Overview
Lark is a collaborative office suite designed for business management and communication. Launched in March 2019, this suite struggled to keep pace with increasingly diverse and rapidly growing user needs. In 2021, Lark's onboarding phase was challenged by fundamental usability and data security risks.
My role
As a UX designer, I worked cross-functionally with the development, UX content, and product teams to streamline and optimize the Lark onboarding process across platforms. I participated in end-to-end product development, from research to iterations, from pain points to user feedback, and from ideation to the final product.
- Scope
- SaaS
- Team
- Engineer team
Data team
Product manager team
Design team - Form
- Cross-platform
Mobile & web apps - Duration
- 8 weeks
01
User insights & ideation
I partnered with two product managers and one data analyst to uncover insights and findings that addressed pain points in the user journey.
02
Localization strategy
I designed new features to face the challenge of cut-throat competition and prevent potential data risks.
03
Scope definition
I defined core problems and built prototypes to share UX strategy and design principles, spread ideas further, and achieve alignment among teams.
04
Design execution
Our team developed six different devices. I proposed user journey maps and wireframes. I was specifically in charge of mobile and web app interfaces.
05
Business & design balance
I drove decision-making with product management partners to balance achieving business goals, providing a positive user experience, and gaining buy-in from stakeholders.
06
Proactivity & leadership
I prioritized and negotiated content strategy and design decisions for launch and beyond. I also coordinated the project timeline to ensure we met our milestones.
Impact
The onboarding redesign drove 45% higher conversion and 36% more engagement
Through qualitative and quantitative research, we defined the problem, iterated on the wireframes, and developed the final design through cross-team collaboration. Here are our overall achievements and impact:
- 18
- one-on-one interviews
- 6
- expert interviews
- 3000
- surveys
- 11
- weekly component syncs
- 6
- cross-team syncs
- 12
- user testing sessions
- 45
- % increase in conversion rate
- 36
- % increase in product engagement
- 30
- % increase in safety perception
The challenge
The conversion rate from new users to active users is lower than expected, as users do not understand how to make full use of the Lark office tool
As a next-generation collaboration suite, Lark differs from other office tools in methods of use, organization charts, and potential goals. However, the conversion rate from new users to active users is lower than expected, as users do not understand how to make full use of the Lark office tool.
The approach
Mapping out the user journey and bandwidth through cross-team collaboration
At the outset of this project, we did not have a clear mission or pre-existing goal for the design of the team onboarding process. Therefore, I partnered with data analysts, user researchers, and product managers at different phases to embrace the evolving and changing user needs within the onboarding process across user registration, function exploration, member invitation, and team formation. Below is our research and design process.
Discovery 01
A time-consuming process detracts from its user-friendliness
We conducted customer and market research to drive our planning phase. The key insights that define the pain points in the registration process are:
Design
A faster, more accessible and user-friendly design
Discovery 02
Users used to skip the feature tour
After logging in, users saw eight pages of illustrations in Lark’s previous feature tour. However, users did not want to spend time reading through pages of instructions, so they chose to skip this section.
To verify my assumption, I asked the data team to analyze data from the feature guidance step and visualized the results: fewer than 10% of users viewed all eight pages of instructions.
Solution 02
Anticipate user needs before starting the tour
With insights from competitor analysis and expert interviews, I determined that guiding new users through their first use of the platform would be a better strategy for Lark. Then, with further research, I applied personalized contextual guidance to the user experience to make it less noisy but more engaging.
Conduct A/B testing to ensure a successful outcome
To ensure that this design strategy could be successfully applied to our platform, I also conducted an A/B test with assistance from the product management and business development teams to support our assumption. Finally, I made the final design decision based on the expected results of the test.
A provocative, enlightening, and efficient design
Adapt an appropriate guide for each main function, so guidance arrives in context instead of as an eight-page tour up front.
Discovery 03
Industry competition blocks user invites from other platforms
The rapid growth of Lark sounded an alarm for other business platforms in China, such as WeChat Work (Tencent) and DingDing (BABA). Those companies started acting to hinder Lark’s expansion — they blocked the spread of Lark’s invitation links on their platforms. The outdated method of member invitation exacerbated the downward trend in new users joining.
Solution 03
Explore appropriate and popular methods in the Chinese social networking ecosystem
I started with a minimum quality bar to enable user invitations in all contexts. In this case, we curated several ways to distribute member invitation resources:
With a clear information structure based on the penetration rate for each method and information density, we have developed seven different design sketches for team member invitations
Design 03
A guaranteed, diverse, and inclusive design
Final design
