Linked Boards Onboarding

Product Design
Project Overview
One of the main usability issues we were up against at Mattermost was discoverability of our larger, recently added tools, Boards and Playbooks. This project was an exploration in solutions to guide users to these products and teach users how to incorporate them into their workflow.

‍

‍
Results: A/B testing; 1 identified winner
My Contributions
My Role: Lead designer

Team: 1 designer (me), 1 product manager, 2 engineers

Establishing our hypothesis from our original design - version A

When exploring new options to address this discoverability issue, it is helpful to first establish a hypothesis.

Hypothesis:
Users will see greater value upon landing on a channel + Boards (and playbooks) in the RHS.  It may lead to more engagement with boards and overall increase in our retention numbers.

Success metrics:
Visits to the Board product (Primary)
Creation of new board (Secondary)
‍

Adding a version B

In order to seamlessly introduce our customers to boards, I wanted to experiment with adding a board to the customer's first pre-created channel upon entry into the product. Since we already had an infrastructure for introducing our customers to channels, I wanted to reuse it for the Boards product as well. So, instead of only seeing the open channel, the user now sees the right side panel open with a tour point pop up explaining the purpose of a linked kanban board.

Determining the winner and what worked

Our option B beat out the original design with a 45% conversion rate versus a 15% conversion rate. In order to determine what worked, we planned additional A/B tests to test some version B characteristics such as, the way we were communicating with our users. Is a landing graphic within the channel itself more effective than simply using the RHS? Does the type of board template linked impact conversion rate? Is there more guiding needed to see the utility in linking boards to channels? These questions can only be answered with additional tests.


This project was a great opportunity to lean into my knowledge of user behaviors and needs as well as how to better adapt our onboarding model to a regularly shifting product and technical infrastructure. One concern I had was our confidence in data tracking as it plagued some of our projects long-term that I shared with the data team and worked to improve our focus on for the future.
Linkedin