Portfolio > Voice and strategy for onboarding flows
Project TL;DR
Why it mattered
💡 Introduced hard-to-grasp features, made them learnable for new audiences
✅ 43% increase in conversion across the onboarding funnel
😍 Impact on Net Promoter Scores, as 71% of promoters completed at least one tour
What it highlights
😵💫 How I worked to distill complex, technical subjects into plain language
🗺️ Mapping user journeys to deliver the right content at the right moments
🗣️ Tactical application of strategic voice attributes
New onboarding copy in context of the UI.
Challenge
From its beginnings, IBM’s Watson Assistant had aimed to set itself apart with powerful features built on leading technology. In 2020, the offering team was challenged to make those features more usable and approachable to wider audiences without expertise in AI, chatbots, or natural language processing.
One key project was to add a series of onboarding tours. I was asked to help the growth team finalize onboarding content and align copywriting to voice guidelines in support of the squad’s OKRs.
Process
I drove an iterative series of synchronous working sessions and asynchronous reviews with cross-functional teammates to identify goals and requirements, critique drafts, share revisions, and incorporate feedback.
Along the way I recommended steps to be eliminated or consolidated, mapping the flow and where we could cut excess that didn’t provide value to the user’s journey. Often the most impactful UX writing is the stuff that doesn’t get written!
For structure and coordination, I used a content document that tracked between proposals and revisions.
Transparency sped up decisions, as partners appreciated seeing for themselves the reasons behind changes.
The document also allowed me to prompt partners and SMEs to write their own first drafts, which helped me better understand the problem space and their perspectives on it.
A central challenge was distilling descriptions of highly technical features into plain language. Instead of asking the Five Whys, it was like asking “Five Hows” — “How could this be more clear?” “How could this be more clear?” “How could this … “
The following images show how I then targeted voice attributes depending on the content and the touchpoint, using many microcopy decisions to bring out an overall feeling of voice:
My Contributions
Copywriting, Interaction design, Microcopy, User flows, Voice and tone
My Collaborators
Janelle Arita [UX designer], Nitayi Parameswaran [Product manager], Angella Qian [Developer], Emilie Shen [UX designer]
Outcomes
New onboarding tours were released in stages, each one performing even better than the last.
Overall, my UX writing helped contribute to a 43% increase in onboarding funnel conversion rates and a 50% improvement over baseline for a priority KPI.