← Product

Case study 03 · Concept · Design language · Domain UX

Homestead

4 tools and a cost center

A browser-based suite for designing and running a home renovation — floor plans, site and landscape, and a live cost center — tying design → cost → permits in one place, location-aware down to the ZIP.

I'm mid-renovation on a 1962 Phoenix ranch. Every tool did one slice: draw a plan, or track a budget, or look up setbacks. The expensive mistakes happen in the gaps between tools — you design something you can't afford, or can't permit, and find out later.

My role
Concept, product design, UX, the whole design language, and AI direction — end to end.
Built with
Claude, under an operating contract I wrote: eight named review lenses and a standing audit protocol.
Status
In use on my actual renovation, modeled to a verified tape measurement.
The decision it turns on

One product, two design languages. The design tool is a dark interface wrapped around a light drawing surface — the chrome recedes so nothing competes with the plan. White print is the deliverable. The person exploring wants a quiet, focused workspace; the person receiving the plan — a contractor, a permit office — wants something authoritative on paper. Serving both means designing two deliberate contexts, not one stretched compromise. The deliverable is a separate render pass, never a screenshot of the tool.

The floor planner in renovation mode: rooms outlined against their original positions with labels reading 'was Bedroom 3' and 'was Living Room', square-footage deltas, and a live cost estimate panel updating alongside.
Reno mode. The value isn't drawing — it's the connection. Move a wall and the money moves with it. Ghost outlines hold the original layout, the “(was Bedroom 3)” labels survive the rename, and the cost panel prices the delta live.
A print-formatted Property Briefing: a serif headline over a terracotta rule, an executive summary, a neighborhood outlook section with market figures, and a highlighted net-read callout.
The same data as a deliverable. Editorial typography, a real accent system, the recommendation carried in a callout rather than buried in a paragraph. Driven by the same project data as the canvas above, and a completely different object.
The floor plan in 3D: a single-storey ranch house shown from above and to the side, walls shaded white against a dark ground, windows and doors cut into them, the garage door closed. A camera readout in the corner gives bearing 124 degrees southeast, altitude 27.4 feet, elevation 15.9 degrees, distance 85.6 feet.
The plan, stood up. Same project data as the 2D canvas — not a separate model kept in sync, which is where suites like this usually rot. You fly it. Drag to orbit, scroll to zoom, shift-drag to pan, and WASDQE to walk the camera through the house — the readout in the corner is live bearing, altitude and distance, because at that point you are navigating a building rather than spinning a thumbnail. The toolbar is the honest measure of scope: Reno, Elec, Plumb, HVAC, Roof, ADU. Six disciplines over one house.
The same house from the identical camera position, switched to framing view: the walls resolve into individual studs and plates drawn in green and yellow, king studs and cripple studs picked out in red around the door and window openings, window frames and doors in black. A legend at lower left names each member type.
And the same house, framed. Identical camera — bearing, altitude and distance all unchanged — so the two read as one object seen twice rather than two pictures. The legend is the claim: studs, plates, king studs and cripple studs, masonry, glass, window frames, doors. King and cripple studs are the members that frame an opening — so the model knows what a door does to a wall, not just where to draw a gap. A floor planner draws a picture of a house. This one is carrying the structure underneath, which is why the room builder can offer you the wall, its mouldings and its openings as separate things to edit.
See the full evidence pack →

All five product case studies →