Guest Pass System

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Context Setting

Shared living communities are complicated. Expectations for fairness, access, and transparency keep rising, but most of the systems meant to manage those spaces feel stuck in the past. For board members, staff, and residents, this creates tension in the small, everyday moments that shape shared living — especially around guest access. Old tools, unclear rules, and inconsistent processes turned what should be simple into a daily friction point.

Economics of Shared Living

From high-rise condos to gated HOAs, property managers are in charge of far more than buildings. They're stewards of shared environments. And these environments are complex—physically, financially, socially. They manage not just the upkeep of property but the dynamics of people sharing space.

They're expected to:

Yet their toolkit often lacks one crucial component: adaptive control. The ability to apply nuanced, seasonal, and situation-aware rules in ways that feel transparent and just.

Legacy Revenue Models, Modern Headaches

Most boards depend on conventional income sources:

• Monthly assessments
• Parking and storage rentals
• Move-in/move-out fees
• Vendor advertising
• Rule enforcement fines

These income sources offer predictability but don't scale well with usage, don't adjust to shifting demand, and don't respond to behavioral dynamics. They also offer few levers to influence resident behavior in more nuanced ways.

The Guest Access Spiral

Friction around guest access wasn't new. Sales flagged overcrowded pools. Customer success heard frustrations from residents. Marketing saw the same themes emerge in surveys and webinars. But these signals only scratched the surface. We needed to understand how guest access played out day-to-day; and how residents, staff, and boards managed it with the tools they had.

We started asking questions, informally at first.

Staff described constant improvisation. One concierge summed it up: "I spend more time decoding arguments than checking in guests."

Boards worried that setting hard limits would cause backlash. But the frustration wasn't with structure, it was with uncertainty. Residents didn't mind rules. They minded when boundaries felt invisible, inconsistent, or unfair.

Without structure, trust broke down:

Every summer, it got worse. Guest spikes revealed how brittle and reactive the existing systems were. We needed to move beyond anecdotes and map the root causes.

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Discovery

That's where we focused next — not on shipping features, but understanding the system beneath the system.

Our team:

• Conducted on-site visits
• Shadowed concierge teams
• Sat in board meetings
• Led resident interviews

We mapped behaviors, building rules, operations, and the unofficial workarounds holding everything together. The problem wasn't just policies. It was improvised systems masking deeper behavioral gaps.

Emerging patterns:

This led us to a focused challenge:

How might we build an access system that turns ambiguity into agency for residents, staff, and decision-makers alike?

Prototyping for Power and Clarity

We translated our research into lightweight prototypes. These weren't polished flows. They were provocations:

• Could a resident invite a guest in under a minute?
• Could a staff member verify access with no clipboard, no drama?
• Could boards apply seasonal rules without calling IT?

We ran these through small-group testing and live shadow sessions. Many failed:

• Barcode passes were awkward to scan and easy to fake
• Admin approvals bottlenecked the process
• SMS links were often missed or misrouted

One pattern kept showing promise: a self-service system that made limits visible and verifiable.

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Key Product Elements

This ecosystem turned rules into understandable narratives.

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Pilot Launch

We ran a structured 6-week pilot across three distinct property types:

Each site brought different challenges: high volume, limited staff, no precedent for digital systems. We needed to test not just whether the system worked—but whether it scaled with complexity.

What We Measured

• Average time to create and share a guest pass
• Errors and edge cases in QR scanning and pass recognition
• Staff onboarding time and error rate
• Resident sentiment around new rules and transparency
• Willingness to pay nominal fees for better-managed amenities

Key Insights

In post-pilot surveys, over 70% of residents said they were more likely to use amenities "if the rules were clear and enforced fairly." For boards, the pilot offered a model for smarter governance that didn't rely on constant oversight.

What We Shipped

See the guest pass system in action: Guest Passes: Creating & Sharing Passes - Resident Video Guide

Tangible Gains

In just 6 weeks, these results reflect median improvements per building or HOA based on the pilot:

• 23% increase in digital guest pass usage
• Over $1,250 in monthly revenue from amenity access fees
• 38% reduction in manual guest management time by staff
• 80% satisfaction among residents using the new access experience

Broader Operational Impacts

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What We Learned and What's Next

What started as a cross-functional investigation evolved into a platform for behavioral design.

This project answered a larger question: How can governance in residential communities feel less like enforcement and more like collaboration?

The results speak for themselves: lower stress, higher satisfaction, better outcomes—and a path forward for rethinking how communities design their everyday systems.