REQpay

SaaS platform that helps construction teams quickly create compliant, bank-ready payment applications and draw packages to reduce billing errors and speed up approvals.

Overview & Role

Duration: 6 months
Origin: Israel, USA
Team: 2 designers + 1 lead
Status: MVP stage was completed

What REQpay is:

REQpay is a SaaS platform designed to simplify construction payment workflows for contractors, finance teams, and project stakeholders. The product addresses complex, error-prone billing processes by providing structured, compliant, and bank-ready payment applications.

My role:

I joined the project at the MVP preparation stage as a Design Lead, owning the end-to-end design strategy and execution. My role included leading the design team, driving research, defining core user flows, and establishing a scalable design process aligned with both business goals and engineering constraints.

I joined the project at the MVP preparation stage as Design Lead, owning the end-to-end UX strategy and execution. My responsibilities included:

Leading and mentoring the design team
Driving user research and defining core user flows
Establishing a scalable design process aligned with business goals and engineering constraints
Collaborating closely with product and engineering stakeholders to guide adoption and implementation

Problem Statement

Construction payment workflows are complex, multi-party, and compliance-driven. Manual, inconsistent processes and fragmented documentation lead to frequent errors, delayed approvals, and cash flow disruptions.

Users lack clear requirements, visibility into payment status, and timely feedback, resulting in repeated corrections. For the business, this creates operational overhead and slows project execution.

Goals & Success Criteria

The MVP aimed to turn complex construction billing into a clear, structured, and predictable experience.

Success was measured by:

Guided and understandable payment workflows
Fewer submission errors
Faster approval cycles

A scalable UX foundation beyond the MVP

Discovery & Research

Research Framing

Given the complexity of construction finance workflows, the discovery phase focused on understanding real-world processes rather than prematurely exploring UI solutions. The primary goal was to identify systemic breakdowns across roles, handoffs, and compliance requirements that could impact the MVP’s success.

Rather than optimizing isolated interactions, the research prioritized clarity, validation points, and decision-making moments within end-to-end payment workflows.

Research Approach

Research activities were intentionally scoped to support early product definition and risk reduction:

Interviews with product, finance, and domain experts
Analysis of construction billing, approval, and lender review processes
Mapping dependencies between subcontractors, general contractors, and lenders

This approach ensured alignment between user needs, business constraints, and regulatory realities.

Key Insights

Synthesis of research surfaced several recurring patterns that shaped the product direction:

Incomplete or rejected submissions were rarely caused by user error, but by unclear requirements and late feedback
Review inefficiencies stemmed from inconsistent submission structures rather than volume
Lack of status visibility created unnecessary follow-ups and delayed approvals
Flexibility without guidance increased risk rather than efficiency

Core takeaway: users did not need more options — they needed clarity, guidance, and early validation at every step.

Users & Core Needs

We defined three primary personas, each operating within the same workflow but optimizing for different outcomes:

Subcontractors focused on successful first-time submission
Finance teams prioritized speed, consistency, and risk reduction
Lenders required compliance, traceability, and auditability

While motivations differed, all roles depended on shared data quality and clear process visibility.

Journey Insights

Journey mapping and job stories revealed that friction consistently occurred at transition points:

Preparation → Submission
Submission → Review
Review → Approval

Most breakdowns were caused by missing information, unclear expectations, or delayed feedback between roles.

These insights highlighted the need for a system that actively guides users, standardizes reviews, and communicates status and next steps transparently.

Research Synthesis → Design Direction

Based on these findings, we aligned on a set of experience principles that would guide all MVP decisions:

Clarity over flexibility
Prevention over correction
Consistency over customization
Transparency over assumptions

These principles formed the foundation for subsequent UX and UI design decisions.

UX & UI Design

These research insights directly informed the UX strategy and concrete product decisions. The design approach focused on turning complex, high-risk financial workflows into clear, predictable, and compliant user experiences.

For the MVP, the priority was not feature breadth, but reliability and clarity of core flows. Every design decision balanced usability, compliance requirements, and technical feasibility.

UX Strategy & Design Direction

The UX strategy centered on reducing ambiguity and preventing errors before they reached review and approval stages. Rather than exposing users to system complexity, the experience was designed to guide them through structured, sequential workflows with clear expectations at each step.

Key strategic principles included:

Clear, step-by-step workflows for complex submissions
Explicit system requirements and constraints
Progressive disclosure to reduce cognitive load
Early validation to prevent downstream issues

(UX strategy visuals and IA screenshots displayed below)

Design Process & Collaboration

As the product was at an early stage, a critical part of my role was establishing the design process itself. This ensured consistency, scalability, and alignment across product and engineering teams.

The process included:

Defining design principles focused on clarity, consistency, and error prevention
Establishing collaboration rituals with product and engineering
Creating documentation standards for handoff and decision tracking
This foundation allowed design decisions to scale alongside product complexity and team growth.

(Process artifacts or simplified workflow diagrams displayed below)

UX Execution & UI Foundations

Design execution focused on a small set of high-impact MVP flows, ensuring they were understandable, reliable, and compliant before expanding functionality.

Key focus areas:

Clear information hierarchy for financial and compliance-critical data
Guided, step-by-step payment application flows
Inline guidance and validation to prevent errors before submission
Design decisions were continuously validated against technical constraints to ensure feasibility and smooth implementation.

Impact & Future Direction

Impact:

Reduced submission errors
Faster review and approval cycles
Improved clarity and alignment across roles
Strong foundation for future expansion

Metrics tracked:

First-time approval rate
Reduction in error rate per submission
Average review turnaround time

Next improvements (V2):

Smarter validation and automation
Advanced analytics and reporting
Custom workflows for enterprise users
Integrations with ERP and accounting systems

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