Reportage Properties.
My role.
Product & UX/UI designer for the native iOS and Android app, in Arabic and English.
- Information architecture built around projects and communities
- UX and UI for iOS and Android
- Every layout designed twice — left-to-right and mirrored for Arabic
- Design-system handoff with both directions specified
- Fully bilingual, Arabic and English
- Two native platforms from one design system
- Marketing team manages content without a developer
- Scattered source material — renders, brochures, floor plans, tours
The brief.
Reportage Properties is a UAE developer with a growing book of projects and master-planned communities. Their material — renders, brochures, fact sheets, floor plans, virtual tours, location links, construction photos — was scattered across a website, a Dropbox, and whatever a sales agent had saved on their phone. A buyer following a project had no single place to watch it take shape.
The ask: a native app for iOS and Android, fully bilingual in Arabic and English, with an admin web behind it so the marketing team could add a project, post an offer, or push an update without a developer.
The idea.
Structure the whole app around the two things Reportage actually sells: projects and the communities they sit in. Everything else — search, offers, the media center, construction updates, announcements — is a different way into the same catalogue.
The app opens by asking for a language, so Arabic isn't a settings-screen afterthought — the entire layout mirrors. A skippable offer takes the first screen, then a home of live renders, a search that speaks the buyer's language (community, unit type, bedrooms, budget), and a chat button one tap away on every screen.
Search the way a buyer thinks.
Not a keyword box — a set of choices: which community, apartment or villa, how many bedrooms, roughly what budget. Results come back as the same project cards used everywhere else in the app, so the catalogue always looks like one thing.
One page, the whole project.
A render slider up top, an "Enquire now" button pinned above it, then everything on tabs: the overview, unit types, and construction updates. Amenities, a location map, and downloads for the brochure, fact sheet and floor plans sit inline — no jumping out to a website.
Pick a layout, then walk it.
Filter by bedrooms and type to pull up the exact floor plan, open the gallery full-screen, or launch the 360° virtual tour from the same card. The VR badge is always in the corner so a buyer knows a walkthrough exists before they ask.
Construction updates, dated.
Each project keeps a timeline of site photos by date, with an empty state that promises the first one is coming. When the team posts an update — or a new render, or an offer — it goes out as a push, so following a project is a reason to keep the app installed.
Key decisions.
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Build the app around projects and communities
Why Those are the two things Reportage actually sells. Search, offers, the media center and updates became different ways into one catalogue, reusing one card and one detail page.
Trade-off Anything that isn't a project or a community has to earn its place as a route into them.
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Ask for language on the first screen
Why It forced every layout to be designed in both directions from the start — far cheaper than retrofitting right-to-left after the left-to-right screens were signed off.
Trade-off Every screen is designed and specified twice.
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Search as a set of choices, not a keyword box
Why A buyer thinks in community, unit type, bedrooms and budget — so the search speaks those, and returns the same project cards used everywhere else.
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Give following a project a payoff
Why Dated construction updates plus push notifications turn a brochure app into something a buyer has a reason to reopen.
The ship.
Reportage shipped to the App Store and Google Play as a native bilingual app, backed by an admin web where the marketing team manages projects, communities, offers, the media center and announcements, and fires push notifications.
Every layout was designed twice — once left-to-right, once mirrored — so Arabic is a first-class reading experience, not a flipped afterthought. The design system was handed over with both directions specified.
What shipped.
Material that lived across a website, a Dropbox and whatever a sales agent had saved on their phone now sits in one app — and the marketing team publishes to it without a developer.
Both store listings are public: App Store and Google Play.
What I'd do again.
Pick the app's backbone from the business, not the screens. Building everything off "projects" and "communities" meant search, offers and updates all reused one card and one detail page instead of each becoming its own mini-app.
Ask for language before anything else. Making it the first screen forced every layout to be designed in both directions from the start — far cheaper than retrofitting RTL after the LTR screens were signed off.
Give "following a project" a payoff. Dated construction updates plus push turned a brochure app into something a buyer opens again next month.