance, alongside suburb-level market data such as price trends, historical performance and signals of cultural growth. This helped users contextualise decisions beyond surface-level metrics.
Dedicated Hubs
Purpose-built hubs created clarity and relevance for different audiences. Separating experiences for franchisees, talent and investors enabled more targeted education, supported by credibility such as milestones and testimonials, and clear application or contact pathways.
Tooling
Effective platforms embedded practical tools directly into the experience. Utilities such as loan repayment calculators and agent or office comparisons supported informed decision-making while keeping users engaged on-platform.
Context
Content performed best when it was restrained and purposeful. Leading experiences prioritised relevance over volume, using structured UI patterns like grids and carousels to surface information clearly without overwhelming users.
Creativity
Beyond research, platforms increasingly supported future-focused behaviours. Inspiration, mood-boarding, and simple styling tools helped users move from exploration toward ownership, extending value beyond the transaction.

ApproachPersonas: A greater audience in mind

Leveraging synthesised data collected by McGrath over the years, along with insights from multiple internal workshops, we identified and segmented their diverse user types based on distinct needs and desires.

We highlighted six core user types that would shape our ideation and strategy moving forward.

ApproachOur core HMW

How might we deliver a transparent, elevated and inspiring experience for real estate customers, talent and partners, so they feel confident that McGrath is the right choice for their needs, now and into the future?

ApproachIdeation: Meaningful pathways

Our ideation centred on the core needs of each user group, with personas guiding the optimisation of features and pathways to drive engagement and inspiration.

Each solution was mapped back to its respective user to ensure alignment with the reframed brief, delivering a more meaningful and purposeful experience across McGrath’s audiences.
Buyer
Buyer experiences balanced aspiration with clarity. Inspirational properties were paired with neighbourhood insights, market trends and practical tools such as calculators and checklists. Flexible search, curated collections and transparent agent profiles supported confident exploration and evaluation.
Renter
Renter pathways prioritised ease, relevance and discovery. Informative rental content, neighbourhood guides, and local insights helped renters assess fit, while search, filtering and comparable property tools enabled efficient shortlisting. Supporting guides and checklists addressed practical needs throughout the journey.
Investor
Investor experiences focused on performance and transparency. Market data, suburb insights and comparable listings supported financial evaluation, while targeted search tools enabled efficient opportunity discovery. Agent profiles and performance history reinforced trust and credibility.

Agent
Current agent pathways supported growth and visibility. Performance tools, success stories and industry insights reinforced development, while agent profiles, awards and case studies showcased credibility. Education, events and membership benefits highlighted McGrath’s ongoing support.
Vendor
Vendor pathways centred on confidence and reassurance. Aspirational sales content was supported by suburb insights, comparable listings and market data to help vendors contextualise value. Agent profiles, track records, and reviews reinforced credibility, while practical tools, guides, and lifestyle-led media supported preparation and decision-making.

Talent
Prospective talent experiences showcased opportunity and progression. Clear entry pathways, agent success stories and education resources demonstrated standards and support, while performance-led profiles and career opportunities positioned McGrath as a place to build a long-term career.

Solution
A focused MVP, designed to scale

Given tight delivery timelines, we defined an MVP that addressed McGrath’s immediate priorities while deliberately laying the foundations for future capability post launch.

Rather than attempting to solve every problem at once, the solution focused on establishing a clear product structure that could evolve as needs matured across customers, agents and partners.

Holistic service launchpad

Designed the homepage as a launchpad, using search, filtering, and purpose driven triage to quickly direct users into relevant Buy, Rent or Sell pathways.
Surfaced high value discovery content, including aspirational properties and detailed market reports, to support customer inspiration and investor decision-making.
Created clear entry points for prospective talent through dedicated CTA placements, encouraging exploration of careers and culture at McGrath.

Discovery & elavated property profiles

Designed dedicated Buy, Rent, and Sell pages to help users understand each journey and how McGrath supports them at every stage.
Delivered industry standard property discovery with robust search and filtering capabilities.
Created detailed property profiles featuring rich imagery, comprehensive property information, inspection calendar integration, home loan calculators, interactive maps (including landmarks and schools), and clear enquiry CTAs to agents and property managers.

