A Friendlier
Onboarding

The TV Pilot

Onboarding acts as the TV pilot for any product. In the first few screens it has to give users an understanding of what the product does — and just as importantly, a sense of its tone.

While at ScriptSave I led the design for a health and wellness product focused on activity tracking and nutrition education. I was tasked with defining what a new onboarding experience would look like — accounting for existing features as well as brand-new ones.

Existing onboarding · the starting point

Listening to Users

My first task was to collect data and feedback on the existing flow. I interviewed a small group of users and gathered survey results, which surfaced a clear set of pain points.

Two more comments cut to the heart of the problem:

• “It feels too clinical.”
• “Why do you need my location? I just started.”

The flow was asking for too much, too soon — and saying it in a voice that felt cold and bureaucratic.

Three Goals

Based on that feedback, I set three goals for the redesign:

Meeting the Goals

The redesigned flow translated those goals into concrete decisions:

• Fewer, friendlier screens — each asking one clear thing at a time
• Permissions requested in context, when they’re actually needed, rather than upfront (directly answering the “why do you need my location?” objection)
• Warmer copy and supportive illustration to set a human tone from screen one
• A modular structure so newly added features slot in without bloating the path to value

Reduced flow

Friendlier tone

Reflection

The project underscored that onboarding is as much about tone as it is about task. Cutting steps made the flow faster, but giving it personality is what made it feel like a product people wanted to keep using past the first screen.