From concept to reality: The strategic MVP that brought Buzz Me Up to life
01 Challenge
Bridging the gap between legacy intercom systems relying on phone calls and modern mobile app convenience to provide a seamless and enhanced user experience for managing door access.
00 Solution
A scalable MVP that offers seamless call management for residential buildings, an intuitive UX/UI design, and a digital intercom system.
00 Services
Product Discovery and Strategy, UX Research, UI Design, End-to-End Product Development.
04 Outcomes
An accessible user experience, flexible intercom management, and a functional MVP that permits market testing.
Buzz Me Up is a startup with an innovative intercom solution enabling flexible call management in residential buildings.
Transforming an idea into a scalable MVP within a fixed budget and flexible scope
A valid business idea without the team or product to execute It
A straightforward and impactful discovery gave rise to the Buzz Me Up project: like Canada, residential building intercom systems are no longer restricted to fixed landlines. Residents can accept guests from any location by redirecting calls to mobile devices. Motivated by this idea, Buzz Me Up's founders realized that they had a chance to introduce a comparable solution, and even better, to the USA market, allowing for a more flexible and advanced approach to intercom management.
They did not, however, had a developed product, an internal team, or a systematic plan to make the idea come to reality, even having a clear idea of the problem they wished to solve. To develop, build, and implement a system from scratch that was both practical and scalable in the future, they need an experienced and skilled partner: and that’s where Untile comes to the scene.
Defining a solution without a fixed scope, but with a defined budget
The project's main challenge was the the complexity on both sides: Untile had to define a workable solution without a precise budget estimation from the beginning, and Buzz Me Up had a vision but was unsure of the features the MVP needed and how much they were willing to invest. The development process needed to be adaptable enough to adjust scope and match expectations while making sure the finished product stayed within the client's budget.
This called for a carefully planned approach from our team, from Business to the Engineering team, that avoided unnecessary complexity, concentrated on what an MVP really needed, and made clever choices to optimize value within a limited budget. The project's success depended on finding a balance between usability, and scalability so that Buzz Me Up could confidently enter the US market while keeping up with the latest developments.
Developing a scalable and cost-effective MVP from scratch for a fast market launch
An approach to the MVP development focused on business validation and long-term scalability
Our mission was clear: It was time for us to get into action and bring a clear path to Buzz Me Up so they could test their concept fast, efficiently, and with purpose.We designed a scalable MVP with a well-defined, strategic scope to guarantee Buzz Me Up could effectively test its business concept while maintaining a strong foundation for future expansion. The challenge was in coming up with a solution that was both powerful and lean, avoiding unnecessary complexity while making sure the system could be modified for future developments.Our strategy was focused on three key goals:
Rapid Go-to-Market
Giving top priority to a quick and effective development cycle in order to validate the concept as quickly as possible.
Solid Foundations for future growth
Ensuring that scalability was incorporated into the system architecture to enable fast and simples changes in the future when needed.
A focused MVP
One MVP that has no extraneous features and only delivers the aspects that are absolutely important for market testing.
Such goals dictated every choice we made, from technical architecture to feature prioritization. This made sure that instead of merely creating a product, we were producing a strategic asset that would lower risk, speed up validation, and grow with the company.
A digital intercom mobile app would be developed to ensure flexibility and accessibility for residential buildings
Our multidisciplinary team went quickly into execution and got deep in this project after defining the strategy, the main points that we were going to attack and how, with our expertise in developing digital products, we would bring the concept to life with precision and purpose.
The final solution would provide flexibility and convenience by allowing residents to receive intercom calls via a mobile app rather than a permanent connection. Simultaneously, property managers could effortlessly modify the call recipients, increasing the system's flexibility to accommodate tenant modifications.
The product's smooth user experience and accessibility-focused design would made it easy to use for a variety of people, including those who were less tech-savvy, like children and older people. We produced an MVP that was completely functional, affordable, and that would offered genuine market validation while guaranteeing long-term scalability by coordinating development with Buzz Me Up's strategic goals.
From UX research to engineering, we took ownership of the full journey — turning a validated strategy into a tangible, tested product ready to hit the market.
