The Compass Mission
Summary
Greg Petroff, the SVP of Design at Compass & UXR, talks about the Compass mission and how User Research and Design play a crucial role in building a groundbreaking platform for real estate agents.
Key Insights
-
•
User research plays a fundamental role in shaping meaningful experiences on technology platforms, especially those integrating machine learning and cloud services.
-
•
Compass focuses on deeply understanding real estate agents as a unique user community to tailor products that fit their specific mental models and workflows.
-
•
Platforms can offer strong business advantages by driving user affinity and repeatability but risk alienating users if not designed empathetically.
-
•
Compass’s business model aligns its success directly with the success of individual real estate agents, creating a unique incentive for user-centric product development.
-
•
The real estate market is highly fragmented and diverse, making it a rich environment for user research with many behavioral, demographic, and regional differences.
-
•
A flat company structure at Compass allows researchers direct access to senior leadership, including the CEO, enabling faster impact and alignment.
-
•
Compass fosters a culture of transparency, vulnerability, and openness where employees are encouraged to focus on outcomes rather than ownership or egos.
-
•
The pace at Compass is fast and entrepreneurial, requiring comfort with change and negotiating the tension between speed and quality, especially in research.
-
•
Research teams at Compass are growing rapidly and work closely with product teams in a squad model, with cross-product research to understand broader customer journeys in development.
-
•
Greg Petraff’s background spans architecture and UX leadership across multiple large organizations, shaping his advocacy for user research and culture-building at Compass.
Notable Quotes
"If agents do well, we do well. The more we know about you, the more we can make you better or fulfill your goals and aspirations."
"There is an enormous amount of diversity in the real estate agent community, from demographics to technology savvy to regional differences."
"Platforms need researchers and designers to make them meaningful and intentional for the people they are designed to serve."
"We want to know agents better than they know themselves to drive tailored, contextually relevant solutions."
"Compass is a pretty frank place where people feel safe to speak their minds, even at leadership levels."
"We focus on delivering high quality but also moving fast—being comfortable negotiating that tension is important."
"Real estate transactions are among the top five life events in terms of emotional significance for people."
"Our researchers talk regularly to the CEO and are closely involved in product decisions, making research highly impactful here."
"We are building cross-product research capabilities to curate a holistic understanding of agents across all workflows and touchpoints."
"We want our culture to be about the outcome, not about who owns what or who’s doing what on a piece of work."
Or choose a question:
More Videos
"Can you show me your thought process? That’s really critical as the ability to articulate themselves."
Adam Cutler Karen Pascoe Ian Swinson Susan WorthmanDiscussion
June 8, 2016
"The design planning and management tool pulls together all necessary design reference material and deliverables, focusing on actively tracked info and their relationships."
Ellie Krysl Jon FukudaPlanned Right. Managed Right. Designed Right.
June 6, 2023
"Two-thirds of our internal team had experienced a late or lost delivery, reflecting real customer frustration."
Anat Fintzi Rachel MinnicksDelivering at Scale: Making Traction with Resistant Partners
June 9, 2022
"I hadn’t realized that we were both going to need that advice."
Randolph Duke IIWar Stories LIVE! Randy Duke II
March 30, 2020
"Failure is easy, recovery is hard, but it’s necessary and part of the process."
Maria GiudiceEmpowering change: Reigniting purpose, passion and impact in research
March 13, 2025
"I’m exceptionally qualified to talk about design systems because I’ve never used one until recently."
Nalini P. KotamrajuAn Organizational Story: Salesforce Lightning Design System
June 9, 2016
"Reflecting on our power as implementers of policy, we must reciprocate by giving back information and value to those we engage."
Aaron Stienstra Lashanda HodgeLeveraging Civic Design to Advance Equity and Rebuild Trust in the US Federal Government
December 8, 2021
"War games really are research — creative and systematic work to gain knowledge and improve decision making."
Terry BuckmanWargaming (An Introduction)
August 10, 2023
"If I had waited for someone else to give me permission, I'd still be waiting. We'd all be waiting."
Jess GrecoClaiming your power: Practical tools for amplifying your unique voice
March 13, 2025
