mark-making*

Head of Product Design / Plyo

Growing PropTech SaaS services to ~70% of Scandinavian market share

2019 - Present
  • Product Design
  • UX
  • UI
  • Figma
  • Zeplin
  • Consultancy

Fully featured Design Systems for integrated all-in-one platform

As Head of Product Design at Plyo AS for 6 years, I have made significant contributions to company growth in the PropTech space as a complete front-end portal and back-end office management solution in the Scandinavian Real Estate Markets.

On this page:

  1. Plyo Explore in detail
  2. Plyo Work Management Tools (Coming Soon)
  3. Plyo CMS and Front-End Toolkit (Coming Soon)
Plyo Explore- Overview with Points of Interest

As part of a small team, we worked with all areas of the business to gain insights, test prototypes and refine specifications.

  • Big Picture thinking and major input on product roadmaps
  • Understand business objectives and how they help define the product
  • Iterate continually from user and stakeholder feedback, and deliver tangible positive updates
  • Work closely with cross-functional teams and provide mentorship.
  • Day-to-day management and handoff prioritisation
  • Used knowledge and experience to avoid introducing tech debt
  • Guide the overall UI direction of projects and initiatives building detailed prototypes, designs and managing Design Systems.

Significant contribution to major platform and portal areas including CRM, Newsletter and Inventory tools. 2024 saw the implementation of Design System elements for flagship 3D Explorer product.

I had the pleasure of working with Simon, and he’s one of those rare professionals who seamlessly adapts to any challenge. He thrives in complex environments, taking broad, abstract ideas and quickly distilling them into clear, practical solutions that align with the bigger picture. Whether synthesizing input from multiple stakeholders or navigating competing priorities, Simon finds the right path forward with clarity and precision.

Beyond his sharp analytical skills, he’s a natural coach and mentor, always helping those around him grow and improve. He also has a keen eye for design tools, mastering Figma’s advanced features with remarkable finesse—enhancing workflows without overcomplicating them. What truly sets Simon apart is his dedication to best practices. If he doesn’t already know the best approach, he’ll research, test, and refine until he does. His drive to continuously improve isn’t just a mindset — it’s something he actively applies to processes, teams, and outcomes.

Anyone working with Simon will immediately see his impact. Highly recommend! Paul René Engejordet, Chief Product Officer, Plyo

Major project and delivery areas

  • Plyo.Work / CRM, Inventory, CMS, Newsletter and Insights Platform Admin tools
  • Plyo.Explore / 3D Property Explorer and home buying experience
  • Plyo.CMS / Frames Admin and front end library kit

Design System and pattern libraries

  • UI UX Guides with consistency and scalability
  • Complete design workflows to get accurate designs built and iterated smarter
  • Plan and implementation of Design Spec commits, comments and versioning
  • Understand how to design around APIs and third party tools
  • Major tools used have been Figma, Zeplin and Notion
  • Detailed areas covered include Documentation, Component Management, States, Breakpoints, Iteration Management, Dark/Light/Themes

Plyo Explore

3D Property Explorer is an interactive property and apartment chooser, allowing immersive exploration of new developments and the surrounding area directly in the browser.

It has quickly been established as the Flagship product and major revenue driver.

Find out more at plyo.com

Plyo Explore- View from Unit or Balcony

Product and background

3D Explore was an already existing standalone 3D viewer to experience an area based on realtime map data and architectural plans and specifications (much like game engines/Google Maps). A number of data sets needed to be brought together, so the database of projects and available properties are linked in realtime.

To scale on a number of areas required some careful planning. The UI was in places inconsistent, but a raft of new features were being quickly developed with new builds and features presented regularly.

The viewer area is embedded on a webpage, and can be deployed anywhere.

  • Consistency
  • Interactive nature
  • Limitiations/Advantages
  • Shifting tech stack, changing focus

Consistency in a dynamic context

The 3D view can be placed anywhere on a webpage in all browsers, but this also introduces many contexts and layers of features that may or may not be available. We needed a Design System that scaled and UX/UI patterns could be adapted with three areas to consider:

  • Exterior and surrounding area explorations / Explore outside and around the building
  • Interior exploration / Look around the layout of an apartment and select different finishes
  • Balcony view / What Can I see from this apartment

Feature highlights

  • Points of Interest
  • Sun Study to illustrate position of the sun at times of day and year
  • Apartment/Unit Details

Challenges

  • MVP Inconsistent UI
  • Needed branding options, where realistically possible
Plyo Explore- Sun Study view. Dynamically track the sun and shading through the day

SPEC Files, Handoff and continuous iteration

Product roadmap always forefront

  • Edit Interface for features such as POIs
  • Maintain a solid Figma based Design System with patterns and flows
  • Implement workflows and continuous iteration cycles from Unity dev builds

To manage a very fluid and shifting area, it is crucial that the design process and designers work with a system where they take responsibility for the quality and accuracy of their work. This setup would be different for any team, but here - a core component system is the key element.

This enabled us to iterate freely on the one hand, but keeping a Final SPEC designs file that is then committed and versioned (we chose Zeplin) means that all stakeholders from other managers and developers are clear what features are being developed and committed.

This takes work in the initial phase, but the act of a COMMIT removes many edges cases and unknowns.

  • Organised Component and Variant Pages
  • Master Layout Components and Variants to cover small changes of position to be consistent across SPEC files.
  • Iterate Features
  • Commit and Push versions to Zeplin
  • Comment and Annotate with Zeplin

As a product that already existed, the main features were further developed in Figma as the basis for a new system with an emphasis on continuity and consistency. I introduced a UI system to recreate screens that could act as a baseline reference that could be safely iterated on.

  • Fonts
  • Colours
  • Minimal branding
  • Layouts for tables
  • Interactions
  • Overlay features
  • Walkthrough
  • Sliders
  • Dropdowns
  • Menus and Navigation
  • Icons
  • Sizing options
  • Statuses
  • Counters
  • Modals
Screenshot of Figma sidebar variants for Explore