Rocket / 2026 / AI image generation, experimentation, and delight
Experimenting with AI to bring delight to millions
At Rocket, one of our biggest goals is keeping our clients engaged to create repeat business. One way we're exploring to accomplish this is by creating more emotional attachment and investment to our product and brand. This project outlines ongoing experimentation with AI to visualize all of our client's homes in a fun way to serve as an in-product avatar, a celebratory token, and also a dynamic content window of delight to bring our product experience to life.
After joining the team, I was asked to further explore a recent hack week project called "home emoji."
The idea was that using listing photos of each mortgage client's home (via our Redfin acquisition), we would use AI to generate a cute, fun little image to serve as an avatar of their home on their dashboard. This idea was still in it's infancy and more of a creative side project for our team.
Finding ways to create connection and joy
While our product is well designed, works well, and has a modern UI, it is mostly thought of as a necessity or a just a tool to do the basics like financial tracking, payments, documents, etc. We wanted to change that.
Exploring without boundaries
My goal when taking over this project was to push it as far as possible visually and creatively, and begin working as if anything was possible. I didn't want to limit myself creatively until I had to.
I wanted to change the initial art direction and started to explore more vibrant 3D illustration styles and the possibilities of generative art tools.
I evaluated what had been done so far. The image was generated via chat GPT and was fairly basic in illustration style.
I had recently seen Air BNBs new illustrations and art direction and really liked the 3D icons and mini isometric style of illustrations. This inspired me to get familiar with AI image generation tools and see what I could create.
Ideations on product UI
I also started to play with a creation flow and how this could be generated and placed somewhere in our product. Most ideations were around creating a home emoji to greet you after closing your loan, similar to creating an avatar in a video game.
Experimenting with prompts
As someone with no prior experience with image generation, this was a new skill to build for me. I started with the simplest possible prompts to see what they yielded, then began a trial-and-error process to see what consistently generated images closer to what I was envisioning.
Good style references were key to consistency
The ultimate goal of the effort was to create an output for millions of homes that was as predicable and consistent as possible. I learned that creating a "set" of images to be used as style references with the prompt could make this possible.
Nano Banana's image generation model blew away other tools and unlocked new possibilities for home emoji.
AI image generation tools like Midjourney, Chat GPT, and Flux Kontext all produced very different results with the same prompt. I started to hone in a style that I liked that was bubbly and fun and that captured the essence of a house.
Accurate, lifelike renders did not feel attainable at first
The initial goal was to create a visual style that was generic enough that it captured the spirit of a home, but not too lifelike because I did not believe that we would be able to generate super accurate renderings of homes at scale with AI.
Nano Banana showed that renders were within reach
The incredible accuracy of this model blew me away when I began experimenting with it. The attention to detail generated in each image proved my initial theory wrong, and that home emojis could mirror details of real homes in a way that other models couldn't. When trained with stylized references, it provided the perfect image that felt accurate, but carrying a fun, whimsical illustration style.
I built a pitch deck to get leadership buy-in. I wanted to show the potential value and real-world applications of a home emoji for each user.
To bring people onboard with what I was crafting, I put together a vision deck that showed the progress and the vision of what a home emoji could be. This required thinking through real world applications of how a home emoji could be helpful in our product, as well as show what is possible with the style.
More than an image - a "window of engagement"
The vision for home emoji was more than just a cute little static image. It gives the potential of bringing the product to life to engage our customers in a variety of ways through animation and dynamic content specific to each user. An engaged client is one that is likely to do repeat business with us for following mortgages or loans.
Creating fun sharable content
Home emoji provided opportunities like creating graphics or animations of our users' emojis to share on social media to celebrate big moments in their mortgage journey.
Engagement after buying a home
This also gave us ways to engage with our clients beyond required actions in mortgage servicing. We could provide helpful seasonal content and update the content window throughout the year with different animations.
"I'm smiling right now"
Prototyping the creation flow validated our assumptions with real users. They loved seeing a mini model of their home and remarked that it made them happy.
With the help of our design technology team, we put together a functional prototype of creating a home emoji in our mobile experience. Users entered their real address in a focused flow to simulate opening their mortgage experience, and a home emoji was generated from the publicly available listing photos of their home.
Foreshadowing through empty and loading states
I wanted to hint at what users would receive when starting the home emoji creation flow. I created an empty state image and loading animation that resembled the final deliverable of a home emoji as visual cues to show what they could expect by going through this flow. This would ideally make them less hesitant at the start of the process.
Testers loved seeing their mini 3D home.
The sentiment was overwhelmingly positive, users remarked how surprised they were to see such an accurate model of their home, and how it made them feel:
9 of 10 testers agreed or strongly agreed that the custom home emoji increased the visual appeal of the page and made them smile.
Experimentation is ongoing as the idea continues to take shape and technical details are tested.
What started as a fun side project has continued to build momentum with executive buy-in and excitement. Months of experimentation have, at minimum, inspired our product and design team to think beyond utility in our product and more about creativity and crafting an enjoyable experience.
Prototyping and testing continue
We continue to test different versions and flows to find the best fit for a home emoji in our product. We also are continuing to explore the generation cost and operational details for doing this at a scale of millions of users.
My AI skills have improved exponentially throughout the experiment
I started this project with no knowledge or experience of image generation or practical application of something like this in a product. But I have grown quite comfortable in the world of prompting and using AI to think outside of the typical product box when it comes to features and user engagement. The opportunities are endless when thinking about what customized, dynamic imagery and animation can bring to consumer experiences.
I'm excited to keep this rolling and will update here as I go!