Starthome

Starthome helps property owners and managers in Québec document a rental’s condition. You walk through the apartment, take photographs and record what you see. When it is time to inspect it again, the earlier visit gives you a reference.

I started working on Starthome in February 2026. The founder came with the logo and an initial design already in place. My work spans product design and engineering: shaping the mobile inspection, building the application around it, and connecting the photographs, observations and signatures to the final report.

The local rental context matters. Article 1890 of Québec’s Civil Code recognizes descriptions and photographs as ways to record a property’s condition. It also distinguishes ordinary wear from changes a tenant may need to answer for. That makes the detail of the record important: what was there at the beginning, what is visible now, and what someone actually checked.

I built the flow around entry and exit inspections, with the earlier inspection available as a reference. The French interface uses the language of the visit—logement, pièces, état des lieux. A photograph belongs to a room and an observation, so it can be understood later without the person who took it having to explain it.

Someone inspecting an apartment is looking around, opening doors and talking to another person. The phone has to fit into that. I kept the founder’s identity and used its gold for the main action, with photographs and short lists doing most of the work.

The home screen brings the unfinished visit back into view: the address, rooms checked and observations still needing attention. Inside a room, adding photographs is the primary action. Analysis can run while the person continues the visit, and entering an observation manually stays within reach.

I also worked through the less convenient moments: a camera permission that has not been granted, a room that needs another photograph, a connection that drops. The offline flow separates photos saved on the device from work waiting for a connection. It gives someone a way to continue taking notes without implying that a report is already ready.

Photo assistance is useful when it gives someone less to write and something specific to check. A proposed observation opens beside the entry and exit photographs. The person can enlarge them, change the condition, edit the wording or discard the suggestion.

I kept confirmation explicit. Marks on a floor may be ordinary wear; a photograph alone does not settle responsibility. The app asks the person on site to make the observation their own before it enters the reviewed record. If the evidence is insufficient, taking another photograph or writing a note remains part of the same flow.

Before signatures, the review shows the rooms checked, photographs and confirmed observations. Each item leads back to its source. A change after signing requires another signature, so the review is a meaningful point in the visit.

The tenant will not always be standing beside the property manager. I designed separate paths for signing on the device, receiving an email invitation, being absent and declining to sign. Each leaves a clear status in the record.

Those distinctions continue through the report. An invitation sent is different from a signature received. Generating the PDF is different from sharing it. The interface keeps those states visible, with the report available to open before sending a copy through the phone’s share sheet.

I build the mobile app with Expo, alongside a web admin for organizations, teams and inspection oversight. Cloudflare Workers runs the API, with D1 for records and R2 for photographs and documents. The report brings the room observations, photos and signatures together.

The interaction and the underlying record have to agree. A proposed observation needs a different state from a confirmed one. A tenant invitation needs a different state from a signature. Those are design decisions that carry through the API and into the PDF, not just labels on a screen.

This is the kind of product work I enjoy: following a real task through the interface and the system behind it. If you are building something similar or hiring a design engineer, I’d be happy to talk.