It was fast-paced, impactful, and I learned to be a designer that could design, defend and deliver with confidence due to speaking directly to large clients and access to quick feedback from the executive team.
Prior to the implementation of SMS verification, 20% of DroneDeploy’s total hosting costs were spent on trial accounts, which is wildly higher than the acceptable range for non-paid accounts. This initial investment was justified as a loss leader when DroneDeploy targeted self-serve signups, but as they have moved up market to larger clientele, this cost is no longer justified.
This was a large unaddressed cost to DroneDeploy, and needed to be addressed cleanly and urgently. As it concerned users' securities and personal information, extra care had to be taken in the design to build trust.
1 Product Designer
1 Product/Engineering Manager
2 Software Engineers
1 Customer Support Representative
Design: 1-2 weeks
Engineering: 6 weeks (synchronously)
Each trial account has 5 free maps available, with the intent of allowing new prospective clients to explore features. However, deep dive shows that 98% of trial maps are made by non-converting users, 48% are made by users with identical phone numbers, and 26% by users who have used the same phone number 5x or more.
Clearly, this was projected to be a high-impact project. Aggressive OKRs were set to ensure that the implementation is effective.
1. 50% reduction in trial mapping cost
2. Free processed images should shrink from 20% to less than 10% of all processed images over 6 months
To reduce the abuse of trial accounts, and encourage the conversion of trials to paid accounts, new signups will be requiring a phone number verification via SMS. This also enables reputable first-time user and trial user research, which is currently misrepresented by multi-account users.
The benefits of implementing SMS validation for both the company and user are clear:
1. Considering the problem of free trial abuse, emails are free and easy to create multiple accounts of, whereas most users only have one phone number. This restricts the amount of accounts to the amount of unique phone numbers that a person owns.
2. People check their phones often. SMS texts have a 98% open rate while emails pale at 22%. Email inboxes are black holes.
3. Clutter, spam, and filters complicate the receiving process.
Unfortunately, we could not eliminate the need for email verification as many users choose to sign up with their email, and the contact is still very important for marketing and app updates.
1. New users signing up that are not affiliated with an existing organization are prompted to provide a phone number on signup
2. This number is checked against a database to ensure it’s not duplicated
3. If the number is unique, an SMS message will be sent with a code
4. The user must enter the correct code to proceed to uploads
It costs DroneDeploy when any user uploads and analyses media. It costs a negligible amount to view sample maps, so we must fast track users to be able to view sample maps and explore the product with as little friction as possible.
Thus, the SMS verification appears first during sign-up, is dismissable once, and then must be completed after the user views sample maps but before uploading. Email verification is simply a banner reminder and not compulsory.
This is not a UI-heavy feature, but design is responsible for minimizing old user frustration and lowering hurdles for new signups.
Anticipated user pain points:
1. For a prospective user who wants to explore the platform before committing: Requiring a phone number on signup makes the process significantly more complicated and increases risk of turnover
2. For all sign-ups: The current sign-up flow already has 5+ screens, adding SMS verification could extend the sign-up time past an acceptable length
3. Users may question why both SMS and email verification are required, an unfamiliar pattern in most sign-up flows
For implementation, once all existing trials expire, the SMS verification will apply to all new sign-ups, and the feature will continue to be monitored for unanticipated loopholes.
After sorting out the information architecture, the final thing was to implement clean, visually satisfying UI for the SMS verification screens, that appear at the end of this flow.
The SMS verification screens in the sign-up were added immediately after the existing screen prompting users to enter their information & phone number. This was intentional so users could easily click one back button to edit their phone number in case of typos.
When the code input box was designed, it was collaboratively tested with a developer to ensure that both iOS and Android platforms could recognize it as an input field and auto copy-paste the code.
At each of the triggers that are labelled "Upload" or allow the user to upload media, another SMS modal is added. The use of a "Cancel" button instead of an "x" enforces that if a user chooses to ignore the verification, they cannot proceed.
I delivered 6 prototyped flows to support all 3 releases, designed foremost for desktop with complementary mobile designs. 3 new components were added to the design system, and 31 components were published in high-fidelity. Figma file.
For the first release version, SMS is mandatory during sign-up. On the second release, it's now dismissable unless the user wants to upload media (which has triggers in two different flows). The third release includes the banner reminding users to verify their email as well. Through a gradual rollout, we can ease old users into the system without overwhelming them.
1. Users that sign up as part of an organisation that is SMS verified do not need to individually verify
2. Cool down period between verification SMS sent (25 seconds) and user request to resend
For implementation, once all existing trials expire, the SMS verification will apply to all new sign-ups, and the feature will continue to be monitored for unanticipated loopholes.
I conducted a thorough heuristic evaluation of the new user onboarding process when I joined DroneDeploy. With a fresh outlook and critique of the app design in mind, I was able to be a primary source for the voice of the user. The current sign-up process was lengthy and clunky, primarily due to four survey-type screeners that must be completed before the email verification.
Through researching existing designs, proactively talking to the engineering team to understand the cost of each UI change, and interviewing customer service representatives about reported bugs, I solutioned and presented the design over a few iterations.
Dronedeploy acquired StructionSite in 2022 and was wrapping up engineering efforts to unify the platforms to fully migrate all legacy StructionSite customers over to the DroneDeploy platform. One of the remaining tasks is to deliver PDF exports of interior views, i.e. floor plans and site plans.
This feature has very high visibility and usage. In one week alone, an average of 2, 820 PDFs are exported. This represents approx. 550 unique maps, 243 customers, and 130 companies.
1. Allow the user to export an interior PDF with the same features as StructionSite, plus new DroneDeploy features
2. Keep the usability similar so that users don't experience a steep learning curve
3. Make sure that the components and screens scale easily for Exterior exports, an upcoming feature
Each page has the following information in a header/footer:
1. Project Name
2. Level Name
3. Exported On timestamp
4. Filters Applied (if any)
5. Dates
6. Media types excluded (easier to list excluded than included)
This was an insightful project and pushed me to think in the problem space of a clientele acquisition. I had to directly interview customers to understand their use cases as we had no previous research on the feature.
On the design side, I was challenged to learn and design for information hierarchy, understanding of cognitive overload and marketing material requirements. I went through multiple iterations with different components, learning the limitations of a sidebar.