Creating a Clearer Financing Experience for Property Buyers

As a Freelance Product Designer, I worked for six months on the Mortgage Calculator within the Finanzierungskonzept squad. The tool helps users explore financing scenarios for a real or potential property, showing how different conditions affect affordability and long-term costs. My role was to design this experience to make it intuitive, trustworthy, and engaging, particularly in a privacy-sensitive market.

The Problem

The Mortgage Calculator required users to enter highly sensitive personal and financial information in order to generate accurate financing scenarios. In the German market, where data privacy is taken extremely seriously, asking for such information demands a high level of trust, clarity, and perceived security. Establishing trust from the very first interaction was essential to ensure that users would confidently engage with the tool.

Goal

The goal was to create an experience that built trust early, explained the purpose of each data request, and motivated users to complete the flow. At the same time, the calculator needed to offer a clear and approachable way for users to compare financing scenarios and understand under which conditions a property would be financially viable..

Hypothesis

If users saw immediate value and understood why certain data was needed, they would feel more comfortable sharing sensitive information. More trust would result in higher engagement with the interactive scenarios and support the business goal of enabling qualified financial leads.

Responsibilities

I led the entire product design process, from concept to final UI. With limited access to external user research, I relied on market insights, internal feedback loops, and iterative design to refine the experience. I defined user flows, built interaction patterns, and collaborated closely with product and engineering to ensure the tool behaved dynamically as users adjusted their inputs.

Final Design

The Mortgage Calculator became an interactive dashboard that adapted to the user’s buying stage. As users entered or modified information, charts and tables updated instantly, allowing them to explore interest rates, down payments, repayment structures, and total affordability. Different visualizations appeared depending on where they were in the process, making complex financial information easier to understand. The design emphasized clarity, reassurance, and gradual value delivery, helping users feel confident while navigating sensitive financial decisions.