CityLink: A Smart Living Experience for Residents
CityLink is a resident-facing mobile app designed to simplify everyday interactions within smart residential buildings. It addresses usability issues in legacy systems, such as confusing navigation and low engagement, by streamlining access to suite controls, amenity bookings, and building services in a single intuitive platform.
Building a 0-1 Resident Experience Platform
CityLink was developed as a 0–1 mobile product to bridge the gap between residents, property management systems (PMS), and smart building technologies. The challenge was to unify fragmented interactions—such as access control, amenity booking, and service requests—into a single, cohesive experience. This required close alignment with PMS infrastructure while designing a scalable foundation for future integrations with IoT devices and third-party services.
Understanding the Problem
Context
Residents rely on building management apps for everyday tasks such as booking amenities, managing deliveries, accessing shared spaces, and interacting with smart suite features. These interactions are often quick and task-oriented, making usability, clarity, and efficiency critical to the overall experience.
CityLink was designed as a modern replacement for the legacy Vertilinc platform, which users described as outdated, confusing, and difficult to navigate. The goal was not only to modernize the interface, but also to rethink how residents interact with smart building services in a more intuitive and engaging way.
User Research
To better understand the challenges users faced with the existing experience, we conducted lightweight interviews with residents currently using the legacy platform. The research focused on identifying friction points, understanding usage patterns, and uncovering opportunities to improve engagement.
3 One-on-one Interviews
30-45 Minutes each
Existing users of Legacy App
What Users Said
I often got lost trying to find things. The navigation is not easy to use.
- Resident, 18 Erskine
I only used the app for basic needs, when I have a delivery or need to contact the management office
- Resident, 18 Erskine
Sometimes its overwhelming to use the app. You get soo much information all at once.
- Resident, 18 Erskine
Key Pain Points
Confusing navigation
Users frequently struggled to move between screens and maintain orientation within the app.
Low engagement and limited perceived value
Most residents only opened the app when absolutely necessary, providing little ongoing value.
Poor Information Architecture
The interface felt cluttered, with too many icons and an unclear feature organization.
Key Insights
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Users lack a clear mental model of the app’s structure, leading to frustration during navigation
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The app is treated as a one-time utility rather than a continuous experience
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An overload of features without prioritization increases cognitive load and reduces usability