Noaha case study
Product design · home equity, reimagined

Noah

Make an unfamiliar bargain feel safe, clear, and worth signing.

Noah — formerly Patch Homes — offers a debt-free way to tap home equity: it buys a share of your home instead of lending against it. My job on the Patch 3.0 marketing site was to make that genuinely novel bargain understandable fast enough that skepticism never won.

your-home · estimate
Home value$850,000
Cash to you$75,000
Noah's share23%
$0 monthly payment0% interest

illustrative example values

Product designFinancial-product UXInformation architectureTrust & comprehension designVoice & copyNoah · formerly Patch Homes
01The bargain

Not a loan. An investment.

Most homeowners have more money locked in their house than anywhere else — and no good way to reach it that isn’t debt. Noah’s answer was to buy a share of the home instead of lending against it.

The old way · a loan

A monthly payment. An interest rate and an APR. A new lender with a claim on your home.

The Noah way · a share

No monthly payment, no interest. Cash today for a share of future value. Noah wins only when your home does.

02The problem

The catch was that there was no catch.

Homeowners arrived skeptical. “No monthly payment, no interest?” invites an instant second question: “So what happens to my house?” If the experience couldn’t answer faster than the doubt could set in, they’d leave — not because the product was bad, but because it was unexplained.

“This sounds too good to be true.”

“What’s the catch — and what happens to my home?”

Comprehension is the conversion.

03How might we

Design the explanation, not just the page.

Explain in a headline

Convey “we buy a share of your home’s future” in the time it takes to read one line.

Reframe the absence

Make the lack of a monthly payment feel like relief, not a red flag.

Show the math, concretely

Spell out what Noah takes and what you keep if the home goes up, down, or flat.

Carry a nervous, high-stakes user through a commitment without ever losing them.

04What I owned

The Patch 3.0 marketing site.

An equity product can’t front-load an offer — it has to front-load understanding.The site was where that happened. Three pieces of work made it legible.

01

Flows & IA

Mapping who arrives, what they’re asking, and where each answer lives.

02

Site architecture

A page structure that meets complexity in the order people are ready for it.

03

Voice & copy

Plain language over jargon — because the words are where trust is won or lost.

05Flows & IA

Four homeowners, four questions.

New to Patch — “What even is this?”

Learn the model first.

Ready to act — “Will this work for me?”

Get an estimate.

On the fence — “Can I trust it?”

Success stories and eligibility.

Comparing — “Better than a HELOC?”

Side-by-side against debt.

marketing site — user flows
User-flow diagram: a homeowner new to Patch learns the model and decides whether to start an application
06Site architecture

Complexity, in the right order.

Homepage
what it is, in one breath
How It Works
mechanics + estimate
Why Patch
side-by-side vs. debt
Stories · About
proof and people
Patch 3.0 — marketing-site content outline
Marketing-site content outline: priority pages and section-by-section breakdowns
07Made legible

The whole path, before step one.

Financing shown as six plain steps — opening with a free estimate that won’t touch your credit, so the first move is reassurance, not risk.

1
Free instant estimate
2
Call a Home Advisor
3
Apply online
4
Independent appraisal
5
Accept your offer
6
Funds in 1–2 days
08Beyond the site · the application

Where the paperwork used to kill it.

The marketing site’s job ends the moment someone clicks Apply.But comprehension doesn’t help if the application itself strands them — and the hardest step is Documents, where you have to prove income, assets, and property. Chasing down tax returns and bank statements is exactly the friction that abandons a half-finished application. So the work carried into the flow: let people link a bank account instead of hunting for paperwork — Plaid embedded directly in the step, with manual upload kept only for the gaps.

Make the third-party step feel native

Plaid Link — out of the box
····
····
Plaid Demo uses Plaid to link your bank
Secure
Transfer of your information is encrypted end-to-end
Private
Your credentials will never be made accessible to Plaid Demo
Continue
By selecting “Continue” you agree to the Plaid End User Privacy Policy
reskinned to Patch
Header
Offer
APPLICATION STEPS
Use of Private
Documents
In order to continue your application we will need to verify the following information
  • Your Income
  • Your assets
  • Your property information
Link Your Account and Upload your information
····
····
Patch Homes Uses Plaid to link your account
Secure
Transfer of your information is encrypted end-to-end
Private
Your credentials will never be made accessible to Plaid Demo
Continue
By selecting “Continue” you agree to the Plaid End User Privacy Policy

Left: Plaid’s default flow. Right: the same moment rebranded and set inside the application — so linking never feels like leaving.

