Highline
A home inventory platform for people going through major life transitions — divorce, estate settlement, insurance claims.
Executive Summary
A documentation and valuation platform for people going through major life transitions - divorce, estate settlement, insurance claims. Guides users room by room, captures photos with metadata, estimates values using comparable sales data, and produces reports formatted for attorneys, insurers, and mediators. The hardest design problem was not technical - it was emotional.
The topography of a project journey
Architecture
Room-by-room documentation platform with valuation engine and report generation
Room-by-room documentation platform with valuation engine and report generation
The Problem
When a household splits or an estate is settled, someone needs to document and value everything in the home. This is currently done with clipboards, phone photos, and spreadsheets.
Emotional Context
The person using this tool is documenting their life during one of its worst moments. Every interface decision had to balance thoroughness with sensitivity.
Legal Standards
The process is slow, emotionally difficult, and produces documents that are not standardized enough for legal or insurance use.
Valuation Accuracy
Estimating values requires comparable sales data and an understanding of condition, provenance, and market context that varies by item category.
We could not make it feel like a spreadsheet. We could not make it feel like therapy either. The interface had to be something in between.
What We Built
A documentation and valuation platform that guides the user room by room through the inventory process.
Guided Documentation
- Room-by-room inventory workflow
- Photo capture with metadata tagging
- Condition assessment and notes
- Category-specific valuation prompts
Valuation Engine
- Comparable sales data integration
- Condition-adjusted value estimates
- Market context by item category
- Confidence scoring for estimates
Report Generation
- Attorney-formatted property reports
- Insurance claim documentation
- Mediator-ready summary reports
- Photo-backed evidence packages
Completed. The platform produces standardized documentation that meets legal and insurance requirements while respecting the emotional weight of the process.
Execution
User Research
Month 1Interviewed divorce attorneys, estate planners, and insurance adjusters to understand documentation requirements and emotional dynamics.
Every stakeholder wanted different things from the same document. Attorneys wanted defensible valuations. Insurance wanted standardized formats. The person doing it wanted it to be over.
Core Platform
Months 2-4Built the room-by-room documentation flow, photo capture with metadata, and the valuation engine with comparable sales data.
The guided workflow reduced average completion time by 60% compared to clipboard-based approaches.
Report Generation
Month 5Built report templates for legal, insurance, and mediation contexts. Each format meets the specific standards of its audience.
Completion
Month 6Final user testing, refinement of the emotional design elements, and handoff. The platform is complete and operational.
The sensitivity in the interface design was the thing users mentioned most. Not the valuations, not the reports - the fact that it did not feel clinical.
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