01 • Overview

The first native user onboarding experience

The project

I led the design of Alma’s first onboarding feature with 500+ MAU, leading end to-end research and design efforts to reduce churn from 13% to 10% within the first month of launch

My role

I was the lead designer and researcher for this project

COMPANY

Alma

TIMELINE

January - August 2024

02 • The Problem

Users wait 2-3 weeks to first log in to the product

Alma lacked an in-app onboarding experience, which meant relying entirely on email to communicate expectations to users. New members joined Alma, then waited 2-3 weeks while we got them credentialed (i.e. able to accept health insurance) and created their public profile.

WHY THIS MATTERS

13% of users churn before their first claim

Time to activation (TTA) - the point at which a provider submits their first claim through Alma and experiences the key value prop of their membership averaged 71 days. The gap between signing and seeing value was too long, so momentum fizzled and motivation dropped, leading to 13% of all churned users churning during this period.

03 • Target User

Who are the users?

Frustration

Generic communication, entirely via email
Inability to engage with the product in the first few weeks
No visibility into expectations, goals, or next steps after joining

Goal

Get into the product, learn how to use the platform, and see value in their membership ASAP

CONTEXT

New members in their first month faced a disjointed onboarding experience. Left without clear guidance, personalized support, or a structured way to complete the critical steps needed to get credentialed and start seeing the value of their membership.

WHAT THEY NEED

A simple and centralized resource that shows them what to do and when during onboarding

04 · Stakeholders

Navigating stakeholder needs

Our Customer Support team wanted to make sure every single detail was thoroughly pressure tested before we shipped because more users on the platform meant the risk of more support tickets. In contrast, Leadership wanted something yesterday to mitigate churn. Our shrinking engineering team just wanted something simple to build.

Finding alignment

To drive alignment across stakeholder groups, we identified three key principles that would be the core of discussions throughout the project related to scope, LOE, and feature prioritization.

04 • Research

Mixed signals

I hosted workshops with our CX team to identify gaps in the onboarding process using Julie Dirksen’s theory on learning gaps. In the workshops, we created case ladders to identify stakeholders and issues in the onboarding journey. I chose workshops over interviews to explore the many unknowns, aiming for more insights through informal discussions.

During the workshops, a major insight was the lack of a common language between users and staff regarding onboarding. Inconsistent terminology in support materials confused users from the start. To explore this, I surveyed over 100 users and staff, revealing gaps between internal language and user perceptions.

“Our main line of defense when a provider asks how to do something is sharing an article on how to do it and that can’t be effective”

Customer Support Team Member

"The onboarding form is one of the most important pieces of onboarding, but I think we have three different names for it”

Customer Support Team Member

05 • Key Design decisions

Inevitable curveballs

06 • Design process

Iteration

07 • solution

Outcome

08 • impact

Small but meaningful impact

The new onboarding dashboard launched in August 2024 and immediately improved provider retention and speed to value. Within the first month, we saw measurable gains in both onboarding completion rates and time to activation (the point at which a provider submits their first claim through Alma).