DPA One™ by Freddie Mac

RKS Design began with a multi-week design sprint that integrated research and collaboration from day one. Through in-depth interviews with stakeholders, including state and local housing authorities, loan officers, and Freddie Mac leaders, we uncovered key pain points, workflow challenges, and emotional barriers to adoption. Applying our Psycho-Aesthetics® methodology, we transformed these insights into personas, user journeys, and experience goals that directly shaped the sprint-based prototyping process and the foundational UX strategy for DPA One.

Although DPA One is a digital platform, we approached it the same way we would physical product design. Our goal was to create an interface that not only worked, but felt trustworthy, clear, and intuitive to users with widely varying levels of technical comfort. To do this, we began with holistic experience mapping rooted in real user journeys. We charted every interaction point across the lifecycle of a DPA program, from initial data entry to lender updates. These maps served as the blueprint for the platform’s architecture, informing everything from dashboard layout and data validation flows to contextual alerts and navigation logic.

Over the course of six design sprints, we translated our research insights into a robust, intuitive, and emotionally resonant user interface. Our UX strategy was rooted in clearly defined user roles, DPA providers, lenders, and internal admins, each with distinct needs, workflows, and technical comfort levels. We crafted experiences that simplified dense data tasks, reduced errors, and made every interaction feel purposeful and human-centered. Features like tabular data entry, revision tracking, and drag-and-drop document uploads were designed not just for efficiency, but to instill confidence in users managing critical housing programs. Frequent usability testing with real stakeholders helped us refine flows and validate design decisions in real-time, ensuring the final interface struck a balance between simplicity, flexibility, and precision.

User feedback was central to shaping DPA One. Throughout development, we conducted structured testing sessions with housing professionals from across the country, including state HFAs, municipal program managers, and nonprofit partners in Texas, Virginia, and Minnesota. Each participant interacted with early prototypes, completing tasks and offering feedback on usability, clarity, and alignment with their day-to-day responsibilities. We tested three distinct design concepts across multiple user personas to identify the most intuitive, error-resistant experience. From there, we refined key workflows, like program entry, approval, and dashboard navigation, based on what real users found easiest and most trustworthy.

DPA One™ is launched and live, actively used by over 9,000 professionals and more than 500 housing organizations across the United States. It’s the first digital platform of its kind to consolidate more than 400 down payment assistance programs into one centralized system, helping democratize access to homeownership nationwide.

DPA One is transforming how the housing ecosystem operates. By eliminating the fragmentation and confusion that once defined down payment assistance, it reduces program entry time by over 50%, increases the accuracy of program submissions, and simplifies compliance for lenders and housing providers alike. More importantly, the platform is closing gaps in access, supporting low- to moderate-income families and underserved communities in building generational wealth through homeownership. It has become a mission-driven product with measurable social and economic value.