Delivering UX Research, Product Strategy, Design, and Engineering in one multidisciplinary team to develop and launch the MVP
Providing a strategic partner to shape the product from the beginning
Buzz Me Up’s team consisted of the CEO and the CTO. That’s why they required a partner who could do much more than just execute the product, but also to guide the journey. They need a team that could understand their concept, turn it into a well-defined plan, and create a digital solution that would quickly hit the market while following to financial and long-term the business goals.
For this, there would be not better match than our team. With a senior, multidisciplinary team that had experience guiding early-stage startups from concept to launch, Untile took over. In order to gain a thorough understanding of the opportunity, the users, and the priorities, we began with a Discovery phase that combined product strategy with UX research. Before any code was created, this step helped us clarify expectations and lower risk by defining a clear, defined MVP scope.
By structuring our work around goals, outcomes, and collaborative syncs with the client, we were able to maintain full transparency, fast decision-making, and predictable costs: three essentials points for any startup working within a fixed budget and limited time to market, specially for the Buzz Me Up project.
Combining strategy and UX Research to create the path for the engineering team develop product
After establishing a clear direction for the product, our multidisciplinary team executed it with confidence. In order to produce a comprehensive, useful, and scalable MVP, it was necessary to integrate our engineering team with our UX/UI design experience.
In order to ensure that users of all ages and degrees of digital familiarity could adopt the app, our UX strategy placed a high priority on accessibility, ease of use, and an app that would suit a variety of situations, from roommates to Airbnb owners. Our engineering choices, meanwhile, were centered on creating a scalable foundation that could evolve with the product without requiring a complete rebuild.
This whole process was divided into two separate stages:
1. During the discovery phase, low-fidelity UX designs, engineering spikes, and service blueprints were utilized to outline user paths, understand the issue, and confirm viability.
2. The production phase came next, during which we implemented the solution from UI design and engineering to launch support and deployment.
Using a planned strategy, we were able to modify the team's emphasis and composition based on each stage, guaranteeing efficiency, speed, and clarity without overloading resources or creating needless complexity.
By taking charge of the entire product lifecycle, Untile allowed Buzz Me Up to focus on validating their business plan, and we produced a solution that was practical, easy to use, and technically sound.
Accessible UX, flexible use cases, and a market-ready MVP
A seamless experience built for real-world adoption
The MVP was not designed for idealized user personas, but instead to fit into actual realities. The application, which placed a high priority on accessibility, provided a simple, user-friendly interface that reduced onboarding difficulties for a variety of user types. The solution was straightforward to use, understand, and adaptable to a range of real-life scenarios, making it suitable for both short-term rental hosts and less tech-savvy residents.
Property managers and residents may easily adjust who receives building calls thanks to the intercom management system's ability to accommodate changing scenarios, such as roommates, families, or rotating tenants. This adaptability improved daily usability and decreased operating costs, demonstrating the product's applicability in changing residential environments.
A strategic MVP that enabled fast validation and future growth
Most significantly, Buzz Me Up was able to confidently test their idea in the market because of to the MVP. Without going overboard, the solution was provided on schedule, within budget, and with all the components required to gather actual user input.
In addition, future revisions will be supported by the architecture and implementation, which will decrease rework and accelerate new advancements. Buzz Me Up was able to test their concept and proceed with a strong foundation for expansion due to the combination of a targeted scope, accessibility-first design, and scalable technology.
The MVP provided Buzz Me Up with more than just a functional product; it also allowed them to quickly and clearly test their idea in the market. The MVP was made within budget, but more significantly, it was designed with early learning in mind, enabling the team to confidently adjust their approach, validate assumptions, and obtain feedback from actual customers.
Future iterations were also considered when designing the product architecture. We decreased the danger of technical debt by creating a flexible, scalable basis early on, which put Buzz Me Up in a position to immediately adapt their platform in response to actual feedback without having to start from scratch.
The result was not just a launch-ready MVP, but a strategic asset: one that aligned with business objectives, adapted to user needs, and gave the startup a solid springboard for long-term growth.
