Dubai Real Estate Corporation (DREC)
DREC controls a vast portfolio of Dubai's land, but the leasing process was opaque and manual. We engineered a digital ecosystem that turned complex government protocols into a seamless, self-service user journey.
DREC holds the keys to Dubai’s physical growth, managing an immense inventory of land assets. But accessing those assets was an analog struggle in a digital city. The leasing process was buried under layers of bureaucracy. Potential investors and tenants faced a fragmented system where simple answers—like availability, zoning rules, or application status—required physical visits or endless email threads. This opacity bred frustration. Users felt disconnected from the very organization trying to serve them. DREC had the land, but they didn't have the bridge to connect it to the people ready to build.
Our strategy was to replace the "black box" of government processing with radical transparency. We mapped the complex matrix of land leasing—inquiries, renewals, payments, and disputes—and flattened it into a unified digital portal. We killed the jargon. Instead of forcing users to understand DREC's internal structure, we organized the interface around their goals: "Find Land," "Manage Lease," or "Make a Payment." We integrated real-time status tracking so users never had to wonder where their application sat in the queue. - Autonomy reduces anxiety: By giving users a dashboard where they could see every detail of their lease, we removed the psychological burden of uncertainty. - The friction audit: We identified that users abandoned the process when asked for redundant data. We implemented smart pre-filling from government databases to respect the user's time.
