A sign up flow that resulted in a 130% increase in conversion.

Project overview
Korbit is an EdTech start up in Montreal that aims to offer high quality, interactive and personalized education through Korbi, an AI tutor. As part of the platform redesign, we tore apart their original sign up and curriculum personalization flow and came up with a better version that resulted in a 130% increase in conversion.
Team
My Role:
Solo UX designer

In collaboration with:
CEO, CMO, COO, Data Scientist, Front-end and Back-end developers
Timeline
1 month
Problem
Goal
Solution
Impact
The Problem of Our Original Flow
Detailed analysis under 'The Process' below.
The Problem
This was their original sign up flow:
The general feedback when it was shown to focus groups were good, and it also performs better in terms of user retention in an A/B test with a frictionless sign up flow (create an account only). However, no user testings were done when it was first designed so the usability issues become apparent as more and more users go through it.

After gathering both quantitative and qualitative feedback, we can conclude that:
The Goal
Allow both beginners and non-beginners to create their personalized curriculum in our sign up flow easily. From a business perspective, we hope to improve the user retention and engagement rate.
01
Qualitative
Interviews with existing users
Quantitative
Clicks, Session Recordings
Market Research
Friction-based sign up best practices & how other companies do it
Beginners in data science don’t know what skills to choose for their curriculum
System behaviour not as expected - 1 user chose ‘not familiar with maths’ and got a math exercise as the first question
Difficulty making decisions due to the large amount of choices -
a lot of users chose 1 or all of the presented options
02
Define
Beginners in data science bear the burden of personalizing their own curriculum
Background questions don't serve a purpose
Poor usability (too many choices, unclear button states, not accessible)
Allow both beginners and non-beginners to create their personalized curriculum in our sign up flow easily. Improve the user retention and engagement rate.
03
Develop
Segment students into beginners vs non-beginners

Students looking for specific AI skills will be given the power to customize their curriculum
Ask meaningful questions

All questions should serve a purpose and actually personalizes their curriculum
Let Korbi (our AI tutor) guide the entire process

For a seamless integration between signing up and learning with Korbi
I like to write down thoughts and reasonings next to the screens.
03
Develop
What questions to include and their purposes

(how they will affect the curriculum)
Ordering of questions
How to segment beginners from non-beginners
Our design
04
Testing
5 Internal + 5 External Testings
It's a significant improvement from the original version
Additional questions gave rise to a more personalized feeling
05
Experiments
A/B/C/D/E Testing
Is the new design is an improvement from the original one?
Will additional (potentially optional) questions hurt conversion?
The new design brings a 130% increase in conversion, the highest among all the variants
Shortening the process by removing additional optional questions actually hurts conversion
05
Experiments
Next Steps and Reflections
Continuous Iteration
A design is never done. We're still iterating on it, and to date we've tweaked icons + copies in order to continuously improve the user experience.

First Project with a Measurable Outcome
Thanks to Korbit being a data driven company, I was able to participate in my first project that generated a measurable outcome. My colleagues have also given me great feedback and support, which had made being the sole designer less challenging :)

What I Would've Done Differently
The KickOff meeting overran by a lot. I didn't know about the concept of First Principles, so I was presenting research findings, only to realize that I was unaware of some information that was collected prior to me joining the company. Thanks to my colleague for suggesting the use of First Principles, we were able to quickly gather everything we know that are relevant to this project. This in return, laid a foundation for our next steps.

Another issue contributing to the overrunning meeting was my failure of facilitating the HMWs brainstorming session. Instead of being lenient and letting everyone fill in their ideas (slowly), I could've set a strict timeline that forces us to come up with as much ideas as we can in e.g. 10mins (or use my beloved crazy 8s method). This will leave enough time for discussing and converging.
Next Up
Approval workflows for course registration