Consent
link, don't dig
Pick bank
search + logos
Sign in
at the bank
Linked
accounts appear
Upload
only the gaps
Term sheet
on its way
Documents step — link accounts to verify
Header
Offer
APPLICATION STEPS
Use of Private
Documents
In order to continue your application we will need to verify the following information
  • Your Income
  • Your assets
  • Your property information
Link Your Account and Upload your information
LINK ACCOUNTS
Choose your bank
Header
Offer
APPLICATION STEPS
Use of Private
Documents
In order to continue your application we will need to verify the following information
  • Your Income
  • Your assets
  • Your property information
Link Your Account and Upload your information
Select your bank
⌕ Search
CHASE
Bank of America
WELLS FARGO
citi
us bank
Capital One
PNC
USAA
Linked accounts, listed back
Header
Offer
APPLICATION STEPS
Use of Private
Documents
In order to continue your application we will need to verify the following information
  • Your Income
  • Your assets
  • Your property information
Link Your Account and Upload your information
Linked Accounts
Mortgage Account
Account ···········0000
USE ADDITIONAL ACCOUNTSCONTINUE
Manual upload — only for the gaps
Header
Offer
APPLICATION STEPS
Use of Private
Documents
In order to continue your application we will need to verify the following information
  • Your Income
  • Your assets
  • Your property information
Link Your Account and Upload your information
Linked Accounts
Mortgage Account
Account ···········0000
Savings Account
Account ···········1111
Additional Documents

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Tax ReturnUPLOAD
Homeowners InsuranceUPLOAD
CONTINUE
Uploaded, with easy removal
Header
Offer
APPLICATION STEPS
Use of Private
Documents
In order to continue your application we will need to verify the following information
  • Your Income
  • Your assets
  • Your property information
Link Your Account and Upload your information
Linked Accounts
Mortgage Account
Account ···········0000
Savings Account
Account ···········1111
Additional Documents

Lorem ipsum sed lorem, ac non in Nam tempus, mauris. Id metus eu viverra. Massa Quisqua lorem ipsum sed lorem.

Tax Returntaxreturn.pdf
Homeowners Insuranceinsurancepolicy.jpg
CONTINUE
“Term sheet on its way”
Header
Offer
APPLICATION STEPS
Use of Private
Term Sheet On Its Way...

We are reviewing the supporting documents you submitted. We will post the final term sheet here when it is ready.

Application design work — the Documents step of the Patch loan flow. Wireframe fidelity; the linking modals rendered at higher detail.

Where the flow landed

The fully-designed endpoints.

Two screens carried the flow at full fidelity: the homeowner’s estimate — the moment the bargain becomes concrete — and the internal Document Vault that the linked accounts and uploads fed. Both shipped as part of Patch Homes.

patchhomes.com — your estimate
The shipped Patch Homes estimate page: a $375,000 offer with full fee breakdown, a schedule-a-call form, and an FAQ

The estimate page — offer, fee breakdown, and book-a-call in one scroll. (Scroll within the frame.)

patch admin — document vault
The internal Patch Homes admin Document Vault: Plaid data plus tax-return and insurance rows, with the full funding-application navigation

The internal Document Vault — where the Plaid data and uploaded documents landed for the underwriting team.

09Voice & copy

Plain language does the heavy lifting.

Headlines led with the life, not the mechanism — “Make the most of owning a home,” “For wherever your home takes you,” “Discover what your house can do for you.” And the fear got answered head-on, in three plain promises:

✓ No monthly payments✓ No interest or APR✓ No prepayment penalty
10Concrete over abstract

Show the downside too.

$75,000 today for a 23% share. The honest version shows both futures — because hiding the loss would break the trust the product is built on.

Home goes up

Sells for more. Noah takes 23% of the gain — you keep the rest.

Home stays flat

You repay roughly what you took — no interest stacked on top.

Home goes down

Noah shares 23% of the loss too. You’re not alone on the way down.

11The tension

Clarity and caution pull against each other.

Add every honest detail

…and you risk overwhelming a reader who’s already nervous.

Cut detail for simplicity

…and it can feel evasive later — fatal for a trust product.

Fully honest and genuinely understandable — that balance was the craft.

What I carry forward

In financial products, comprehension is the conversion.

When a product is genuinely novel, the interface’s first job isn’t to persuade — it’s to explain so well that persuasion becomes unnecessary. Plain language, an honest downside, and visible fairness aren’t decoration. On Noah, they were the product — and so was getting out of the way once someone was finally ready to act.