Own Up helps homebuyers navigate enormous financial decisions by helping them choose the best mortgage. Thus, the team knows first-hand how important it is for their product to build trust and for users to feel fully informed.
As the growing team worked on the Own Up application — complex flows with interdependent copy based on the user’s qualifiers and refinancing options — they realized how important it was to both operate efficiently and get it right.
Their existing workflow of copying and pasting edits from spreadsheets and documents to Figma, across duplicate text and different versions in Figma, and then to development was both error-prone and time-intensive. Designers spent hours each day chasing down and implementing the latest copy, and developers were encountering incorrect copy, inconsistencies, and spelling mistakes in the mockups.
For the Own Up team, a copy mistake meant more than wasted time — it had important user-facing consequences. As content designer Sam Wilder describes,
“The biggest pain point is communicating the wrong expectations and then not being able to deliver on those expectations. It affects our bottom line, it affects our revenue, it affects all of our success metrics — and those are big shoes to fill. We segment our copy based on the timeline, and if it’s incorrect, then we run the risk of giving the wrong type of advice to somebody that should not receive it, providing the wrong timeline or the wrong mindset.”
The Own Up team brought in Ditto to manage the team’s product text. Since bringing Ditto into their workflows, they’ve seen an elimination of copy inconsistencies, hours of designer time saved each day, smoother developer handoff, and organization of their copy as it evolves over time.
For designers at Own Up, bringing on Ditto has meant saving hours of time each day.
Ditto allows Own Up’s designers to easily import their designs to Ditto, allow writers to manage and update the copy, and then update design files with the latest text — with just one click. Sam elaborates,
“It saves the design team hours each day because they don’t have to change individual instances many, many times. They can really design different explorations, knowing that no matter what the final version is, writers are able to change the copy and it will reflect in the final version. It’s music to their ears that in 10 minutes or less, [Ditto] can connect all of those instances of text, apply all of the copy changes, and it just changes the file across the board — it’s 100% a game changer.”
With Ditto’s components and sync with Figma, designers no longer have to copy and paste text changes over and over, across numerous frames and files. Ditto also eliminates the design overhead required to consistently check mockups to confirm the text progress and completion.
Using Ditto, product designers get more time back to iterate on designs — instead of painstakingly chasing down the latest version of text. They no longer have to worry that content designers won’t have the latest version of the design files. After implementing Ditto in their workflows, the team has eliminated misalignment, as both product designers and content designers are working from a shared source of content truth.
An important part of the Own Up team’s design process is gathering feedback from multiple perspectives from an early stage, whether it’s from legal, product, or design.
A key component of incorporating feedback was the ability for Ditto to serve as a history for the product copy even as it evolved. Text could start being written and iterated on without having to depend on a bottleneck of mockups being created first. Using notes and tags, the team could keep track of contextual information — from timelines to feedback — and use it to iterate better. The team describes,
“Ditto actually lends itself to be a history behind where we were and where we are now — and that's a lot easier of a story to deliver to stakeholders on how decisions were made. Without it, things get lost in Figma files and documents, and there isn’t an ability to see how it evolves over time.”
As a startup, it’s important to Own Up to operate quickly to deliver value to their customers. This meant evaluating their existing workflows to ensure everyone from designers to engineers were making the most of their bandwidth, and making sure that speed didn’t come at the cost of quality, even at scale.
Prior to Ditto, engineers on the team described frequently spending time circling back on copy mistakes, whether to fix a grammatical mistake or identify correct wording. Each time they spotted an inconsistency, they had to spend time tracking down the correct text. Since using Ditto, developers on the team have both noticed fewer mistakes and less time spent implementing text. Jessica Yi, engineer on the team, elaborates,
“Developers now actually have the ability to see the source of truth and follow it, without any type of disruption or confusion."
Ditto has also helped Own Up eliminate misalignment and ensure that both designers and content designers have access to the latest version of the design files.
The Own Up team describes Ditto as a “game-changer,” streamlining their product text management and helping them build trust with their users. By eliminating copy inconsistencies, saving designer time, and minimizing mistakes and inconsistencies, Ditto has helped Own Up focus on what they do best — providing a top-quality mortgage experience for their users.
