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2018 → 2019

Envelope.city

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I led product development at Envelope.city, a software startup co-founded by Sarah Williams of MIT Civic Data Design Lab and SHoP architects. Envelope.city programmatically generates and visualizes massing scenarios based on New York City’s complex zoning resolution, dramatically simplifying answers to the question of “what can I build” at the lot, neighborhood, and city-wide scales.

screen cap 2
Envelope uses a zoning rules engine and computational 3D design to facilitate zoning studies, based on an intuitive search/select/test interaction paradigm.

Launching Envelope's spec search product

I led early concept, research, product strategy, design, and launch of Envelope’s “spec search” product, which empowers real estate users to find development sites based on specific and potentially complex criteria.

spec search screen flow
How users find development sites: build queries, contextual exploration, refine and repeat

A sample criteria might be "find a site that can accommodate at least 100 residential units plus ground floor retail, located on a major avenue within 5 minutes of a subway, that can also potentially tap into at least 10,000 ZFA of adjacent air rights".

query builder
To facilitate complex search strategies such as these, I built the data model for a NYC-wide development site database, and designed a flexible and extensible "query builder" design system for the frontend.

Outcome: a new business model for Envelope.city

Spec search enabled a successful business transition for Envelope from a pure SaSS design software to a hybrid SaSS/consulting model targeted at high-value real estate customers.

multi site
The spec search product became the basis of a successful hybrid SaSS/advisory business, focused on helping real estate customers surface development opportunity sites at scale.

siqi.zhu [at] gmail.com