New account flows

Creating an account is the user’s first interaction with a company. If this process isn’t easy, it often predicts future frustrations with the product. When Abstract developed a new product, suddenly there were 2 account creation processes at play and 6 account options instead of 3. Sorting out these options and figuring out how to present them in an easy to understand format became my mission for several weeks.

You can read about the process below.

The fewer steps, the better

The user flow below shows how quickly we want our users to move from interest to physically trying the product. While I didn’t create this flow, it was the place where I identified the first friction points—within the second and third screen. It’s at this point where the user has to make decisions that they didn’t expect. They have to think of themselves as an organization, find out if their organization already holds an account for either product, and determine if they can sign up or if they need to receive a call from our support specialists. That’s a heavy load for two screens.

Using our problem spaces to think about process

While working on this project, it was the fist time I used our own product to ideate on a problem. While figuring out the solution to this issue, I was also engaged in some metacognitive processes to determine if how we were approaching the problem was feasible within the contextual framework that we had developed. I found that referencing information in sections aided our feedback and review process and this lead to incorporating annotations in our comment fields a month later.

Depending on what triggered you to approached these blocks of text would change what what the message was. The text below was written for a churned account and would come from an email encouraging the user to explore our new product for free while they trial improvements to Versions (now Branches), our reengineered original product. I also created copy for users funneled into this flow from our State of Design article, the main website, and from active Branches accounts. Each user base had different needs.

Sign up landing point

Sometimes simple solutions are undesirable. There are times when each user population needs its own introduction to the product. Identifying those times and populations and putting in the additional work to make the product work for each group is worth the extra effort when decisions are going to be made. This screen is an excellent example. There is no reason for a user of our original product to land on this screen, yet it’s important for everyone else. We treat current and churned users as “insiders” to our products, ushering them to the next decision point.

In conclusion:

The challenge of developing three separate sign-up flows required meetings with many people. Stakeholders, engineering, product managers and designers all held pieces to this intriguing little puzzle. I think my biggest takeaway from this project was the realization that I’m more than UX Writer. I do a healthy amount of research, I’m often influencing design and product direction, and I sometimes manage projects. While I’m perfectly content in my role as a writer, I’m not afraid to expand it when necessary.