01
PROJECT OVERVIEW
A rental market that
runs on trust, not paperwork
Haven is a rental marketplace connecting independent property owners with tenants — handling discovery, verification, leasing, payments, and disputes in one place, with an admin layer keeping the marketplace honest.
Who are the users?
Tenants searching for a home, independent owners managing a handful of units each, and an internal admin team moderating the marketplace.
What problem does it solve?
Rental trust today lives in scattered emails, cash handoffs,and verbal promises. Haven turns identity, money, and consent into things the product can prove.
Business goals
Grow subscription revenue from owners, keep dispute and support costs low, and build a reputation strong enough to out-trust larger incumbents.
Product goals
Make verification something people finish, not abandon. Make money movement legible. Make consent provable, not implied.
SUCCESS METRIC
Verification completion
SUCCESS METRIC
Dispute resolution time
SUCCESS METRIC
Owner subscription retention
02
THE PROBLEM
Three stakeholders,three
different reasons not to trust the system
Rather than start from screens, the problem was broken down by who feels it — because a fix that reassures a tenant can just as easily create new friction for an owner or new blind spots for admin.
TENANT
Doesn't trust the owner
•
Deposit deductions happen
with no visibility
•
Payments scattered across
cash, transfer, and apps
•
Verification takes days and
repeats per listing
•
No record of what was agreed
to at move-in
OWNER
Can't verify tenants
confidently
•
Manual, inconsistent tenant
screening
•
Payment tracking spread
across channels
•
Lease and ID documents live in
email threads
•
Approving applicants is slow
and manual
ADMIN
Has no scalable way
to referee
•
Every registration needs a
manual approval
•
Fraud and fake listings go
undetected too long
•
Property verification isn't
standardized
•
Disputes arrive with no
structured evidence
09
Another Challenge
Consent,
proven in product.
The fix for Diagnosis 02 isn't a line in a spec doc — it's three real
screen states. Here's the deduction moving from proposal to a
resolution the tenant actually agreed to.
DIAGNOSIS 02
Consent
PROBLEM
Deduction amounts could be proposed by the owner.
Nothing in the flow required the tenant to agree before the case closed.
ROOT CAUSE · WHY #3
Unconfirmed deduction isn't resolved — it's delayed distrust.
SOLUTION
Case only closes on explicit tenant Accept.
It surfaces later as distrust or an offline argument otherwise.
PROOF IN PRODUCT
One proposal, two honest outcomes
The owner submits a deduction breakdown. The tenant sees the numbers and has to make an active choice — the product no longer treats silence as agreement.
STEP 1
Move Out Details
Move Out date
02/10/2026
Reason For Move Out
Maintenance Required.
Offer Deposit Refund
Yes
Amount Details Offered By owner.
Deposit Amount
Deduction Amount
Final Amount
$2000
Deductions Details
Type a message...
0/100
In progress
Contact Owner
Accept
Please confirm whether you wish to accept the deposit amount offered by the owner.
Move Out Management
✓ ACCEPT
Move Out Details
Move Out date
02/10/2026
Reason For Move Out
Maintenance Required.
Offer Deposit Refund
No
Completed
Move Out Management
! DISPUTE
Move Out Details
Move Out date
02/10/2026
Reason For Move Out
Maintenance Required.
Offer Deposit Refund
No
Disputed
Move Out Management
Review proposal
Tenant accepts
Tenant disputes
REAL SCREENS
Every screen, live in Figma
There are more finished screens here than make sense to paste in one by one — so instead of a wall
of static images, each app area below links straight into the actual file, fully interactive.
Mobile
4 APPS
Tenant App
Search, applications, rented properties, payment management and consent — the full renter-side experience.
OPEN IN FIGMA
Owner Mobile App
Property management, tenant management,subscriptions, and communication, on mobile.
OPEN IN FIGMA
Service Provider App
The flow for third-party service providers handling
maintenance and repair requests.
OPEN IN FIGMA
Service Taker App
The requesting side of the same maintenance flow, from the tenant or owner's view.
OPEN IN FIGMA
Web
2 APPS
Rental Web App
The desktop counterpart of the tenant experience — search,
applications, and account.
OPEN IN FIGMA
Owner Web Portal
The full desktop dashboard for owners managing multiple
properties and tenants.
OPEN IN FIGMA
10
View more projects
GET IN TOUCH
03
RESEARCH
Grounding the problem
before designing the answer
Formal usability testing came later; early direction was shaped by structured product thinking — mapping needs against constraints,then a competitive scan to find where the market's incumbents were leaving trust on the table.
USER NEEDS
Proof, not promises — for
identity, money, and
agreements.
BUSINESS NEEDS
Low support load, high
subscription retention,
defensible trust as a moat.
TECHNICAL CONSTRAINTS
Third-party ID/credit/background
checks, multi-currency ledgers, document storage.
OPPORTUNITIES
No mainstream competitor
makes consent and money
movement this explicit.
COMPETITIVE ANALYSIS
AIRBNB
Verified-badge host
identity
ZILLOW
Map-first listing
discovery
AVAIL
Built-in lease &
document tooling
BUILDIUM
Full-depth portfolio
accounting
APARTMENTS.COM
High-volume search
reach
Represented as icons rather than screenshots — these summarise each platform's most-cited standout feature rather than reproducing their actual UI.
