Making moving home faster… much faster!
Case Study: Building a category-defining Move Platform in under three years
Company: Home | Role: Chief Product & Experience Officer
The problem
Moving home is ranked alongside divorce as one of life’s most stressful events.
In the UK, the average transaction takes over 180 days from offer to completion. Movers juggle dozens of disconnected systems from estate agents, conveyancers, mortgage brokers, AML checks and so on, each with its own log-ins, documents, and timelines.
The result? Delays, missed tasks, frustration, and roughly one in three transactions falling through. It’s a broken process!
Our hypothesis
I met Matt for coffee in 2019 with no intention to start a business. We shared the same frustrations about the pains of moving house at the time and ended up venting about how broken the industry was. Two hours later we had the seed for a new business; Home.
The core idea: Moving home should be rewarding… not punishing!
We both believed that there had to be a better way to move home. Instead of forcing movers to use multiple fractured systems and project manage everything themselves, we envisioned a single connected platform to manage your move. It could remove friction for everyone involved; both movers and professionals. Stress could be reduced by providing clarity, transparency and automation throughout the process. Ultimately, we believed moving could be joyful.
The mission
Our mission was to create a single connected platform that:
Reduces transaction times and lowers the rate of fall through
Improves the mover experience by lowering the stress involved
Lofty goals indeed. But we had a plan for achieving them:
Empower the mover by connecting them with the professionals managing their move, sharing the data at every step to improve transparency, reduce mistakes and reduce repetitive form-filling
Provide clarity and automation at each step of the journey through a real-time “Move Wizard”
Embed all the essential services (insurance, removals, utilities, finance) exactly when they’re needed
Provide free human help for when things slip or get confusing
Build trust and reduce friction at every interaction by championing the mover in every interaction
Where to start?
Starting almost immediately after our first conversation, I joined as Employee #1, combining the vision and strategy of a founder with the hands-on delivery of a design lead.
Strategy & Vision → Shaped the product alongside the CEO, positioning Home as a category creator rather than just another PropTech tool.
Rapid Prototyping → Built and tested investor-ready prototypes without dev overheads, winning early buy-in from major estate agents.
Hands on craft and leadership → Managed design and development teams across UK and Brazil, always staying hands-on with UX and high-fidelity UI.
Stakeholder Management → Worked directly with board members, enterprise partners, and investors.
Partnering with industry giants
To test our hypothesis properly, we needed to convince industry partners to run a pilot with us with real users and live data. After all, we couldn’t make the data transparent without having access to it in the first place.
Landing Foxtons PLC and blockchain provider Coadjute was our David-and-Goliath moment. We were the unknown startup in an industry dominated by legacy names, so instead of selling a vision deck, we turned up with a working prototype.
That live demo, built in under two weeks, showed exactly how a digitised, end-to-end move could look and feel. It shifted the conversation from 'Who are Home?’ to 'We need to work with Home.'
Homepulse Finance dashboard for B2B partners
Increasing the operating experience was just as important as the consumer front-end. Ensuring partner teams could seamlessly utilise Home tools without friction created faster market adoption. Proprietary tools were created for partner finance reporting, CRM & SaaS Property management systems.
Rapid progression
We didn’t 'big-bang' our way into market. We built partner confidence through constant, visible progress.
Rapid research and prototyping sprints: short sprints to validate assumptions and visualise ideas before writing code
Cross-business alignment: design, engineering, and legal teams ran shared 'integration sprints' to ensure feasibility
Design system: introduced in Figma + Storybook to speed async collaboration between the teams involved
User feedback loops: every release included NPS collection and user-testing to guide iteration. A panel of real movers was formed to ground ideas and assumptions with short feedback loops
Design principles
Be proactive
Principle → Design for what’s next, not just what’s now. To reduce cognitive load, I wanted the platform to anticipate what users need before they know it themselves. For example, removals quotes appear only when the move reached the right legal stage; avoiding overwhelm and ensuring decisions were timely and relevant.
