Properti by First American
Protecting 1 in 5 US homeowners
Properti is First American's first owner portal, built for Eagle policyholders, giving homeowners centralized access to title insurance, document storage, and property monitoring post-closing. As a product designer, I led the 0 → 1 design of the first-time user experience, establishing the UX strategy for onboarding Eagle policyholders and setting the standard for post-closing homeowner engagement.
The Challenge:
48% of homeowners had limited or no familiarity with Title Insurance, meaning the majority of Eagle policyholders arrived at the portal without a mental model for what it protected them from. The dominant competitors, Home Title Lock and LifeLock Home Title Protect, had captured the market through fear-based advertising built on misleading claims. Without a clear first-touch experience, First American risked losing the post-closing relationship entirely, ceding ground to less credible alternatives.
The Strategy:
I partnered with our UX researcher to run 31 hours of qualitative interviews with stakeholders representing 200+ years of combined industry experience, and built the team's first proto-persona and end-to-end journey maps from the ground up. I anchored the onboarding strategy on plain-English policy explanations and progressive disclosure, moving away from the fear-based framing that defined the category. Unmoderated usability testing with 24 participants, including 9 pre-screened target users, drove iterations on backwards navigation, descriptive CTAs for screen reader accessibility, and smooth scroll interactions for navigational recall.
The Outcome:
The onboarding launched with an 84% sign-up rate and reduced operational costs by 7%. Post-onboarding intent to use landed at 87%, and 95% of participants rated the modal language as intuitive. The Eagle ID authentication pattern I designed was adopted across the firm-wide First American ecosystem, and the claims experience I conceptualized is projected to reduce manual operational work by 60%.
