Millions of Veterans are using their money on monthly rent payments when they could be putting that same money toward building equity in a house of their own. This responsive webpage responds with educational content on the pros and cons of homeownership that clearly educates Veterans on the costs and benefits of renting vs buying.
Roles: Product Designer, Project Manager, and Developer
Collaborators: VP of Design, Growth, and Marketing Research Team
Problem
For many Veterans, renting may very well be the right decision for their current life situation. But for some, they either don’t believe they can afford a home, they don’t know how much money they are effectively throwing away, or they don’t understand the importance of home ownership toward building generational wealth.
Process
This project, I used Design Thinking to approach all problems from a user centered perspective. This process, with the inclusion of asking questions to the Vets United Team, I was able to gain a better understanding of user problems and desires in a short time.
While at Veterans United, I worked in a hybrid setting. For the first few weeks I worked remotely and then I came to their headquarters in Columbia, MO. During this week I completed a design sprint to drive innovation and accelerate product development through structured problem-solving and rapid solutions.
Design Roles
Research
Visual Design
Webpage Architecture
Project Management
User Testing
Development
Tools
Figma
Dovetail
Notion
Slack
Visual Studio Code
UserTesting.com
Deliverables
Interactive Prototype
Responsive Webpage
HTML, CSS and JS layers
Secondary Market Research
Utilizing previous research completed by the Vets United team within Dovetail, I was able to quickly understand how the Vets' needs aligned with the Creative Director's vision for the project. Here, my main focus was to gain insight on how the Vets United team used CTA’s and why certain choices were made on the previously completed decision making tools.
Competitive Analysis
For this project's competitive analysis, I compared Vets United’s current calculator offering to ensure that my work was within Vets United’s branding and I compared that to similar mortgage companies rent vs buy tools. The outside tools compared were Nerd Wallet, Smart Asset, and New York Times.
For each comparison, I identified decision points for the end user, outlined the positives and negatives of the tools, and identified potential opportunities that can be targeted for this project.
Business Requirements
After conducting internal research and consulting with the Creative VP, I was able to finalize the initial requirements for the business.
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Ability to enter the the key data inputs for decision making
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A clearly understood “which is best” decision for the Veteran
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Compelling CTAs for mortgage conversion
User Survey
Vets United had their own marketing/user research team. I collaborated with them to conduct the initial user survey for the project. Based on the information Vets United had already collected, we developed additional questions that were specific to the top factors that come to mind when veterans make a decision to rent or buy.
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When ranking the factors that most influenced the rent vs. buy decision, equity was at the top. The equity gained with mortgage payments, as opposed to no equity gained when making rent payments, was featured in the primary decision-making tool.
User Interviews
Additionally, the interview results revealed that there were two segments: one that made quantitative decisions and another that made qualitative decisions. To cater to both groups, we included a number-heavy decision-making tool (quantitative) and a short verbal chart (qualitative) that discussed the other most important factors for veterans when making this life decision.
Wireframes
To quickly form the webpages layout, hand drawn sketches were made for visualization. Then under the direction of the Creative VP, the sketches were then turned into into high fidelity wireframes.
I was able to get the design assets from other designers that worked on Vets United's previous calculator pages. I turned those assets into an easy to use design system to ensure brand cohesiveness and rapid prototyping.
Usability Testing
The high fidelity wireframes were then connected in Figma to produce an interactive prototype. Again, collaborating with the research team, we organized 5 participants through UserTesting.com and I conducted the interviews. The issues that testing participants had were turned into user requirements and 

implemented into the next design iteration.
Tasks
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Change your destination home's location
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State how many years you would need to live in one home to save money when buying
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Explain the yearly savings breakdown
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State which factors are most important to you when making the buy vs rent decision
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State what you expect to happen when clicking on the CTAs
Notable Changes
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Make the calculator inputs simpler
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Reduce the number of actions made to get a decision
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Make the main decision stand out more on the webpage
This works well because the user only needs to input where they want to live, then the avg home price for that city appears and the standard $0 down payment for Vets can also be adjusted.
Lessons Learned
Because Veterans United Home Loans is a private company, I had no idea how mature and developed their creative division was. The first two weeks, we worked mainly through Slack and then the third week I was working from their home office in Columbia, Missouri.
There, I worked with and learned from the marketing staff on best practices for CTAs, the copy team to come up with them most compelling language, the other creatives for design advice, and the work that the research team prepared saved me a ton of time.
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The team is a good mix of professional and friendly. I heavily considered staying with them for the long run, but at the time, I was not interested in spending much of my energy coding. While developing the design, I hit a wall trying to get the calculator and the graph to work together. So, I put my PM hat back on and hired an experienced developer that has done similar work to complete the project.
Still, I'm proud of the work that was done and I believe that the intended population now has a tool made specifically for their financial and Veteran benefits situation, which can lead to prosperity for them and generations to come.
"I found him to be determined and hard-working. He was able to quickly learn new concepts and apply them to his work. He created an amazing portfolio of work. I would highly recommend Marlon as a UX designer and researcher."
Sr Designer - Lowes
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Designer - See Tickets
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