The first step was to find out who our user is. We knew a lot about our core user but needed to find out if that segment was also the core user of our app. So I ran a survey and aggregated the data using affinity mapping.

Insights

• App users skew younger with lower income than our core user.
• Users who transact tend to have love & relationship questions.
• Users who bounce are largely browsing.
• Chat is the most important feature.
• Horoscope and Best Match are more valued than we anticipated.

Problem Statement

As a user, I wish it was easier to connect with an advisor I trust to provide me long-term advice.

Hypothesis

We believe that if we improve the home screen experience, for both new and returning users, and we should be able to increase the retention and growth of users that prefer chat and convenience.

After understanding the problem and researching common solutions, I sketched some rough ideas of possible solutions. I sketch out two flows to account for the personalization of new user vs return.

I tried different layouts of listings to explore how we could display them to the user. I also contemplated a hero slider vs just showing listings or horoscopes feature. I did a design review of my sketches with the Product Manager to make sure we are on the same page. Then iterated on them until we find a solution we both like.

Now time for some clickable prototypes using Sketch, Invision, and its plugin Craft. The prototypes are used to test and validate the viability of our solutions with real users.

What I found from testing was users preferred less clutter and were jarred by the amount of actions that Variation 1 had. They preferred Variation 2 with bigger tiles and the carousel hero because it felt “warmer” to them and less “salesy”. Also as hypothesized earlier in the process, there was a clear distinction between what new users wanted to see and what return users expected.