ourself.health:
onboarding redesign

I redesigned the onboarding flow for Ourself Health end to end, auditing the existing experience, restructuring the user flow, and redesigning the flow to match the product's updated visual identity, features, and goals.

My aim was to reduce drop-off and improve conversion rates by ensuring the onboarding experience is as considered and personal as the rest of the app.

Challenge

Ourself's product had grown significantly since its original onboarding was built. The product had evolved to include new features, an updated visual identity, and a clearer understanding of who the users were, but the onboarding flow hadn't grown with the rest of the app.

First-time users were arriving to an experience that felt misaligned with the rest of the product: too many steps, visually outdated, and with onboarding steps that were disjointed with the experience of the rest of the product. The result was drop-off. My goal was to refine the onboarding flow and update it in such a way that it communicates the core experience of the app to first-time users in the onboarding flow, and therefore increases conversion rates.

Process

I audited the app's current onboarding flow, completed a competitive analysis on the onboarding flows of competitors in a similar space, and worked closely with stakeholders to refine our shared goals for the onboarding experience.

With all of that in mind, I crafted UX for a new, more effective onboarding flow, and eventually created the UI for the flow after agreeing with the stakeholders that this flow was our best path forward.

Research

Before any design work began, I reviewed the existing onboarding flow end-to-end. The problems were consistent:

Too many steps:
The flow asked for information that could be collected later or over time, front-loading the experience with friction before the user had any reason to trust or want to use the product
Visually disconnected:
The UI used older patterns, type scales, illustrations, and other assets that no longer matched the rest of the app. For a first-time user, this created an immediate sense of inconsistency, a subtle indicator that the product may not be entirely trustworthy or valuable to the user
Unclear next steps:
Several screens had ambiguous CTAs or copy, and the overall flow did not inform the users of where they would be taken next, or how it would be relevant to their in-app experience. In a health context especially, users need to feel in control and informed.
No life stage collection:
The product had no way to understand where a user was in her reproductive health journey (ie: in her menstrual years, pregnant, postpartum, perimenopausal or menopausal), meaning the experience it delivered was generic by default, while the product itself was built for customization and personalization. This needed to be communicated in the onboarding experience.

From there, I invested time in understanding the onboarding process used by other apps in the personal health space. I audited top-performing apps and learned how they structured their onboarding flows, used messaging in their onboarding flows, and appealed to their users.

After this, I had a clear idea of how to move forward strategically as I redesigned ourself.health's onboarding flow.

Strategy

My approach centered on earning information progressively, matching the onboarding flow to the product's visual identity, and clearly communicating the core value adds of the app to the user early and often.

In terms of earning information progressively, it was important to only ask what's needed to get the user to their value add. Everything else could be deferred to later, once the user was converted. Because of this, a lot of screens were cut entirely from the original flow.

The user also needed to be asked where she was at in her life journey - whether she was in her menstrual years, pregnant, postpartum, perimenopausal or menopausal. One of the app's goals is to be customizable for each woman who uses it, so it's important to have this information so the user can be set up for success, and easily access the features which are most relevant to her. Because this is a personal question, it was important to be sensitive to the language used to ask the user about this. I explored multiple framings and ultimately designed this set of screens around language that felt warm and self-directed: "What can we do to help you?" This avoids sounding overly clinical and robotic while informing the user why we are asking this question.

Every screen also needed to be redesigned using the updated design system, which included new typography, colors, components, patterns, and other visual assets. This was vital to create a sense of consistency in the user's first experience using the app, which would also communicate a sense of trust and show that the product contains something of value.

Results

The redesigned onboarding shipped as part of a broader product update. Anecdotal feedback from the team and a small group of users pointed to users moving through the flow more smoothly, with fewer moments of confusion or hesitation.

The new life stage question and flow was received positively. The framing and design made it feel like the product was listening to the user rather than being invasive. Longer-term conversion metrics are still being tracked, but the qualitative signal from early users was consistent: the new onboarding felt like it belonged to the product they'd come to use, and they felt like they had a clear understanding of the value that product hoped to add to their lives.

Next steps

Next, I'd recommend that the team run moderated usability sessions on the whole onboarding flow, focusing specifically on the life stage flows as it carries enough emotional weight that small wording or ordering changes could meaningfully impact the experience users have while navigating through these screens.

It would also be important to ask users if, given their experience with the onboarding flow, they would consider integrating the product into their lives. It would also be pertinent to ask users if, based on the onboarding flow, they might consider becoming paid users if they found that the product added value to their lives.