As the team’s UX Designer, I was tasked to redesign the onboarding experience and to lead the design and flow through its first major redesign.
Chit Chats first time clients have many steps to take to deliver their product and understand the true value of the service, so information and functionally needed to be streamlined. Education and guidance was top of mind.
I led the redesign of this project and was supported by an amazing team of 4, composed of Senior Communications Manager Juhee, Junior Communications Manager Cynthia, Front End Developer Eoin, and Illustration Designer Florence. I was the individual responsible for the user experience and I personally created the deliverables that you will see in this case study, including the visual designs. I saw the project through from the kickoff meeting, to the launch.
I started by looking into our client data, logging user pain points and blockers in their first moments of their shipping experience. Data was available through our support tickets and custom reports.
We focused on interviewing clients that had been with Chit Chats for 3-4 months. Through talking with users I noticed they were experiencing confusion around what their next steps were. I used this knowledge as the foundation for building a guided and streamlined design.
By looking at individual user journeys, we focused on the Aha Moments most users would experience in conjunction with shipping their products. We managed to make those Aha moments a good experience to the user, with tons of praise and support.
I worked closely with Eoin, sharing ideas and bouncing off suggestions and feedback. We used a combination of Figma and Basecamp to organize and share our comments. Eoin, the Developer on this project, did an incredible job of putting together well constructed code that was responsive across all devices. I worked with him to oversee all user interactions, user flows and system feedback.
I used the Fat Marker technique, it really helps focus the team on what is most important to pay attention to and gives a good picture of the overall designs and concepts. This helped me to narrow the design down, which I used to establish a starting point for the mockups.
There is always more you can add and bring attention to users on their first visit. We had to temper that excitement and urge. We had some healthy debates on what we should display and what we shouldn’t. In the end we aligned on getting the user to see the value of Chit Chats, by making the shipping process guided and effortless.
An integral part of this project was the implementation of an onboarding checklist. This concept was first introduced to me by Samuel from UserOnboard. We used the Checklist as a way to streamline the onboarding process for new users, keep them from thrashing between pages, keep them focused on the task and for them to realize their Aha moments sooner.
Copy was a critical part of the design. We wanted to focus on creating helpful and succinct content for our users and help them throughout their experience shipping their first product.
I wanted to bring a sense of welcome and accomplishment during the users onboarding experience. So we decided to create welcoming illustrations. Coming up with this idea was a big win for the team. We focused all our attention to the user’s first moments and directed the shipping tasks into a helpful guided experience.
During the visual design phase, I used a mix of clean lines, strong typography, simple colors, flat imagery, and a 3 column layout structure to elevate the design for Chit Chits.
I wanted to create a space where the user could really focus on the most important part of their business, their product, and I was able to achieve that by putting the delivery times front and center.
I was very proud of the team, we documented our process, aligned with our goals and objectives and we delivered in time.
It was extremely rewarding to work on a project that generated such collaboration from different departments and personalities.
We grew as a team and strengthened our design and work culture at Chit Chats.
