Athena
A complete conversational system for apartment living: a chatbot that gets residents from problem to solution with almost no typing, and a client dashboard that turns thousands of those conversations into decisions for property owners.
- What we did
- Interaction design and UI for both products, research synthesis
- Surfaces
- Mobile chatbot + web KPI dashboard
- Methods
- Qualitative research at scale, owner interviews, usability testing
- Outcome
- Faster resident support, owner insight from chat data
A chatbot for people who hate chatting with bots
Athena assists residents whenever something in the flat goes wrong: a leak, a broken heater, an appointment with the painter. The research said something blunt: users don't want to spend time chatting with a bot, and they don't want to type. So the design respects that.
- Category shortcuts replace open-ended 'How can I help?' prompts.
- Structured replies: date pickers, confirmations and quick-reply chips keep exchanges short.
- Direct answers end conversations fast. A good support chat is a brief one.
The research verdict was humbling: nobody wants to talk to the bot. That insight designed the product.
research synthesis
Turning chat logs into decisions
Every resident conversation is also a data point. Interviews with property owners established which data would actually help them, then the dashboard was designed around it: problem clustering that surfaces what most residents struggle with, time travel to any period, language switching and dark mode for international teams and long sessions.
One system, two audiences, zero friction
The less residents have to type, the cleaner the structured data that reaches the dashboard, and the better owners can fix the problems that caused the chats in the first place.
