OpenSpace Onboarding
Transforming an organization from sales-led to product-led through self-serve onboarding.
Overview
Design an onboarding experience (0 → 1) that works within the constraints of the existing product to guide users through project setup and taking their first capture. To keep things simple, our approach leveraged a common pattern in other products—checklists.
Impact
I was able to impact the business through design in the following areas:
30% of new logos go through the NUX
Increased from 0% → 30% the number of accounts/new logos we could funnel to onboard themselves. These were often lower value accounts (less than $10K ARR)
1 day time-to-first-capture
Decreased time to first capture from an average of ~7 days to 1 day!
3 quarters of exceeding ARR goal
Company was able to exceed ARR targets for the following 3 quarters, even after a RIF (40%) in November 2023. We were able to sell to more logos and sign higher value deals with less people.
Role
As the Design Lead on this project, I collaborated with cross functional partners to improve how our customers experience the platform for the first time. I led activities across all phases of the design process, like discovery, ideation, prototyping, storytelling, scoping, and shipping.
Details
June 2023 – Present
Research, Design Strategy, UX, UI
“AHA moment” = viewing and navigating a 360 capture
I designed a checklist to make it easy for customers to get started using OpenSpace so they can experience the value we bring to their project documentation.
The checklist design made it easy to apply to our web and mobile platforms.
We also scaled the checklist across multiple roles with the steps that complimented their permission level (Org Admin, Group Admin, Project Admin, Editors, and Viewers).
Thumbnails were created for each step to provide more visual interest and also extend our illustration vernacular.
Web details
Step anatomy (web)
Step states (web)
Mobile details
Step anatomy (mobile)
Step states (mobile)
Creation steps
A unique challenge with our product is that it wasn’t as simple as replicating the same steps across the web and mobile platforms. Steps like 360 video capture and Field Note creation only made sense in the mobile app.
The checklist design was only a small part of the overall experience and acted as the glue to unify and simplify our onboarding steps. The core areas of improvement are outlined below.
Authentication
The legacy experience uses Okta to authenticate users to our platform. The default look and feel is something we wanted to improve to be more approachable and on brand.
The new account creation/log in screen was designed to extend our brand language and also make clear the benefits of creating an account using an integration (like Procore).
Uploading sheets
Sheets are a prerequisite to document your project in OpenSpace.
Upload sheets via Procore
Customers already use other digital tools (Procore, ACC, PlanGrid, BIM360) in their stack and it’s a common place for construction documents to live. We wanted to make it easy for customers to pull in their architectural drawings through integrations.
Sheet upload/formatting tips
Even if customers don’t want to leverage integrations to upload sheets, we wanted to better communicate best practices for what makes a good sheet to capture on in OpenSpace.
Download the mobile app…at the right time
Previously, viewing a project on web that does not have sheets would present the user with a QR code to download the mobile app, even though they wouldn’t be able to do anything in the app if they did. We wanted to take the user to the mobile app after they added sheets because they would be able to document their project, using our 360-degree capture workflow.
Take a 360-degree capture
In the mobile app, users can bring OpenSpace with them into the field and on the job site where they can do their image documentation. Capturing your project using a 360-degree camera with our native app will enable us to apply AI and machine learning to build virtual walk throughs that anyone, anywhere can view.
Taking a capture is documented more fully in a separate case study: Core Capture.
Process
🚩 Problem
The existing process for getting customers onboarded to the OpenSpace platform was time-consuming and not scalable. These problems can be summarized under these themes:
User problem
→ Lack of guidance — “I don’t know what to do!”
In product guidance was non-existent and did not focus on the steps we really needed them to do to be successful and reach the aha! moment (taking a capture of their project and viewing it). It also lacked the specificity of providing instructions relevant to their role/permission-level on the project.
Business Problem
→ High Cost of Acquisition (CAC) — “That’s expensive!”
Being a sales/marketing led organization meant every customer that wanted to try the product would have to get on a 30 minute call to be qualified. They then go through the setup process and teach them how to use the product (sometimes even doing the setup for them—how will they ever learn to do it themselves?). For customers segments identified as high-value, we had even longer sales cycles where we would provide free access to the product (30 day pilots) that involved a white-glove level of hand holding.
🎯 Goal
Reduce CAC by enabling customers and prospects to get to time to value quicker (on their own), to enable our sales team to focus their time on higher value activities: winning and expanding business (onboard more logos/projects at one time and upsell).
🔍 Discovery
Our discovery process involved 2 main activities: 01. Shadow: Pilots 02. Product Audit
01. Shadow: Pilots
Pilots are OpenSpace’s version of a 30-day free trial.
Pilots were areas of the business with high success
At the time of this project, our pilot program was the most successful sales motion in our playbook. Pilots allowed our team to focus and use learnings that we could apply to the in-product experience.
Understanding who we are impacting
Myself along with my Product Manager spent a week shadowing our sales team on customer calls involved in Pilots. We listened in on various stages of the sales process to understand how our sales team onboard customers and learn about common paint points for the end user.
Breaking down the sales journey
After observing a few calls, we were able to visualize the sales journey. This revealed inefficiencies in our sales process and helped identify opportunities for user experience improvements.
02. Product Audit
Our product audit involved mapping out the current state for new user onboarding across all roles (org admins, site admins, editors, and viewers), platforms (web and mobile), and authentication method (integration vs work email). We identified where we could simplify and eliminate dead ends in the product.
We also used learnings from a past failed project, OpenSpace Basic—the industry’s first free reality capture offering. Our approach wanted to avoid falling into the same trap from that project of not thinking holistically about how a product-led onboarding strategy should compliment the existing sales motion.
🔮 Vision
Using the insights gathered through the discovery phase of the project, we began crafting a vision for what the ideal new user onboarding experience could be in the future. We mapped out the ideal user journey, storyboarded a happy path that touched on all areas that we wanted to improve, built prototypes, got feedback from our cross functional partners, and shared the work with our C-level execs to get their buy in.
Flow diagrams (simple → detailed)
A simplified look at how a product-led approach would be applied and how it could scale to future enhancement.
Wireframing
Where appropriate, wireframes were used to quickly iterate on key sections of the experience (authentication example below).
Storytelling
To tell our end-to-end story, we focused on a single role, starting platform, and account type. This combination provided the opportunity to consider the challenges of starting on web and transitioning to mobile as well as leveraging integrations to make project setup simpler.
Leadership Reviews
The design team regular reviews projects in flight with C-Suite execs to gather feedback, alignment, and get buy-in. We presented the end-to-end story that included a mid/high-fidelity prototype to allow the team to see what we plan on building.
Impact
30% of funnel (less than $10K ARR) could be sent to self-serve onboarding
Up from 0% before we had onboarding in the product.
Reduced time to value to 1 day
Previously customers would take an average of 1-2 weeks to get to time to value.
Extended onboarding to 3 roles across web and mobile
The experience is more relevant to who the users are and how they are accessing the product.
Work done at OpenSpace. Product Manager: Michaela Rhile Engineering Managers: Brayden Parkinson, Ian Lovejoy