Redesigning the onboarding experience for an early-stage startup.
As the final project for a design class I took in college, I designed WaveForm, an accessible podcast player for hard-of-hearing individuals. With live captions, transcripts, and fine-tuned audio adjustments, listeners can tailor their experience to their unique needs.
Background
A promising product.
Lucidata offers quick and accurate personality tests to help companies and career consultants to build better teams. Think Myers-Briggs and CliftonStrengths, but faster and more applicable to the workplace.
Lucidata has two groups of users: the “testers” who take the assessments and gain insights, and the “advisors” who purchase and administer the tests, like HR reps and career consultants.
Problem
Lucidata’s growth was stalling because users were treating it as a one-and-done service.
Testers weren’t utilizing all of Lucidata’s offerings, even with the time they were investing in taking the assessment.
Additionally, testers would lose their results if they didn't set a password after completing the assessment. This forced advisors to re-administer the assessments, wasting resources and reducing retention.
This led us to ask: how might we eliminate pain points in the onboarding experience?
Research
I conducted think-aloud interviews with actual testers and advisors.
I asked in-depth questions about their experiences with Lucidata versus competitors. I then had them think aloud as they progressed through the assessment and subsequent onboarding process.
I used affinity mapping to find trends in the qualitative data, looking at customer perceptions and pain points.
Below are the highlights from my research.
“Do I have to make an account to see my results? Why am I doing this?”
Testers are prompted to set a password after completing the assessment. But there was no context.
All participants were confused about why they needed to set a password. One participant was even tempted to exit without finishing the setup.
"Unless I clicked into each one, I wouldn't know what each report is or what it contains."
There were no descriptions for the reports on the dashboard. Most participants were confused about the purpose of having multiple reports.
When prompted to find a certain result, only 1 in 4 participants accessed the right report on the first try.
The problems continued on the backend of the site with advisors.
"When that happened, it made me pause a little, and my confidence level dropped."
"Right now, I'd have to go through each client's report and parse the data myself."
Lucidata's system had no workaround for testers forgetting to (or choosing not to) set a password.
If this happened, their reports were lost, and the advisors were unable to restore them.
This led to a loss of confidence in the service.
Constraints
Then, I hit a roadblock.
During my research, internal stakeholders realized that improving the workflow for advisors wasn't financially feasible due to limitations with the site's backend structure.
So, I focused on improving the tester's experience in a way that would prevent common issues arising for advisors downstream.
Ideating + Wireframing
With everything I discovered through research and conversations with the team, I laid out 4 key design objectives.
Evoke a sense of trust.
Incorporate context and CTAs at critical conversion points to keep users informed.
Highlight the content.
Eliminate obstacles between users and Lucidata's diverse content offerings.
Make it responsive.
Develop a cohesive and accessible component library for seamless adaptation to mobile screens.
Make it feasible.
Preserve the core structure of the dashboard to expedite the implementation of the new design.
Guided by those objectives, I created some wireframes in Whimsical, where I started building out solutions for the core issues found in my research with testers.
Prototyping
After feedback from stakeholders, I combined solutions from my wireframes with the styles and structure of the current site to create a working prototype.
Feedback
I presented the prototype and gathered valuable feedback from stakeholders.
Due to low adoption by advisors, Lucidata’s stakeholders decided to remove and rework the "Anicon" assessment, leaving an large, empty space at the top of the dashboard where a user's Anicon was displayed.
They also wanted to explore fluid animations for the dashboard's dropdowns, so I explored using nested auto-layout components to achieve a more realistic prototype.
Revised Prototype
With the revised prototype, Lucidata's onboarding provides testers with a clean and contextualized interface, while respecting the limitations of the site's structure.
Takeaways
Informal testing showed a positive shift in users successfully completing the onboarding process.
I handed off the design to Lucidata's stakeholders. Unfortunately, implementation was put on hold due to the startup's shifting priorities.
If I’d had more time and resources, I would’ve conducted further testing with a larger sample size to validate my initial testing.
Regardless, this was a fascinating project, especially given my education in cognitive science. Throughout the process, I found value in:
Understanding and embracing limitations.
When encountering constraints, I pivoted toward effective design solutions.
Being relentlessly resourceful.
I researched and applied techniques that were new to me in order to create a realistic, feasible prototype.
Prioritizing simplicity.
I preserved the core structure of the site with simple solutions to ease future implementation.