Project Context
A house is never just a purchase. It's a relationship between a dozen people making thousands of decisions over eighteen months.
I came onto this project at its earliest stage — a group of businessmen wanted to build an e-commerce platform for construction materials. On the surface it sounded like a catalogue problem. After two days of workshops on-site with homeowners, architects, and contractors, it became clear this was a coordination problem. The platform needed to serve as the connective tissue between all the people involved in building a home.
The design challenge was not just information architecture. It was service design — mapping an ecosystem of stakeholders with different mental models, different workflows, and different definitions of success, then creating a digital experience that felt natural to all of them.
Understanding the Ecosystem
Six stakeholders.
One construction project.
Every node in this system has different needs, different technical comfort, and different reasons to use the platform. Hover to explore each role.
Home Owner
Architect
Marketplace
Contractor
Supplier
Logistics
Key Insight from Ecosystem Mapping
The home owner only interacts with the marketplace at the very beginning and very end. The architect and contractor are the power users. Designing for homeowners without designing for professionals would have created a beautiful but incomplete system.
Stakeholder Workshop
This project started in a room with sticky notes, not in Figma.
I travelled to the client's location and ran a two-day workshop with business stakeholders, a homeowner, an architect, and two contractors. The goal was not to validate a solution — we didn't have one yet. The goal was to understand the real shape of the problem.
Day one focused on mapping existing workflows and pain points across each stakeholder group. Day two focused on business model viability, distribution strategy, and what a useful digital platform would actually need to do.
Understand how materials are currently sourced
Identify friction between stakeholder handoffs
Validate which stakeholder to design for first
Map the business opportunity clearly
Users don't know brand names, only category names
Architects need project-level purchase tracking
WhatsApp is the current procurement platform
BoM upload = the biggest time-saver for architects
Trust = the biggest barrier to first purchase
Delivery to site is genuinely hard. Needs scheduling.
Opportunity Mapping
Every pain point is a design opportunity waiting.
Current Reality
Pain Point
Design Opportunity
Finding trusted materials
Too many disconnected vendors and showrooms
Unified marketplace with verified brands
Architect–client communication
Phone calls, WhatsApp, missed messages
Shared project workspace
Material estimation
Manual Excel calculations, errors
BoM Upload → instant matching
Order tracking
No visibility after purchase
Live delivery tracking per project
Budget management
Scattered invoices and guesses
Project budget dashboard
The People We Designed For
Four stakeholders.
Completely different needs.
Each persona shaped a distinct journey. Designing for one without the others would have broken the ecosystem.
House Owner
“I just want someone to tell me what to buy and where to get it.”
Motivated by
A beautiful, well-built home that reflects their vision
Frustrated by
Overwhelmed by product choices, mistrustful of vendors
Architect
“I spend 30% of my time chasing material approvals. That's time I should be designing.”
Motivated by
Precision, client alignment, and project delivery on schedule
Frustrated by
Repetitive procurement work, no single source of truth
Contractor
“I need to order 500 bags of cement before Thursday. Just show me the price and confirm delivery.”
Motivated by
Efficiency, bulk pricing, reliable delivery to site
Frustrated by
Minimum order complexity, unclear delivery timelines
Business Owner
“We need a platform that grows with the ecosystem, not one that only works for one type of user.”
Motivated by
Scalable marketplace with high repeat purchase rate
Frustrated by
Fragmented supply chain, low digital adoption in the industry
Information Architecture
One platform.
Two mental models.
The eStore and the Project Workspace are two distinct contexts. A homeowner browsing tiles has a completely different mental model to an architect uploading a 200-item BoM. The IA had to hold both without making either feel like they were in the wrong place.
The key structural decision was to use the user's role — detected on login — to surface the appropriate context. An architect who logs in lands in the Project Workspace. A homeowner lands in the eStore with guided discovery.
Marketplace Architecture
homesworld.in
eStore
Categories → Products → PDP
Search + Filters + Compare
Cart → Checkout → Orders
BoM Upload → Recommendations
Project Workspace
Dashboard → Active Projects
BOQ Management
Clients + Contractors
Material Status
Designing the Marketplace
Three decisions that shaped the experience.
Marketplace Design Language
Warm. Premium. Architectural.
Construction materials are inherently tactile and beautiful — marble, steel, timber, brass. The visual language had to honour that. Warm stone neutrals, terracotta accents, Playfair Display for editorial moments, Plus Jakarta Sans for functional clarity. The design system took cues from Jaquar's product photography — single products on clean backgrounds, dramatic but not theatrical.
The system uses two typographic registers: serif for storytelling (headlines, section titles), sans-serif for utility (labels, prices, specifications). This duality mirrors the product itself — a marketplace that's both aspirational and functional.
Colour
Terracotta
Charcoal
Stone
Cream
Sand
Moss
Typography
Playfair Display
Headlines · Moments · Story
Plus Jakarta Sans
UI · Labels · Utility
Sue Ellen Francisco
Annotations · Workshop
Components
Primary Button
Ghost Button
Kajaria
White Marble Tile 800×800
₹185 /sqft
Final Experience
The working prototype.
All 10 routes are interactive. Click through the full purchase journey — from browsing categories to uploading a BoM to tracking an order.
Homepage
Hero + Search + Discovery
Categories
PLP + Filter + Sort
Product Detail
Gallery + Bulk Pricing
BoM Upload
Intelligent Matching
Cart
BoM + Browse items
Checkout
Address + UPI + EMI
Orders
Track + Timeline
Projects
Workspace + Budget
Impact
What the platform enables.
BoM Upload
→
Procurement from days to minutes for architects
Unified Marketplace
→
Single platform replacing 12+ vendor relationships
Project Workspace
→
Architect–client collaboration without WhatsApp
Stage Navigation
→
Lower bounce rate from confused homeowners
The platform was designed to serve as the digital operating model for home construction — not just a place to buy materials, but a coordination layer that makes the entire process less fragmented for everyone involved.
Reflections
What I took away.
01
Marketplace design is less about products and more about the relationships between the people buying them.
The hardest design work wasn't the catalogue or the cart. It was understanding that an architect and a homeowner need fundamentally different experiences of the same platform — and building both without the seams showing.
02
Good information architecture reduces emotional overwhelm, not just cognitive load.
Buying materials for a home is an emotional act. When the IA is confusing, people don't just get lost — they feel anxious. Every simplification in the navigation had an emotional payoff for the user. That became my compass.
03
Service design always starts before the interface does.
The two workshop days shaped every subsequent decision. The ecosystem map, the personas, the BoM insight — none of that came from sitting at a desk. It came from listening to the right people in the right room. I'd do more of that, earlier, on every project.
Next Case Study
CogniCure
Designing a clinical decision support tool for neurologists — where the stakes are higher than any UX mistake I've made before.