discovery

We started by conducting a thorough competitive analysis to inform our redesign of Yahoo Mail's onboarding experience. This involved examining the onboarding processes of other platforms, identifying areas where our platform was lacking, and learning about best practices in onboarding. Our goal at this stage was to understand what was missing from our own experience and establish a baseline for what our experiment needed to achieve. Doing this allowed us to gather valuable data that informed the design requirements for the project.

initial designs

Based on our background research, we established that in order for the new onboarding experience to feel valuable, it needed to solve two key problems:

• Help people quickly personalize their inbox
• Convince them to perform key tasks that would set them up to use their new email more effectively

For the second problem, we evaluated what key tasks correlated with user retention. We found that users were more likely to return to their email account if they received new emails within the first week of opening that account. Two key actions that correlate with receiving new emails included adding another email account and importing contacts. On top of this, enabling notifications would ensure that users did not miss the new emails they received. Finally, we knew from anecdotal research that personalization is an important driver for user retention.

Based on these insights, we arrived at two major design decisions. A one-time personalization flow when the user first signs up and sticky onboarding flow with the identified core tasks for user retention.

Early user testing and learnings

After establishing a baseline for our new onboarding experience, we decided to test early designs with users. We wanted to validate design decisions as well as observe user response generally to a new experience. The tests were conducted with mid-fidelity prototypes in unmoderated user sessions. We asked the participants to walkthrough the onboarding steps and provide feedback at different points in the experience.

Additionally, the team had hypothesized that an incentive such as an ad-free experience would be significant enough to motivate users to complete all the steps in the onboarding experience. We tested this hypothesis with our users.

Participants responded positively to the one-time and sticky onboarding tasks. The top feedback we received was that while it remained a "nice-to-have" option, it did provide a quick and easy way to personalize their inbox. Some participants were more engaged than others based on the reason they identified for creating the new account.  The incentive portion of the experience was unsuccessful - participants did not find the benefit provided sufficient enough to convince them into completing all steps

design iterations

We took the findings from our research into consideration and redesigned the experience to focus more on the benefits of personalization. I also worked with a content designer to better frame the copy in the flow. Additionally, I iterated on the existing visual designs to feel more integrated into the existing design of our inbox. Doing this required a balance of modernizing certain elements within our design system without creating a drastically different experience from our baseline designs.

learnings and outcomes

• Time Constraints: The project was a growth initiative for the team, requiring rapid design iteration and implementation. The timeline of two months (one month for design, one month for development) necessitated efficient project management and prioritization of tasks.
• Engineering Limitations: As the project progressed, engineering limitations emerged that impacted the feasibility of certain design features. Close collaboration between design and engineering teams was required to address these constraints while maintaining the integrity of the user experience.
• Iterative Process: The iterative nature of the design process meant that the scope of the project evolved over time based on user feedback, technical constraints, and strategic considerations. This required flexibility and adaptability in responding to changing requirements and priorities.

We tested the new user onboarding with our new users using the A/B Testing method. We experimented with users encountering the personalization portion immediately after sign up before they land in their inbox and right after they land in their inbox. Separately, we tested the efficacy of the sticky onboarding portion of the experience.

After the experiment concluded, the team moved forward with introducing the new onboarding experience before users land in their inbox based on experiment results. We were able to increase the CTR of our onboarding by 10% and achieve a 27% completion rate.

This project was my first larger initiative that I led independently in collaboration with several cross-functional partners. I learned the value of embracing the velocity that comes with growth design without compromising design quality. Some considerations I had to make included: