Overview

ORO is a B Corp based in Los Angeles that is focused on creating innovative benefits for companies primarily centered around housing and financial wellness.  

When ORO’s CEO, renowned real estate attorney George Fatheree III, approached me to build their flagship digital product for employees, I eagerly accepted. Fresh off developing Omi, a platform that helps first-time buyers navigate the home-buying journey, we brought deep domain expertise and a clear understanding of the challenges facing new homeowners.

With ORO still in its early stages, I stepped in as a fractional Chief Design Officer, leading everything from brand development to digital product design. Our creative approach reflected the company’s innovative spirit—combining bold visuals with classic typography and thoughtful content design to inspire curiosity and build trust.

The Challenge:

ORO had a well respected brand and initial traction with their down payment assistance product, but no digital offerings or ways to track participation in the program after registering.

Once the employee received the down payment assistance, they also needed help navigating all aspects of home ownership; from the purchase to maintenance.

The Process

I flew out to Los Angeles for a week-long onsite with the ORO Team where we hosted 2 collaborative workshops to set the vision for the company and product offerings.

Key Findings

Purposeful Language

Our content strategy needs to be centered around providing clear, concise, and reliable information, addressing users' information overload concerns. The language should be accessible regardless of experience in finance or education levels.

Personalization Features

The home-buying process is deeply personal. The application incorporated user profiles that allowed individuals to input their financial details and goals, tailoring the content and resources to their unique situations.

Emotional Support

The truth is, buying a home - like any large-scale financial decision, is emotionally taxing.We brainstormed features like forums and expert advice sections to help users navigate the emotional journey of home-buying, fostering a sense of community and support.

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We then worked with the founding team to develop a framework and competitive analysis that positions the product to provide value to all employees.  Regardless of where they are on their housing journey.

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Research

This project related heavily to Omi. I was designing for the same persona in that I needed to create an experience that took the gargantuan task of buying a home to something digital, accessible, and even simple. The complexity came in with the distribution channel. Omi was B2C. This experience was actually procured by the HR departments.

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What is a benefit?

Employee benefits are non-wage, indirect compensation provided to employees in addition to their salary or hourly wages, designed to improve job satisfaction, retention, and well-being.

I worked with the head of HR of 6 different organizations in the LA area through zoom calls to understand what a benefit is and how I can package our offerings to be not only a tool but a benefit. Something that improves job satisfaction and increases likelihood of retention. Through those interviews, a few common themes came out as insights.

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Insight:

• All benefits are picked out for the following year around November. After that window closes, there is no opportunity to change the benefits until the next year. So the sales cycle for this project would be relatively small and the value propositions need to be concise and compelling.
• Companies in competitive talent markets compete more on benefits than traditional salary. A unique solution can give organizations a competitive edge in recruiting and retention.
• Companies look for benefits that provide value to the end users long-term. There are some ephemeral offerings, like fertility benefits, but for the most part, the most popular offerings need to provide value to the entire workforce, at all times to be effective.

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Understanding how benefits are selected, utilized and valued, I could create a Service Value Delivery Framework that would inform how we organize our work going forward.

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Ideation

I flew out to Los Angeles to spend a week with the founding team and a series of board members. In addition to the founding team, I also had meetings with a Loan Officer, two Real Estate agents (one that focused on starter homes and one that focused on $1 million+), 5 potential home buyers and one life-long renter.

From these initial meetings, we created a framework on how to organize our ideation and content based on the each step of the housing lifecycle. We wanted to build a strategy on not only those employees looking to buy a home, but everyone else.

User Stage Lifecycle

• Currently Renting
• Thinking About Buying
• Looking for a House
• Closing on your Home
• Maintaining your Home

Feature Ideation

Next, during the in-person workshop, we ideated around what types of features we could offer as part of the digital experience that would differentiate our offering from other tools.

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Primary Features:

• View and manage credit score
• Tools to improve credit
• Tools to manage savings/ salary deductions
• Settings for benefits participation

Secondary Features:

• Find a local Real Estate agent
• Find a dependable mortgage company
• Search for Downpayment Assistance programs
• Downpayment Calculators
• Rent vs Buy Calculators

Aspirational Features:

• Home search based on proximity to office
• Mortgage transaction document storage
• Ability to report rent payments to improve credit score
• Personal Housing Concierge

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System Design

The most important part of creating an engaging service is maintaining a birds-eye view of how everything works together session to session to keep the possibilities of each session fresh, exciting and most importantly, useful. Its also important to have a perspective on what external integrations are needed to ensure the usage will pass the procurement and security process.

Orchestrating channels like email drip campaign and when each piece would be triggered allows fine-tuned control over how each session is experienced and how to avoid annoyances like email overwhelm, dead ends, and unclear navigation.

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Onboarding

The experience should be immediately applicable to both where the user currently is on their housing journey as well as where they want to be. This required me to think through what information should be collected initially to create that "personal" feel on the dashboard. Since this benefit would typically first explored at work, it was important to make the onboarding a "progressive onboarding" technique that allowed them to first complete onboarding over a few different sessions if needed.

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I broke up the onboarding in 4 different "sections" design to complete each during a session or if time allowed, the users can do the entire thing in one sitting.

• General Information
• Financial Information
• Assistance needs
  
  • If they a realtor or mortgage assistance
• Home Type
• Learning Preferences

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Feature Design

Being that this is a part of an employee offering, it was important that we build a visual language that builds both trust and confidence in the tool, as well as inspires usage. Though the tool will be typically used at work, we wanted to build out a highly usable mobile experience as well.

We learned that there are privacy concerns with entering personal financial information in a tool that is offered by their employer. Although there is no way for the employer to view this information, making that explicit was important as a first touchpoint.

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Credit Score Tracking

We decided to focus on personalization metrics that have value to anyone, whether they are renting with no intention to buy, looking for their first home, or seasoned owner looking for their first investment property.

Journey Based Experience

Utilizing the output from the workshops, we developed a framework to organize the experience and content that would touch on each aspect of the housing journey, ensuring lifetime value. The user is in control of where they begin their path, and how much control they have to move through the various stages of it.

Educational Insight

We worked with leading content producers in the financial literacy space to create a library of articles addressing common hangups and questions. We sequenced the content in a way that loosely reflects a curriculum but designed the experience so that people can skip around and find things relevant to where they are on their "Path".

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Results

ORO Path has onboarded 12 companies with the average headcount of 5000 + employee’s across a series of locations throughout the United States.

23

Homes Purchased utilizing tools from ORO Path to assist in the purchasing process

56,000

Individual Users as of November 2025 with a month to month retention rate of over 87%

12

Companies onboarded to the platform offering the application as an employment benefit

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