Video testimonial from Eric Fan, Founder and CEO, Lumos.
Eric FanFounder and CEO, LumosRefract
Refract Group2026
We design property software, and the brands that sell it.
Managed puts renters, owners, agencies and tradespeople in one place, and it sells through agencies who each want their own name on it. We designed an identity that steps aside when an agency’s colours arrive, then the product and its design system, which we built in code. Our studio is in Sydney, Australia, and we work between Sydney and New York.
- Every agency wants its own name on it.We split Managed’s brand in two so a renter logs in and sees their agency, and we designed the product and built its design system.
- The product does a lot, and people lose their place.Keeyu helps large retailers after an order is placed, and we designed its product from inside the team and built its design system.
- Your users choose places on a map.Lumos plans out-of-home campaigns by audience, and we designed its planning surface, from the asset map to the reporting table, and built its design system.
What we think
A product with many roles needs each of them in the audit.
Work in a SaaS product often passes between people. Each account state lets you examine something the others hide.
Restricted actions explain the next step.
A disabled control should help someone understand the requirement or who can help.
An MVP needs to let its intended users finish a meaningful task.
That may be a much smaller task than the eventual product will support, but it needs an end.
A white-label brand is asked to be recognisable enough to sell, and quiet enough to disappear behind whoever bought it.
The easy answer is to have no opinion, which is why so much property software looks like paperwork.
Start with a product sprint.
One problem, a fixed length, and a working prototype in front of your users at the end. If it’s worth building, you’ll know. If it isn’t, you’ll know that cheaper.
- One product or flow
- Fixed length
- Price agreed upfront
Audit
An audit of the product or flow as it is
Prototype
A clickable prototype of the fix
Test
What your users did with it, in their words
Plan
A build plan and estimate, yours to keep
In their words.
Eric FanFounder and CEO, Lumos“Refract has killed it again. We call your team FEDEX because you always deliver!!”
RohithCOO, Managed
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SejalGTM Lead, Trusst AIQuestions
Yes. Refract designs property software and the brands around it. For Managed, a property platform for renters, owners, agencies and tradespeople, which had raised its seed round when we started, we designed the product, built its design system in code and designed a brand that steps aside for each agency’s own. Our studio is in Sydney, Australia.
Yes. Refract is a studio in Sydney, Australia, and we work between Sydney and New York. Our property work is Managed, which puts rent and bills, tasks, compliance certificates and the money itself in one place instead of four inboxes and a spreadsheet. We designed the product and the brand, and built its design system in code. Product design starts from $10,000 a month.
Yes. Managed sells through agencies, and every agency wants its own name on it. Refract split the brand in two: the purple, the mark and the illustrations run wherever Managed speaks under its own name, and inside the product the colours belong to the agency, so a renter logs in and sees their agency.
For Managed, Refract drew renting as an ordinary day. Renting is usually drawn as a problem: paperwork, queues, chasing someone for money. The illustrations show renters, agents and landlords carrying on with their day, because that is what the product does for them, and the colour, the objects and the type are there to make renting feel light and a little fun.
For Managed, Refract designed the product and built its design system in code, and the product itself was built on Managed’s side. We do engineering as well: Prism, our own product, is one we designed and built. An embedded team costs from $10,000 to $30,000 a month.
A closer look at the work
- Designing complex SaaS workflows: lessons from KeeyuHow relationships, progress and contextual guidance shape a usable product, and how to apply those lessons to your next difficult workflow.
- How to run a UX audit that leads to useful fixesA UX audit follows real tasks through your product, records where people get stuck and ranks fixes by user impact, evidence and the effort required.
- What is a product sprint, and when should you run one?A product sprint takes one product problem and a fixed length, tests a working prototype with the people it’s for, and ends with evidence and a build plan.
Building property software?
Tell us who uses it and where they get stuck.
Most teams start with a call, then a sprint or an audit.
The people you’d work with, from the first call to launch