Launching Own Up’s concierge experience
As the Design Lead, I worked cross-functionally with stakeholders to advocate for the users at every step through design decisions in an economic environment that was make or break in the mortgage industry.
TEAMIan Griesdorn (Senior Product Manager), Sam Wilder (Content Strategist), Robert Cafazzo (Tech Lead) &
ZeroDegrees (Agency Partner)
TIMELINE
3 Months
The Problems;
Getting into the depth of the problems;
① Evaluating the current experience
• Lacking “human” depthOwn Up home advisors serve as unbiased facilitators to prospective homebuyers, who will advise you to not use Own Up if somewhere else is better — we were not sharing much about them.
• Address current problemsEveryone knows the economy is not doing well, rates are high and housing is tough to find — this page was not relatable to that and did not reflect these changes.
• Just want to see ratesAfter going through onboarding, some people expect to look at rates, not another friction point
•What else...?Besides this pitch, there is not much else to do on the page. Our resources also link out to other pages that are already accessible through the homepage
② Are there opportunities to convert users that Own Up doesn’t currently serve?
Ideating on the new experience;
③ Leveraging creativity from Own Up teams across departments
I led a group ideation session consisting of our Sales, Engineering, Lender Relations & Customer Success led to the generation of key themes, which helped me derive insights on how to approach design.Session Prompt— How might we better position our Concierge offerings so that they more effectively solve the customer problem and deliver value in order to increase contact rates and consult take-rates?
④ Rapid prototyping & testing — under NDA
With the help of our agency partner Zero Degrees, I collaborated on quickly producing prototypes to test out concepts. The winning version was taken forward by me and refined.
The first prototype added features and interactivity, resembling an app experience on mobile — this turned out to be too complex for our users during the test. They preferred the second experience which was simpler, provided them with options and clear steps on what to do next.
The Concierge Experience
Highlights;
① Clarity of options & expectation setting
In this new pitch, customer’s can either opt for Own Up’s concierge service and talk to a home advisor or be connected with a partner lender to give them a custom negotiated rate.
② Interest Rates & Market Forces
Utilizing our rate range calculation API (we do this by parsing data from Optimal Blue), I created a widget for our users to look at weekly rate ranges, along with explanations on market conditions.
I also included the ability to set rate reminders, giving the option for people to stay informed daily or weekly about rate fluctuations — so when they are ready, they can move forward with their mortgage loan.
③ Real people with genuine advice
I created a home advisor details view, featuring their qualifications, years of experience and user reviews from previous customers.
Leveraging the strength of our in-house expertise allows our customers to build trust with the product.
Learnings & Next Steps;
To underscore the importance of this;
A few months after the release of Own Up’s concierge experience, The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) announced new legal requirements for online mortgages — requiring another iteration and product pivot.