Home Loan Application Tracker
Real-time updates for the home loan application journey
Helping customers navigate a complex home loan process with more clarity, confidence, and less manual follow-up.
Time
Strategic product initiative
Role
Sole Product Designer
Team
Researcher, PO, engineers, copywriter, UI designer
Platform
CommBank app / Home Hub
The Problem
Context
The home buying and refinancing process is long, complex, and involves multiple parties including lenders, brokers, and solicitors. Customers lacked a single source of truth, had poor visibility into progress, and often felt lost in a jargon-heavy process with unclear next steps.
This poor omni-channel experience created stress and uncertainty at exactly the moment customers needed guidance and reassurance.
Pain points
- No real-time view of application status
- No central checklist or reference point for the journey
- Heavy reliance on manual documentation and paper forms
- Frequent customer calls to lenders for status updates
Business Goals
Increase conversion rate
Increase digital applications converted to approval from 35% to 42%.
Reduce documentation burden
Lower the number of documents required for approval and simplify the application journey.
Reduce manual work
Cut rework time and relieve manual validation effort across the lending process.
Reduce stress and support costs
Give customers better visibility so they feel more confident and call lenders less often.
My Role
- I was the sole product designer on this project and followed the Double Diamond design thinking process.
- Led end-to-end strategic design from framing through delivery.
- Planned research and created the test plan.
- Drove ideation, prototyping, and solution definition.
- Worked closely with all stakeholders including the Product Owner, engineers, copywriter, and QA to bring the MVP of this feature live.
Constraints & Complexity
Multi-channel ecosystem
The application tracker had to fit within Home Hub, existing lender workflows, and multiple digital journeys rather than exist as a standalone feature.
Multiple customer scenarios
It needed to adapt to first-home buyers, subsequent buyers, refinancing customers, and top-up journeys.
Backend and compliance constraints
It needed to align with lender checklist systems, system constraints at the time, and compliance requirements.
Discovery
Research synthesis
- Reviewed existing research across the end-to-end home buying journey
- Captured customer pain points in the home loan application process
- Used those findings to align the team on the most urgent issues to solve
Journey and ecosystem mapping
- Created a home buying journey checklist across 4 stages
- Mapped existing tools customers use across their journey
- Built a simplified system map to show where the tracker fits across customer and lender touchpoints
Stakeholder and lender understanding
- Worked with stakeholders and lenders to understand purchasing scenarios, application types, tasks, and documents
- Identified how the tracker should dynamically adapt based on customer intent
- Clarified the role of the tracker in a broader Home Hub experience
Definition & Product Framing
I translated discovery into an initial tracker structure that captured the main stages of the home loan journey and supported multiple scenarios such as buying a first home, refinancing, topping up, or saving to buy later.
Design Exploration
Low-fi ideation and early concepts
Validation
In the next step, I tested the application tracker with 12 participants from mixed demographics, including first-home buyers, subsequent buyers, and refinancers.
My hypothesis
If we provide home loan customers with a clear application journey tracker, they will feel more guided and supported throughout the process.
My objective
To understand customer pain points, the information they need at each stage, how they currently track their application, and how features like reminders and document uploads can improve their experience.
What worked well
The overall application tracker worked well. Users were able to understand where they were in the process, which tasks required their action, and which tasks were handled by the bank.
Needs improvement
There are some areas that need improvement, which we are currently addressing, such as notifying users before their pre-approval expires and allowing users to renew their pre-approval digitally.
Testing plan and validation outcomes
Final Solution & Key Challenges
The final solution introduced a real-time application tracker inside CommBank’s Home Hub, giving customers a clearer view of progress, key milestones, next steps, and supporting tasks in one place. It transformed a fragmented, stressful process into a more guided and transparent experience.
Core solution
Key Challenges
Creating a progress/timeline component
The existing timeline component in our design system did not support clear communication of application progress and limited how we could present key information. To address this, I designed a new progress tracker tailored to customer needs, collaborated with the design system team, and successfully introduced it as a reusable component.
Mapping CommSee (backend) to Home Hub (customer app)
To make the tracker work beyond a visual layer, I mapped the relationship between Home Hub, CommSee lender checklist logic, and the language customers should see. I defined rules and guidelines for categories, tasks, and where each piece of information comes from. This helped align system language with user-facing language and made task journeys consistent and scalable.
Creating full task journeys end-to-end
Customers need to complete different tasks throughout their home loan application via the Application Tracker. I mapped the full journey for each task to ensure the experience was clear, consistent, and easy to follow from start to finish.
Impact
88%+
Customer engagement
We achieved over 88% customer engagement through the new App Status Tracker, enhancing transparency in the loan journey and advancing the Digi Loan initiative to streamline application processes and improve customer support.
100%
Customer satisfaction
Through concept testing, customers found the application tracker clearer, more transparent, and easier to use.