Allo
UX + UI design
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Refining the onboarding flow for native iOS app.
Overview
The Client
Allo is a community-based app that allows you to build a “village” of nearby friends and neighbors to more easily exchange favors.
My Role
Product Designer in a team of eight designers, with a focus on the profile as well as improving the onboarding flow.
Problem/Outcome
My team was on board this project a week after Allo officially launched their iOS app in summer 2018; as a new app, they seek to drive acquisition and retention onto the platform, increase emotional investment and trust, and improve usability.
In eight weeks, we took the pain points we discovered from research and added new features to improve the overall flow of the app. My focus was to help improve the onboarding flow and profile page, and better utilize them to gain the users’ trust while navigating through the app. This was what our process looked like:
Final Tally
We tested the app with users before and after the redesign. Here is a summary of results from the final validation tests:
— and some final screens from onboarding and profile:
Some final onboarding and profile screens for Allo
“I think it’s clean. All the information is laid out nicely.
Would love to give [the app] a try.”
—
The Process
01. Research
Looking at trends
To get a better understanding of common conventions for onboarding, we looked into Allo’s competitors that also are community-based, parent-targeted, and/or favor swapping apps, including Komae, Peanut, and Ujama. We would be keeping these trends in mind as we design the Allo onboarding flow:
Identifying blockers
We facilitated user interviews and ran usability tests to better understand consumers’ behaviors as they navigate through the existing app, specifically what blockers they faced that prevented them from completing tasks successfully and efficiently. With our findings, we synthesized them in an affinity map, then prioritized the main issues based on their importance to the business and importance to the users. Here are the results for the onboarding flow:
Reducing + optimizing the onboarding process
A majority of users had expressed their frustration at the lengthy onboarding process, citing that not everything was necessary — nor did they want to give out their private information just yet, before really understanding the app. We sought to reduce the number of steps to get into app, and by visualizing the onboarding task flow, we were able to cut sections out that weren’t immediately necessary. In the end, we were able to reduce the process by half of the original onboarding flow, so users can explore the app, but still have their basic information stored.
Cutting out the onboarding process means having a bare profile — and we wanted users to have a fleshed out profile to safely and sensibly discover new people — the whole basis of the app to swap simple favors within a community. Thus, instead of having users land on the Allo “Feed” after onboarding, we had them land on “Profile” to let them know that it exists, and encourage them to fill it out.
02. Ideate
Design studio
A few new features were added to the profile, including adding family members, inputting your interests, and later, karma points. Taking ownership of the profile page, I added these features in, as well as a list of “Activity” for users to easily see their history. I started the design process by sketching out the possibilities, then turned my sketches into lo-fi mockups.
03. Prototype + Test
Testing our lo-fis
Along with the rest of the onboarding team, we prototyped and tested our pages for usability.
04. Iterate
Finalizing our hi-fis
From the testing, we discovered some new issues, including the fact that there wasn’t much incentive for people to fill out their profile once they land on it. We would be iterating and improving the screens, and considering any possible use cases as we go into high-fidelity mockups.
We ended up relocating and/or getting rid of sections that caused the most friction; for example, we removed the requirement for users to give out their complete addresses, and moved the “adding family” section from onboarding so users can explore the app first. I also added new features to the profile, including the ability to see your history in “Activity” and a section for karma points. To see the edits, here are the before and after screens for a user’s private profile right after onboarding:
Final Thoughts
Onboarding is probably one of the most important flows in a new app. Users want to immediately know what the product is and quickly go through onboarding to get to the actual product — without giving away a lot of personal information, if they can help it. If an onboarding process is too long or requires too much at once, users may quickly get discouraged to finish, and never get to use the product at all.
In this role, I learned to distinguish what’s necessary information and what’s not, in what areas I can build trust, and how to make onboarding as quick and efficient as possible — for users and for Allo. My team and I were able to make a long, laborious onboarding much more manageable, so users can start exploring and using the app much quicker and easier.
