As the sole designer for this project, I was tasked with auditing the existing experience that had been in place for over five years. The biggest disconnect that I found when going through the onboarding process was that there was no way for me customize my phone prior to setup. As we have seen through various applications and operating systems, users go through a flow in which they can pick and choose what their experience will be. For example, when you purchase a new MacBook, there is a wizard the user must go through to start up their computer for the first time – think “share data analytics to improve your experience” or “sign into your iCloud account” so that the user can essentially have all of their previous applications and preferences imported so that they have an end-to-end seamless experience. My task was to do just that, but in a way that didn’t seem intrusive, but rather helpful.

The first step was to gather data and review the existing workflow. Through the use of Mixpanel and other BI solutions, I was able to see the metrics detailing where customers interacted with various elements as well as drop off points.

After this initial review, I took that information and began creating wireframes and user journey’s to try and make simple enhancements. We then rolled this out to a select few throughout the country to see if perhaps my minor adjustments made a big impact. Low and behold, they did.

Next, I took the learnings from this test and created multiple hi-fidelity mockups and prototypes that introduced the concept of “selecting interests” to introduce the users to a personalized experience. The results showed a huge improvement in engagement, which meant that users did have intrinsic motivations to want to make their own journey.

Though successful, I still leveraged the data from these users and made minor adjustments regarding the layout of “interest tiles”. For example, categories such as photography, social media, and productivity performed the highest – so I relocated the most commonly used interests to be closer to the users touch point so that their effort were reduced.

After finalizing the design for optimal user experience, we rolled out the new and improved onboarding experience to select stores. We found that the stores that deployed the new experience had an 84% increase in customer experience, a reduced amount of calls for assistance, and a much higher customer satisfaction score.