Overview
Bluescape is a whiteboard, visual collaboration startup that provides a platform for users to collaboratively innovate, generate, and refine ideas within a visual workspace.
Role
Product Designer 2021-2023
I oversaw the entire project lifecycle, including
competitive analyses, user interviews, and
facilitating user tests, resulting in enhanced UX/UI
and improved business results. Insights gathered
through close collaboration with researchers,
developers, and PMs continuously guided my design
concepts, wireframes, prototypes, and final designs.
Objective
To effectively facilitate first-time users’ onboarding process while minimizing learning curves.
Results
By implementing dedicated and ongoing improvements, we not only successfully launched an onboarding experience but also consistently refined it to achieve higher satisfaction rates while doubling user retention and increasing conversion rates by 25%.
Discover
Research
Based on our product evaluations and user feedback, we learned that new users were experiencing low confidence levels during the initial stages of the onboarding process.
Observations
No onboarding user experience
Users landed on an empty workspace and no clear indication of what to do next.
Negative first impression
The infinite, dark background added to a perception of difficulty and unintuitiveness.
“The black background is offputting to folks, it adds to the feeling of vastness”
To kick off the onboarding planning process, I teamed up with internal stakeholders such as product managers, designers, researchers, and developers to develop a customer journey map.
This served as a foundation for creating three lean personas that represented different types of Bluescape users based on their roles, goals, and preferences.
Hypothesis
We hypothesized that it was essential to reduce the learning curve for first-time users. By implementing targeted solutions catered to 3 user profiles, we believed we could achieve our goal of improving retention rates among new users.
Explorations
I generated a series of exploratory designs that prioritized user-friendliness and ease of use.
Deliver
Due to time and cost constraints, we opted for a goal-oriented, guided onboarding entailing an intuitive Welcome screen and a “Learn the Basics” tutorial over an interactive tour.
Onboarding user flow
I crafted subtle hints that provided guidance for less familiar user interactions.
Wireframes
Welcome screen
Learn
The first iteration of our onboarding experience was an extensive project that significantly enhanced users’ initial impressions of Bluescape.
However, our research revealed a critical need to help users discover the true value of Bluescape’s key features in order to promote long-term engagement and retention.
In order to address this matter, I drove the creation of an intuitive interactive tour that replaced subtle hints. This solution received positive feedback from our users.
Interactive tour
Continously test and optimize
Based on our data analysis, we discovered that users who engaged in collaborative activities displayed higher retention rates and more efficient conversion.
Our qualitative research further revealed that 25% of the user base favored immediate collaboration, while others preferred to begin with a pre-defined template or explore independently.
In order to confirm our findings, we conducted an A/B test on the welcome screen. The results confirmed that users prefer starting with a blank canvas or a template but most importantly, adding the ability to collaborate right away resulted in higher user engagement and retention.
Results
Users praised the onboarding improvements, citing greater guidance and a refined overall experience. Incorporating essential features such as the interactive tour and refined personalized product selections resulted in heightened user engagement, doubling user retention and increasing conversion rates by 25%.
Research led to significant improvements in user engagement through personalized product selections, complemented by the incorporation of an image of a person on the welcome screen.