The new user challenge: 5 seconds to wow them; 5 minutes to get them invested.

The New user challenge: 5 seconds to wow them; 5 minutes to get them invested.

Project Details

My Role

Lead Designer

Results

Creating the onboarding and home experience to meet success metrics laid the foundation for the Product Insights team to be able to conceptualize all of the other parts--navigation, reports, settings, etc.
so that it would be ready for public preview stage when
company gets feedback from the community to improve it before it becomes generally available.

After the redesign users had multiple ways of interacting with the product even if were able to new onboarding experience that encouraged users to start interacting with the product iimmediately, using elements of designin for learners

The challenge

How do we quickly demonstrate the value of Product Insights and streamline the activation process for users?

Background

Product Insights is a new product in the Dynamics suite of tools. It’s an app for organizations who want to collect multiple sources of user data from their web and mobile products in order to understand their customer usage better, get actionable insights and make smart, data-driven decisions across channels. Comparable products are Google Analytics and Adobe Analytics. 

Stakeholder feedback on current design

The initial pass at an onboarding workflow done by a different designer, did not pass at the monthly business review from the GM of Dynamics 365 team. After stepping through 5 screens the user would end up on an empty state of the screen with nothing left to do.
The feedback also noted that it was not hitting the 5x5 mark because the get started path took too long and required too much manual work on the users part for the user to be able to quickly be invested in the product.

UX Research

Initial research looked at the main questions analysts wanted to answer and
What is happening now?
Are we on track with our business goals?
Where are customers encountering problems with our website/app/service?Where should we spend our resources?
Analytics tools are not the end of the journey
Web analytics provide a piece of a larger puzzle;
not the entire solution

Competitor research and analysis

New to the domain, I studied the marketplace and took a critical look at our closest competitors in terms of their strengths and weaknesses, how they are marketed, sentimental analysis, use of artificial intelligence and our strategic advantages.

User scenario writing workshop

The Product Insights Research team had developed 2 provisional personas. Based on that study and the product strategy, I wrote several user scenarios and held a scenario writing workshop with the design team who were eager to do participate in this previously overlooked phase of the design process.

Review onboard best practices

There are many good resources out there that talk about how to onboard users. For example Sam Hulick has lots of interesting insights, which I have drawn from over the years. I also use my knowledge about active learning to get users engaged with the onboarding process right away. These are my top 3 design principles for onboarding new users.

  • Be clear about the value proposition right up front.
  • Give quick wins to get the user invested.
  • Be streamlined, with small achievable steps.

My problem solving process

Process

My design process

P

Problem
No immediate value proposition

Users had to walk through 7 separate screens before they could get to the product, because the design required them to enter a lot of information, doing work.

Then, the payoff for their at the end was not there

S

Solution
Make value prop clear and immediate

Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit

P

Problem
Too much friction getting onboarded

No immediate value proposition

S

Solution
Simple, fast, frictionless

Reduce number of screens from 7  to 4.
Don't require users to do meaningless work.
Only simple button clicks required.
The payoff is a

P

Problem
Empty state missed opportunity

There is nothing for the user to do because their has not been connected to the product yet.

They've given us all of the information we asked for and they still don't get to experience the value of the product.

S

Solution
Quick wins and engaging interactions

The demo content tells a story that our persona cares about. It's relevant and meaningful.

The user can interact with the content and get immediate feedback.

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Using active learning techniques
to engage new users

Active learning at its most basic level means getting your students involved in activities rather than just passively listening. Psychology and brain science show that when people are excited it activates their brain. And when the brain is activated, it learns better. This theory applies to new users also, who are in the process of learning a new interface.
For Product Insights I wanted to stimulate users by prompting them with questions that reflect the problems they need to solve, telling a story that reflects their goals and offering multiple ways to get that information - another learning design technique.

Rather than taking the usual Microsoft tour approach, which points out the way different features work, in a robotic way. I wanted to present a personalized tour which focused on the topics users cared about.

Final Design

SHow it here

Impact and Result

QUOTE about this looking amazing and being ahead of the other team