Onboarding Plan
Guiding new and seasoned users through new features after a major update.
2024
Year
Product Designer
My role
Company
Product
The sound system design software HOLOPLOT Plan is meant to make designing, simulating and setting up a HOLOPLOT Audio System simple and intuitive. It lets users create audio setups and provides a realistic prediction of audio quality in the venue.
For the unique and complex software, I worked on educational and organizational features. In this case study, I would like to focus on the educational aspect — specifically, onboarding for Plan.
When I joined the team, Plan was undergoing a major redesign. The team was exploring ways to introduce new features, terminology and unique HOLOPLOT concepts to both new and experienced users, while also thinking about replacing individual onboarding calls, which had become time-consuming due to the growing number of users.
01
Summary
After discussing the project's goals, I began by reviewing previous user research conducted by a Product Designer from the team and watching 4 recorded onboarding calls:
”I wouldn't know immediately where to start working.”
— System Designer
02
User research
Using the findings, I created a User Journey Map that covers the entire process, from visiting the HOLOPLOT website and setting up an account on HOLOPLOT Hub to downloading Plan and starting to work with the tool and documented users’ pain points at each step.
”This is great! We have a lot to do! After reading through all of the different pain points, the first “Log in” blank screen feels the most pressing one to address.”
— Product Owner
User Journey Map
As a final step of the “Understand the problem” phase, I conducted competitive research, analyzing 7 direct and 15 indirect competitors. I found that most direct competitors use long-read formats for help and redirect users from their apps to websites for assistance. In contrast, indirect competitors, such as 3D tools and digital audio workstations, offer hands-on tutorials, an always-visible “Help” button, or hover-on tooltips with feature explanations.
03
Workshop
While doing research, I noticed that the users had similar problems, such as finding it difficult to know where to start their system design or what projects are possible with Plan. Additionally, users desire application-specific best practices to achieve the best results in their system design.
Workshop Boards
To proceed, I led "How might we?" workshops: one with the company’s Designers and another with the team's Product Owners, Developers and QA. In these sessions, I introduced the User Journey Map and 7 the most common user pain points. During the solutions brainstorming, I also presented a board with different possible onboarding features. Together, we chose the problems we wanted to focus on and possible solutions through voting.
After discussing the selected solutions with the Product Designer, Product Owners and Developers, two solutions were chosen: first, adding in-app onboarding in the form of lightboxes to draw immediate attention to important information and highlight what’s new in the software after the update; and second, improving the documentation hosted on GitBook with more detailed feature explanations, examples and educational videos.
04
Solution
Layout Ideation
Each onboarding lightbox component includes a picture visualizing new features of Plan 2.0, accompanied by text and options to proceed to the next step or go back. In the final step, there is a link to updated documentation and training. The users can see the onboarding feature when they open Plan after an update or download Plan for the first time. Also, they can revisit the onboarding later by accessing it under the "What’s new?" section.
According to analytics, since the feature was implemented, about 85% of users who interacted with it have completed all onboarding steps.
04
Result
”Let’s define the minimum and maximum size of the component so it looks balanced and also comfortable to view the picture and read the text.”
— Software Developer