Paper is an education support tool that helps students K-12 on getting the help they need to succeed in the classroom through 24/7 tutor support, math games, reading comprehension, and more.
Since the inception of the flow several years ago, sign-in hasn’t evolved or been reviewed with students, my role in this project is to reskin onboarding and make some UX enhancements.
Product Designer, Researcher
PM, Eng Team, Marketing
Figma, Notion, Maze, Google Forms
Jan, Mar - Apr, Stopped (2023)
When students land on the sign-in page, they are greeted with a find your school flow that helps them find which SSO is the preferred method for their school. Alternatively, they can sign in through SSO.
Additionally, according to some initial research, some students who have access to Paper in our partnered districts didn’t know what it was for. So when they landed on the sign-in page, they were apprehensive about signing in or even using the product.
For students who consistently use Paper, they didn't know the existence of the SSO sign in, therefore would always have to find their school's preferred method every time. There was also a bug that would continually sign out students continually so this was extra frustrating.
How can we make a smooth sign in experience for new and current users?
Taking all of the previous points into consideration and doing a bit more research on improvements, I designed a new sign-in experience that is more adaptive to students’ needs.
Create an adaptable flow for first-time and continuing students on the web, mobile, and Chrome Extension
Inject some delightful moments in a mundane landscape
Incorporate new design system components
Keep scope to a minimum as resources are limited
For signing in, web and chrome extension surface the find your school flow. This is optimal for a first time experience, but is annoying to go through every time as it takes 3 clicks (search bar, typing school, clicking enter, then clicking on the SSO).
As opposed to mobile that has surfaces the SSO first, which is 1 click. This is optimal for faster log in experience. According to some initial data for students signing up for Paper, students who were not part of the affiliated districts downloaded on the app store without knowing that they need to be part of Paper schools. Thus causing unnecessary friction and drop off rates on users that we can't serve.
Collaborating with research, we created sub-personas from our main student personas that suited the 2 use cases we found in initial survey feedback.
As students are strapped for time, we want to create an experience that optimizes their experience instead of causing friction.
For first time users, we want to guide them from the beginning and provide them with the right materials for success.
Starting off with inspiration boarding with marketing. Wanted to understand what look and feel we wanted the new sign in page to have. Ultimately chose the value-added to consider first-time users.
Added visual from marketing, but not scalable for other screen sizes
Caption included for students who aren't affiliated with Paper -> directs them to request Paper in their district
Repositioned forgot password below password input
Realized no page existed, so link taken out
Input from design system changed, but had to alter to fit various screen sizes
Marketing took out extra visual to suit other screen sizes
Added more delight within the flow with an addition of the character, reskinned to have clearer language in the copy and errors, and visually more cleaner.
Instead of having immediately landing on the find my school flow. I adjusted so that the SSO page would land first since that is the most requested and most used in the platform.
We service a lot of various students with different breakpoint needs. So designing variations of all the designs is a must.
With a change of priorities and resources, chrome extension was the only to survive because it was easiest to build and test. Leadership wanted a landing visual for new students to test.
I created a survey with the various visuals I created using Marketing assets. With 113 responses, they liked choice A was the most popular with 35%
I also did a Maze test for the new flow with the changes above, and it decreased bounce rates by 24% and increase satisfaction rate by 38%
This was the first design x marketing led project, so we had to work out a few kinks a long the way. Deadlines kept getting pushed from the leadership side, so advocating for timelines and making sure everyone was on track was key. It was mainly led by me and the other marketing designer, so I regularly gave updates to my PM, DM, and marketing team so everyone is in the loop.
Unfortunately this was not fully built as there was an internal change in priorities. There will be some designs that will never seen the light of day despite having positive feedback from users, but at the end of the day we just have to work incrementally to someday pick this up. I worked with engineers on a roadmap to see this hopefully in the future quarters, but nothing is guaranteed and things are always changing.