Designing a Home Improvement Lending Experience from 0→1

About Upgrade

Upgrade is a leading U.S. consumer fintech platform headquartered in San Francisco, providing responsible credit, mobile banking, and payment products to millions of Americans.

Since its launch, Upgrade has provided more than $50 billion in credit to over 8 million customers, across products including personal loans, cards, mobile banking, BNPL, home improvement financing, and auto financing. Upgrade

1,500+ employees · 8M+ customers · $50B+ credit delivered

Home Improvement Lending

I worked on the 0→1 design of Upgrade’s Home Improvement lending experience, helping homeowners finance renovation and improvement projects through a simpler digital lending journey.

Unlike an established product with clearly defined user behaviors, this was a new product space for the team. Our users, needs, behaviors, and end-to-end journey were still being defined.

My role went beyond designing the application interface. I used data analysis, user research, competitive research, and journey mapping to understand who our customers were, how homeowners made financing decisions, where uncertainty occurred, and what information they needed throughout the lending process.

My Role

I partnered with Product, Engineering, Data, and business stakeholders to define the experience from application → approval → funding → renovation.

My work included:

User Research · Data Analysis · Journey Mapping · Competitive Research · Product Strategy · Information Architecture · Prototyping · UX/UI Design · Cross-functional Collaboration

Research helped us identify user needs and service gaps before translating those insights into product requirements, workflows, and a scalable digital experience.

Explore the full design process by clicking the link below.