PLATFORM
DOES WELL
FALLS SHORT
OUR OPPORTUNITY
Airbnb
Trust signals, reviews, host
verification.
Not built for long-term leases or
deposits.
Bring review-grade trust to
long-term renting.
Zillow
Discovery, listing reach
Handoff to owner is informal
after contact
Own the relationship past the first
message
Avail
Lease and document tooling for
owners
Tenant side feels like an
afterthought
Design both sides as first-class
experiences
Buildium
Deep property management
features
Built for professional managers,
not small owners
Same rigor, approachable for a one-
property owner
Apartments.com
Search and listing volume
Payments and disputes happen
outside the app
Keep the whole lifecycle in one
ledger
Design goals
Six goals the product had to earn,
not claim
04
Design goals
Six goals the product had to earn,
not claim
04
05
PERSONAS
Designing for three people
who rarely agree
Tenant
Meera, the tenant
28 · first apartment on her own ·
budget-conscious
GOALS
•
Find a place fast
•
Get her deposit back in full
PAIN POINTS
•
Re-verifying for every listing
•
No record of move-in condition
NEEDS
•
One verification, many applications
•
Proof for every payment
BEHAVIOURS
•
Applies to 4–5 places at once
•
Reads reviews before anything else
Owner
Daniel, the owner
45 · owns 3 units · not a full-time
landlord
GOALS
•
Fill vacancies with reliable tenants
•
Spend under an hour a week
managing
PAIN POINTS
•
Screening feels like guesswork
•
Chasing late rent manually
NEEDS
•
Standardized, comparable applicant
checks
•
Automatic rent and renewal
reminders
MOTIVATIONS
•
Protect the property
•
Minimize time spent, not just income
Admin
Priya, the admin
internal ops · reviews ~40 cases
a day
GOALS
•
Clear the queue without missing
fraud
•
Resolve disputes fairly and fast
PAIN POINTS
•
Evidence for disputes is inconsistent
•
No single view of a flagged account
NEEDS
•
Structured, comparable case data
•
Auditable decision history
BEHAVIOURS
•
Triages by risk, not by arrival time
•
Escalates ambiguous cases
INFORMATION ARCHITECTURE
Designing for four people
who rarely agree
06
Platform
Public
Tenant
Home
Search
Request move out
Wallet
Payments
Documents
Consent
Verification
Profile
Owner
Dashboard
Properties
Wallet
Lease
Documents
Reports
Tenants
Verification
SSN verification
Handyman
Dashboard
Job requests
Wallet
Schedule
Messages
Documents
Verification
Reviews
Admin
Dashboard
Users
Verification
Disputes
Reports
Analytics
Listings
Move Out flow
WIREFRAMES
From notebook to
navigable structure
Before any screen was styled, every flow was worked out by hand — tenant, owner, the shared public app, and admin — so the structure was settled before a single pixel of visual design happened. Shown here exactly as sketched.
TENANT
Tenant App Flow
Home, rented property, search, payments, application management, and profile — mapped out screen by screen, including the identity, income, and background verification steps required to apply.
Owner
Owner App Flow
Subscription and verification at the door, then property management, tenant management, and communication — including the full onboarding sequence from verification to a live subscription plan.
Admin
Admin Flow
User management, application review, property moderation, payment and dispute management, communication oversight, and monthly reporting — the internal ops layer that keeps the marketplace honest.
07
Key Challenges
One wallet, up to two
currencies at once
Only Providers pass the background verification tied to real money movement —
so only Provider-to-Provider referrals could ever be safely paid out in cash.
Everyone else earns coins, spendable only inside the app. The hard part: one
account can hold every role, and people switch which one they're using constantly.
!
The constraint: a referral's reward type is decided once — by whichever profile was active the moment it was earned — and it never changes after that. Switching roles later changes what you can earn next, not what you already earned.
08
HOW A SINGLE REFERRAL GETS TYPED
Every referral runs through the same check at the moment it's earned. The outcome isstamped onto that referral permanently — nothing downstream re-evaluates it.
WHY ROLE-AT-SWITCH ISN'T ENOUGH
The type only reflects the moment of earning — not the account's current state, and not something the payout job re-checks later.
SITUATION
WHAT'S EARNED
LOCKED AS
Referral sent while active profile is Provider, to another
verified Provider
Real-money reward, backed by both parties' background verification
Cash
Referral sent while active profile is Tenant or Owner, or a
Provider refers a non-Provider
In-app credit, redeemable only toward
bookings
Coins
User later switches roles, or adds a new verified role
Nothing retroactive — past rewards keep
their original type
Unchanged
HOW THE USER ACTUALLY EXPERIENCES IT
Four real screens from the flow — switching into Provider, sending the referral, seeing itland in the wallet, and the plain-language explainer shown before a user's first referral.
Handyman-to-handyman referrals pay cash. Every other referral pays into an in-app wallet,spendable only on the platform. The two-track payout is what makes the timing of a profile switch matter at all — see Decision 03 for how the four real scenarios resolve.
+
OPERATIONS · MULTI-ROLE · TRUST SYSTEMS
Haven
a trust-first rental
platform
A two-sided marketplace where tenants and owners can verify each
other, move money, and resolve disagreements — without either side having to take the other's word for it.
TIMELINE
6 months
ROLE
Product Designer, 0→1
RESPONSIBILITIES
Research, IA, flows, UI, design system
TOOLS
Figma, FigJam
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