Reduce friction
Principle → Every step and interaction was seen as an opportunity to make things faster, simpler, and clearer. We obsessed with this principle in every journey and checkout. For example, we turned a 50-question, 30-minute insurance form into just four questions and 30 seconds, using data already held in the platform. The goal: no repetitive form-filling, no unnecessary clicks, no wasted time.
Build trust
Principle → Trust is the currency for changing entrenched behaviour. That meant we needed to be transparent about the data we held, our partners, and processes from the get go. We also embedded free, human support to guide movers when automation wasn’t enough. Customers loved the help and we got hands on user-feedback in real-time. The result was higher adoption rates, repeat service usage, and a platform that users felt comfortable saying “yes” to again and again.
A category defining pilot
At the end of 2023 we launched the first fully digitised home purchase journey with Foxtons and Coadjute.
It connected buyers, sellers, conveyancers, mortgage lenders and agents in one real-time workflow. Tracking progress, surfacing next steps, and digitising archaic steps like signing your mortgage… all while proactively suggesting actions and services at each milestone.
Measured impacts:
30 days faster than the UK average transaction time
7+ hours of admin saved per move
£100s saved in moving costs per move
Dramatic improvement in client cash flow
The pilot’s success was covered widely in early 2024 and became the foundation for Home.cc’s expansion.
Scaling success
The pilot validated our model and unlocked the next phase.
With a successful pilot, I focused on scaling product, culture, and capability:
Grew distributed design + product org across UK and Brazil
Designed HomePay, an AI-enabled digital wallet reducing household costs
Embedded proactive AI co-pilots across products to anticipate user needs
Continued expansion to Australia and the US with enterprise-grade partnerships
Results
Faster completions
Reduced friction, consumer empowerment and a connect experience to those who matter mean movers complete faster with Home.
Raised Through Design
As CPO at Home, our visual-first, rapid prototyping approach secured over £6m in multi-stage funding and global partnerships.
Movers reached
Enterprise adoption with the Tenancy Deposit Scheme mean Home is in the hands of over 40% of UK renters. It’s also launched in multiple countries and with leading Estate Agents.
My role
Founding designer to hands on CPO:
Joined as founding designer shaped product strategy
Led design from idea to international rollout
Built and mentored high-performing distributed product + design teams along with engineer resource
Championed async collaboration and data-driven decision making
Presented directly to investors and partners to secure multi-stage funding
Hands on design, leading core products and design systems
This project taught me that changing entrenched industry behaviour requires more than great UX… it needs:
The right champions collaborating at the top table
Relentless focus on trust and timing
A proactive approach that reduces cognitive load and guides users through complexity
The ambition to challenge long held viewpoints
Notes below
Launching in a global crisis → Home was founded just months before the COVID-19 pandemic. While our design and development teams were already operating remotely; it was a new experience for the wider business, investors and board members. Fully remote collaboration for all stakeholders needed new processes and communication rhythms to maintain trust, visibility, and decision-making speed in uncertain conditions.
Challenging the industry playbook → Rather than starting with small agencies and gradually building credibility, we went straight to the top of the UK property market. This meant aligning our product vision and execution with the needs of the largest players from day one, demonstrating that Home could operate at enterprise scale from the outset.
Securing high-influence buy-In → We deliberately targeted and engaged industry leaders; including Martin Samworth (Chairman of RICS), Robin Paterson (property sector leader), and Edward Fitzalan-Howard (Duke of Norfolk) in order to open doors and secure enterprise-level trust. This strategy directly led to partnerships with Foxtons PLC, Connells Countrywide PLC, the Tenancy Deposit Scheme, and nationwide mortgage and conveyancing networks.
From underdog to category creator → With no legacy brand recognition, we positioned Home as a category-defining solution, not “just another PropTech tool.” This involved crafting a compelling vision and delivering investor-ready prototypes that demonstrated tangible value in reducing move times, increasing service adoption, and creating revenue beyond forecast.
Get in touch
If you’re interested in building category-defining products that solve complex problems while delighting users, I’d love to talk.
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