Houselogic was a project that came to Huge from the National Association of Realtors, a blue sky initiative seeking a website for homebuyers. The goal was to create an excellent consumer product for homebuyers as a way to show good will and show positive perceptions of Realtors
Before I joined the project, the design team developed the concept for Houselogic: a set of tools for homeowners to track their home projects and calculate potential increases in home value. The site was intended to fit in an area that sites like This Old House didn't compete in.
As this was my second from scratch software development project, it taught me several important lessons.
First, working with a talented development team and following a rigorous software development process is the way to go. Shocker, I know. But it was good to see in practice. I also learned that clear communication and a disciplined feature list could actually deliver on-time results. We became one of the first development projects at Huge to ship on schedule with minimal complications.
The second lesson involved what the site ultimately became. Houselogic evolved into a content site rather than a tool-based platform. Consumers simply weren't ready to use these kinds of tools on the web yet. Many similar tools exist now, but at the time, we were ahead of the curve. The desktop-only nature of the site, predating mobile phones, didn't help either.
From an engineering perspective, we invested far more time building the tools than the content site. But those hours are a sunk cost, don't keep investing in something you know isn't going to work. It was smart to do that, and the website lived for a very long time...
While I was writing this case study, Houselogic turned into something else. I took one screenshot one day it was still there, the next day it was gone. The site redirects to something else that is hard for me to describe. Thats why there aren't hardly any screenshots.
RIP Houselogic. You lived longer than most.