Journal
New work
More certainty, more clarity, and more say.
An accessible, mobile-first repairs service that gives tenants more control and confidence.
Our original project with Homes NSW was a hard reset on the tenant experience. We rebuilt the repairs service so people could log issues quickly, track their progress, and see some of what was happening behind the scenes. It worked. Usage of the repairs service climbed, confidence lifted, and the service became easier to navigate on mobile.
Phase 2 has taken that foundation and pushed it further. The focus this time was on enabling control and autonomy. Tenants told us they wanted to set their availability for contractors, see their appointments and planned programmed works, request follow ups on work not completed by the due date without having to make a phone call, and easily updates. So that’s what we built!
We continued our collaboration with Homes NSW tenants, testing designs with older people, tenants with diverse accessibility needs, and people with lower digital confidence. With the Council for Intellectual Disability, we tested against best-practice accessibility and refined content, navigation, and interface patterns. The service now leans even harder into plain English, clearer visual cues, and mobile-first layouts that reduce cognitive load.
Control, clarity, confidence
Building on our research and co-design in phase one, we prototyped the following features to continue to improve the tenant experience.
- Set your availability: Tenants choose the days and times that suit them when they log a repair. They can see upcoming contractor visits in one place. This mean fewer missed appointments, more predictability.
- Know what’s planned: Tenant can see planned maintenance for their home or common areas, ahead of time, no guesswork.
- Follow up without the queue: If the date for work to be completed has passed, tenants can request a follow up for their repair request. This means escalating issues without having to call the contact centre.
- Add photos and docs later: If tenants have forgotten something or have been asked for more detail they can upload extra photos or documents after a repair has been submitted a repair is submitted.
- Accessible by design: Plain English, clearer status labels, larger tap targets, a cleaner history of current and past requests, and mobile first layouts make the experience easier for everyone.
Momentum in the numbers
The service keeps on growing. Since the initial go-live in November 2024, tenants have lodged 45,000 repair requests.
In the first week after the July 2025 Phase 2 release, there were 2,175 requests, including 1,950 with availability preferences, 148 follow-up requests, and 13 with additional photo uploads. 91.5% of usage is on mobile, matching what we heard in research and the design choices made. The signal is clear: more independence for tenants, and less pressure on the call centre.
We know that a repair request is often made in a moment of stress. Because of this, phase 2 has turned more of the focus onto things tenants can control: when someone can visit, viewing already scheduled, adding more useful context, and getting more support when something is not resolved. For Homes NSW, that means better information up front, clearer scheduling, fewer call centre calls, and faster responses.
Phase 1 delivered transparency. Phase 2 has turned that transparency into control.
Built with Homes NSW, tenants across the state, the Council for Intellectual Disability, and our delivery partners Deloitte.
