BoardX | Onboarding Design for Team Collaboration
Show value upfront, help the first time users fast getting started and help the team work seamlessly.
Responsibility
User Interviews, user flow, user journey map, ideation, wireframes, prototypes
Timeline
02.2022- 05.2022 (5 Sprints)
The partial design was shipped in June.
Tools
Figma
Scope
Teammate: Junyao
Design lead: Feiyang Xue
Engineer: Ziwei
OVERVIEW
Background
BoardX is a startup company specializing in a visual collaboration whiteboard that enables seamless cooperation in hybrid environments. It empowers users to conduct workshops, share thoughts and connect with teams remotely.

As an intern UX designer at BoardX, I was entrusted with the responsibility of designing an onboarding process from the ground up, with the other designer.
Impact
After 10 users rating for the 1st and 2nd design versions. We increased the onboarding satisfaction rate from 2 to 4.5 out of 5.

67% of the users thought the onboarding was easy to follow. The design was approved by the team and the partial key feature was shipped in June.
Problem Statement
Users will become dissuaded from using the product if its learning curve is too steep.
BoardX targets to a diverse user base. Unlike designers, many of the users are not familiar with visual collaboration tools. While BoardX is on its very early stage, and don’t have an onboarding process.
BUSIness opportunity
“Aha!” moment + Continued use
A good onboarding can guide users to their “aha!” moment as quickly as possible. Users are more likely to continue using our product if they have good first time experience.
DESIGN PROCESS
Research
Understand what users want & current product gaps
My teammate and I planned and invited 10 individuals with different backgrounds, and divided them into 2 user groups: Experienced and Non-experienced in visual collaboration tools. We interviewed them separately.
Goal
1. Understood their problems when using the existing BoardX tool for the first time;
2. What they expect from the ideal visual collaboration tool.
Note Taking | Card Sorting
After interview, we categorized the conversations and organized notes on FigJam, and grouped commonalities and points of repeated mention in the interviews.
What Users Want
Current Gaps
Insights
Some of the quotes are representative, and we took step further to ask ourselves a WHY behind what they said, and we found 4 insights.
Themes
We connect all the information we got so far and it led us to set 2 themes.
01
Nancy and Eddie explore the BoardX product by themselves for the first time.
02
Eddie plans to set up a sync meeting, so he invites Nancy (unfamiliar with the visual collaboration tool) to the BoardX whiteboard and will onboard her in the meeting.
HMW design an intuitive guidance that shows the BoardX value, and supports user on their first time usage?
Ideation & Workshop
Me and another designer conducted several workshops to sketch out ideas, storyboards. And we also invited other team members to participant in and voted for ideas.
Design
Pain point 1
To solve this problem, I drew a few sketches and had team members vote on them. Here are the options that we selected.
The Try Zone on the landing page that allows users to interact with our product and try in advance.
The Pop-up Dialog introduces valuable features to new users and gives them the freedom to check it later.
Low-fi Wireframes
Pain point 2
To address this pain point, HMW design a step-by-step tutorial that guides the user to learn the basic skills of using the board?
Hand-in-hand basic tutorials to get started.
Low-fi Wireframes
Pain point 3
To address this pain point, HMW design features that allows new users to have some basic understanding about the tools before the meeting begins?
The Facilitator feature allows Eddie to send new users basic tutorials before the meeting;
The Message feature allows Eddie to leave a note to teammates when sharing the board;
The Facilitator Progress Bar allows Eddie (as a facilitator) to see teammates’ onboarding progress.
Low-fi Wireframes
Concept Testing
We set up Zoom meetings with 8 users and observed their interactions with our low-fi wireframes to test our new onboarding concepts.
I wrote down users’ comments, organized sticky notes, and placed these sticky notes under the corresponding frames.
Insights
All the users were satisfied with the Pop-up dialog card. They think it’s straightforward.
All the users thought the overall concept was accessible, and the flow was easy to navigate.
Experienced people felt it was too essential for the basic tutorial and wanted to exit anytime.
The tutorial needed to be longer and introduce more advanced features.
Most of the users didn’t get the facilitator toolbar. It needs to make more sense to get, be more intuitive, and practical.
Redesign
According to the usability test insights, we reworked the user flows. We made it more customized based on these two user personas who have different skill experiences on visual collaboration tools.
Story 1: Nancy and Eddie explore the BoardX product by themselves for the first time.
Story 2: Eddie plans to set up a sync meeting, so he invites Nancy (unfamiliar with the visual collaboration tool) to the BoardX whiteboard and will onboard her in the meeting.
4 Major Improvements
Improvement 01
Changed to a tailored tutorial with freedom to practice
- Provided an option based on experience level
- Side-by-side practice
- Freedom to exit and check back
Before
Improvement 02
Customized template for users based on their interest fields
- Prioritize show the relevant templates
Before
Improvement 03
Introduce tools in a slide out panel
- Recorded GIFs tutorials
- Slide-out Learning Center during onboarding
Before
After
Improvement 04
Support facilitators with templates for better team practices
Previously we thought about to have a waiting time for facilitators and preparation time for new users to go through onboarding process and practice before the workshop begins. Facilitators could also use that waiting time do some ice-breakers on the board.

X  Too much time & effort to develop
X  Doesn’t solve key problems
Deal with conflict
But since we were on the concept testing and under exploration. We still would like to hear what user said. After testing it, we gave up the previous one and designed a template for facilitators to set a practice area.
Before
After
"Final" Designs
Customization based on experienced level and interest
Flexible and intuitive introduction
Eddie’s view: Supportive option for better team practices
Nancy’s view: Walk through essential onboarding guidance & Practice on Eddie’s practice template
UI & Organisms
I also want to show my UI designs. BoardX has followed a specific design system, but I can modify and create molecules and organisms upon need.
Reflection
If I had more time...
In this project we mainly work on when the user first time on our board. If I had more time, I would like to expand the onboarding process to guide user to create organizations and rooms or invite teammates in the Team Management. I would also like to further explore more use cases for facilitator tools and think about the permission settings.
Takeaways
And since this was my first UX project outside the school, my takeaways is preparing a precise research plan before interview could be very helpful to ask right questions and get effective feedback. And it’s also important to think one step further, ask a "WHY" behind users saying and think about different touch points and scenarios.
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