Increasing onboarding completion rate with 40%
user research
usability testing
ux strategy
UI design
onboarding
Saas
developer tools
Summary
Goals and challenges
Designing an onboarding flow that is useful for two types of users with conflicting needs
Increasing efficiency and decreasing the complexity of implementing an auth solution
Results
An onboarding flow that increased the implementation of an auth solution from days to minutes
Increased the completion rate of the onboarding drastically
My role
User research
UX strategy
UX/UI design
Usability testing
Learning
This project highlighted the importance of understanding the unique perspectives and needs of different stakeholders, such as product managers and developers. Their prior knowledge and goals often differ, leading to distinct requirements. During the research phase, keeping insights separated by stakeholder group allowed us to account for these differences effectively when drawing conclusions
For example, developers needed a way to quickly explore deeper product functionalities without fully completing the onboarding process. A simple solution, like adding a "skip" button, provided them with the flexibility they required while maintaining the onboarding flow for other user groups.
This experience emphasized the value of tailoring solutions to diverse user needs, ensuring that the product is both functional and efficient for everyone involved.
Feedback
“Although a lack of experience required me to go back and forth in the process, this onboarding would highly improve efficiency and, moreover, the collaboration between me and developers.” - Product manager
Affinidi’s Auth Solution
Passwordless authentication solutions and user management systems are essential for service developers, manage accounts and user data and enabling users to log in. This feature is an essential part of Affinidi’s mission to provide tools that build safe and privacy preserving apps.
Building this part is often time-consuming and requires technical knowledge. Affinidi aims to increase efficiency, and clarifies the process. In order to achieve this, we deconstructed the technical requirements and designed an onboarding that guides service developers through the implementation, tailored to their requirements, in a matter of a couple steps.
Challenge
Two different users have conflicting needs: the product manager with less prior knowledge would like to learn and experiment more to understand how it works and what they need specifically for their project, whereas an experienced developer knows what they need upfront, and is more interested in the advanced functionality of the product before they devote their time. The challenge is to find the right balance between the two users, so that it is still useful for both backgrounds, through understanding their individual needs.
Hypothesis
By providing a tailored onboarding flow that deconstructs technical requirements into comprehensible steps, we can enable both developers and non-developers to effectively implement authentication solutions, thus reducing the complexity and time required for implementation.
Approach
We conducted benchmarks, interviewed both developers and product managers, and performed usability tests on early-stage prototypes. This helped us translate complex technical concepts of authentication solutions into comprehensible steps and guide users logically through the onboarding process.
Design brief
In close collaboration with experts, users, and the development team, we deconstructed technical requirements and translated them into a design brief. My role involved benchmarking similar solutions to identify best practices for onboarding flows, focusing on commonly used taxonomy and features to enhance user experience.
I benchmarked eight onboarding flows from direct and indirect competitors. Auth0’s flow stood out for its:
Clear explanation of the value proposition.
Deconstruction of technical requirements into comprehensible steps.
Logical description and illustration of each step.
Providing both a visual representation of the login box, alternated by the actual code on the side, which was notably insightful during setup.
User flow
Based on insights from experts, stakeholders, and benchmarking, we scoped down the project to an envisioned user flow with several setup options.
From low to high fideltiy
Sketching screens from the flow helped me better understand concepts, visual representation, and possibilities. Using our design system, we skipped mid-fi wireframes and directly designed hi-fi mock-ups.
Hi-fi designs
We designed screens for each step in the onboarding using mostly existing components, keeping a backlog of components that might need to be added in future implementations.
Prototyping and user testing
We defined hypotheses to test, focusing on users’ background knowledge and the appeal of our solution. We tested our hypothesis with eight participants, using a clickable prototype and a predefined interview guide.
Results
We found out that developers usually have more prior knowledge regarding the technicalities. They are drawn to using tools that increase the efficiency of their workflow. However, before walking through a whole onboarding, they would like to know more about the technical functionality of the service which allows them to tweak the code to their preferences. Advanced developers were eager to explore the dashboard and learn about the more advanced functionalities of the service. This resulted in adding a “skip onboarding” button and allowing users to continue the onboarding from the dashboard.
“The promise of a complete authentication and user management solutions in a couple lines of code sounds too good to be true. I’m suspicious that the service lacks controls, so most likely, I won’t finish the onboarding before I know what I can expect.” - Developer
Product Managers and less experienced developers, however, tend to complete the onboarding. Although they seem to struggle when they were not sure, the onboarding process enabled them to achieve their goals through trial and error more easily. Moreover, it gives them valuable knowledge about the requirements of implementing authentication and user management solutions, supporting collaboration between roles in service development.
“The onboarding deconstructs the concepts of authentication and user management solutions. As a Product Manager, this is valuable because it enables me to understand developers better and take off workload from the developers.” - Product Manager
PM’s are eager to use tools that allow them to quickly prototype parts of their service to make it tangible and learn from it, without utilizing valuable time from developers.
Conclusions and next steps
Conducting early stage usability tests with prototypes helped us to add the skip button, and might be an essential feature for a large group of users to complete the onboarding. In order to increase the completion rate, more insights about how these users think and act will help to make the onboarding more meaningful. For instance, as finishing the actual onboarding is a business goal to drive use in a later stage, developers tend to skip the onboarding which possibly results in dropping out in a later stage. Hence, for the following steps of the research and design, we like to test the assumption is that by summarising the advanced features developers generally need from an auth solution during the onboarding, motivates them to finish.