Project
Chave
Product design
Dashboard
Mobile app
2025
The brief
Chave started in 2022 as a spreadsheet Joana Pires built for her parents’ four flats in Porto. It now has 6,500 landlords in Portugal paying €9 a month, most of them owning between two and eight homes. They aren’t property managers and don’t want to become ones. The old app opened on a ledger of payments and an inbox of tenant messages, and landlords said they only opened it once something had gone wrong. Chave wanted a product people would check with their morning coffee, and a check-in flow for the September move-ins of 2025.
The idea
A landlord thinks in flats, not transactions, so every flat is drawn as a door: the address, the tenant, whether the rent came in, and the next job. Red is only for rent that is late; everything else stays quiet. The phone opens on what needs you today, which is usually nothing, and the tablet walks landlord and tenant through a check-in room by room, signed on the screen by both.
Every flat is a door
Six flats, six doors. Paid ones stay dark with a tick, an empty one turns brass with its viewings counted, and a late rent turns the door red.
Rent, one number
The year’s rent received as one figure, with the month that came in late in red.
The morning
The phone opens on what needs you today. Most mornings that is nothing; this one, a rent four days late and a button to call.
One flat
Tap a door and the flat opens on what matters now: an empty one shows its viewings and the day it is free from.
Check-in
Move-ins are done room by room on a tablet, and the last screen is both signatures.
What changed
The new app shipped in August 2025, in time for the September move-ins, and 2,300 check-ins were signed on it that month. Landlords now open Chave in the morning rather than when something breaks, and late rent arrives a week sooner.
Credits
Okapi: João Antunes (lead product designer), Marta Lobo (UX writing), Beatriz Correia (brand)
Chave: Joana Pires (founder), Bruno Sá (engineering)
With: photography by Rafael Costa