Agent discovery & profiling

Designed a dedicated agent discovery hub, combining clear explanations of agent services with search functionality to find agents by name or location.
Developed comprehensive agent profiles featuring bios, current and past listings, supporting team members, and quick links to office profiles for a broader view of each local McGrath agency.

The McGrath story

Developed a dedicated About Us page highlighting McGrath’s mission, long standing industry history, business milestones and the core values that define the business.
Introduced tailored CTA banners for both early career and experienced agents, guiding them to learn more about working at McGrath, including the support, benefits and growth opportunities available.

Talent education & onboarding

Elevated the careers hub to clearly articulate McGrath’s values, career benefits, and key differentiators, positioning the brand as a considered and bespoke career opportunity within real estate.
Created dedicated pathways for early career and experienced agents, allowing individuals at different stages to understand how McGrath supports growth, development and the expansion of established skill sets.

Introduced tailored engagement forms for each talent segment to encourage enquiry and progression.

Insights & market leadership

In response to a fragmented and unstructured content ecosystem, insights were repositioned as a core supporting layer across the platform.
McGrath’s depth of industry knowledge, significantly exceeding that of many local competitors, was surfaced through discovery modules and clear subject tagging, ensuring content was delivered contextually based on where users were in their journey.

SolutionAn elegant, scalable UI

The design system was developed as a scalable foundation to support both the MVP and McGrath’s longer-term roadmap. It was structured around modular components, repeatable patterns and clear behavioural rules, allowing new content types, features and pathways to be introduced without compromising consistency or requiring rework.

I worked closely alongside the Senior UI Designer to roll out the system in parallel with wireframing and experience definition. While the visual language and overall look and feel were led by them, my focus was on ensuring the system supported flexible layouts, consistent interaction patterns and adaptability across a wide range of use cases. This collaborative approach helped align experience intent with long-term scalability from the outset.

Visually, the system adopted a more elevated and elegant expression to align with McGrath’s brand redesign, positioning the platform as a refined and sophisticated product within the Australian real estate market.

SolutionFuture roadmap

With the broader strategy focused on further leveraging McGrath’s depth of proprietary data, two clear product opportunities were identified for post-MVP delivery.

Map View
Introducing a map-based discovery view would align McGrath with established real estate patterns while elevating the browsing experience. A map view would allow users to spatially explore available properties, better understand geographic context and navigate urban listings more intuitively, providing a familiar, low-friction interaction that strengthens usability and competitive difference.
Suburb Profiles
Building out suburb profiling was identified as a longer-term differentiator. By mobilising McGrath’s data into rich suburb-level experiences, covering pricing history, performance trends, local services, demographics and cultural highlights, the platform could support deeper decision-making around suitability, desirability and investment potential. Beyond utility, suburb profiles also presented a strong content opportunity, enabling social storytelling and authentic contributions from local agents and communities (Testimonials, feature articles etc).

OutcomeTraffic & conversion generation

The platform delivered clearer pathways that improved traffic quality and lead generation across both property and talent journeys.

Enhanced discovery and profiling contributed to higher engagement across listings, with increases in session depth and a noticeable improvement in qualified property enquiries to agents. Improved content structure and dedicated navigation supported stronger return user growth and more consistent traffic.

For talent, dedicated hubs and role specific forms reduced friction and clarified value propositions, leading to higher form engagement and more relevant recruitment enquiries from both early career and experienced agents. Collectively, these changes positioned the platform as a more effective driver of enquiries, engagement and long term growth across sales, services and talent acquisition.

Team
Head of Product (PM) - Russel Privett
Technical Director - Arturo Escartin
Full Stack Developer - Will Walsh
Lead Strategist - Alex Vitlin
Lead UX/UI Designer - Sean Valadão Duarte
Senior UI Designer - Jillian Sun

Tasks
Discovery
Synthesis
Ideation
Workshopping
IA & User Flow Mapping
Roadmapping & Future Scoping
UI Design
Design Systems
Concept & Usability Testing
Backend Content Mapping
QA Testing