Louisa AI: Onboarding Experience for Busy Professionals

📜 Overview

Louisa AI is an AI-powered internal networking tool at Goldman Sachs. This project focuses on designing new onboarding experience to improve user engagement and retention for busy professionals at the firm.

🧢 Hats that I wore

UX Design 60% + UX Testing 20% + User Research 20%

Team: 1 Senior Product Designer, 1 Product Designer, 1 User Researcher, 1 Product Manager

As a Product Designer, I created a step-by-step onboarding flow through user research and competitive analysis. The new process greatly reduced the drop-off rate.

Process

Pain Points

As the platform prepared to spin-off in 2022, ensuring a seamless and user-friendly onboarding experience became critical. The goal was to address common frustrations with strategic design and user engagement.

😖

Generic onboarding process is lengthy and perceived as tedious by users. We needed to create a more intuitive, less intrusive experience that would keep users engaged from the start.

👥 User are busy professionals who don’t have time

Users aren’t interested in spending time building profile
Users aren’t aware what data is being shared with Louisa

🏢 Business wants to utilize existing data to reduce effort

Data collected from HR aren’t used effectively
Need onboarding that will intro to the product at one glance

Competitive Analysis

We conducted a thorough competitive analysis of leading networking platforms like Polywork, LinkedIn, and The Dot. They followed structured onboarding processes, but users often find them tedius and repetitive.

UX Goals

Users expressed a strong preference for an onboarding process that allowed them to explore the product at their own pace, with clear guidance but without overwhelming instructions.

🥅

Simplified, user-friendly onboarding processes are essential to maintain engagement
Early interaction with the product helps users understand its value, reducing the likelihood of abandonment

Opportunities

1. How might we simplify the information acquisition process?

By leveraging existing user data, we could streamline the onboarding journey, reducing the number of steps required and maintaining user engagement.

2. How might we personalize the product introduction?

Tailoring the initial product experience to align with the user’s specific interests and motivations would create a more meaningful and engaging onboarding process.

A/B Testing

A/B testing was conducted in order to test the most effective way to introduce the product features while gathering required user data.

A. Embedded - Hubspot

Great way for user to engage directly with the product while going through the information gathering process

However, doesn’t tackle the pain point of making sure users are aware of data privacy

B. Dedicated - Product Tour

Users can’t directly interact with the product, which means this is the first impression of the product

However, users can build trust with the product as they have more control over the process and information shared

Result

🏆

B - Dedicated user onboarding screens with an intuitive introduction to product features aligns better with the UX goal. It will be crucial to make the process more engaging and welcoming.

Process

I collaborated with user researcher and product manager to define data from the HR integration and organize content requirements for the user flow. During this process, we decided to utilize the data resources including name, role, and team.

Final Design

Stage 1

A Warm Welcome: Instead of a generic opening question, we personalized the experience with a welcoming message that used the user's name, followed by a simple prompt to select their role.

Stage 2

Addressing Data Privacy Concerns: Recognizing the growing importance of data privacy in AI platforms, we incorporated a step where users were asked about their data-sharing preferences.

Stage 3-1

Guided Exploration: Users could choose which features to explore first, allowing them to customize their onboarding journey according to their interests.

Stage 3-2

Empowering User Control: Users were given options to make new connections or sign up for newsletter, with an easy-to-find "Skip this step" button for those who preferred a faster process.

Full Prototype

Outcome

💪

-63% Time Spent

The new onboarding experience resulted in a 63% reduction in average time spent during onboarding compared competitor’s and users reported more favorable experience. The tailored, flexible approach resonated well with users, significantly improving their initial interactions with the platform.