RealKey

Case Study

FinTechReactJSDjangoMortgage

Our Methodology

The Backstory

Rapid Planning

Defined the MVP scope for a working demo on a tight conference deadline—not mockups, but a functional web application.

Rapid Design & Dev

Designed and built the core mortgage workflow interface in parallel, prioritizing the features that would demonstrate the platform's power.

Demo & Feedback

Presented the working prototype at the industry conference, gathering real-world feedback from mortgage professionals.

Agile Sprints

Expanded the platform through iterative sprints based on conference feedback and industry requirements.

MVP Launch

Shipped the production platform with document processing, real-time updates, and secure transaction handling.

Handoff

Transitioned the platform to RealKey's internal team with comprehensive documentation and architecture guidance.

Our Challenges

Minimizing Technical Debt

With a tight deadline, we knew that we would incur some tech debt. The goal was to work quickly but not have to throw out the demo project and start from scratch for the MVP.

Team Setup

RealKey's stakeholders included the subject matter expert CEO, a CTO, and a product consultant who previously worked at a Fortune 100 company. We worked at their direction and provided full transparency into our processes and code.

The Dress Rehearsal

We worked with the client-side stakeholders to quickly put together a demo product in just a couple of weeks. The interface used a very minimal style guide and basic frontend components from third party libraries so that we could focus our energy on making sure the backend functioned properly

The Real Show

After gathering valuable feedback from the demos at the conference, we worked in agile sprints to design and develop the product for MVP launch. In addition to creating a polished interface, we built custom document tools that allowed easy organization and export.

This project was a great short term relationship with the goal of getting the product off the ground. As an early-stage startup, RealKey needed to move quickly and use time and money very efficiently. We made sure to give real-time assessments to the stakeholders so that they could set their own priorities. Once the MVP was complete, we handed off the code and helped them vet the right people to take over from there.

We had several in-person day-long crunch sessions at our offices in Los Angeles where we included RealKey's San Fransisco-based CEO and San Diego-based product lead, and our own team of designer, engineering lead, and project manager.

When they were ready to take everything in-house, we made sure they had all of the documentation and a handoff of the code so that there was no knowledge loss.

Learning from Experience

One important lesson we learned was that the third-party UI Kit we leveraged to launch the demo version was seriously lacking. We had to throw away more code than we wanted, and were boxed in to certain design decisions that we didn't want to have to live with later on. RealKey's challenges were a major force in our decision to create the Starter Kit, so that future projects could be set up quickly using components and our own design system for less tech debt.