Kalido

A new, better onboarding experience

Kalido started in 2015 as a mobile app to connect people with better opportunities and connections using interconnecting Networks. When I joined (in 2020), the focus was shifting from Consumer to Business. The work to be done was massive, and it is still ongoing: translating the value of Kalido from mobile to a web platform, allowing businesses to deploy and use their internal resources as best they could.

The businesses we talked with struggled with matching employees with the right projects. Furthermore, Kalido wanted to elevate their experience, allowing them to voice their preferences and their interests, to give feedback when refusing a project or to show interest for projects they might not be 100% a match for.

One of the first projects was the onboarding flow. I was asked to translate the current onboarding into the web platform, including specific steps to allow the employer to have all the necessary information to create a complete profile at the end of the process.

Analysis

As a first step, I myself experienced the current onboarding flow in the Android App. I immediately saw some flaws, but I kept in mind the new onboarding was for a different user target, and it would also mainly be used on web.

Remembering this, I organised some usability tests, in order to collect more feedback and see if there would be some patterns I could translate in the new onboarding flow.

We completed 6 remote interviews, mirroring the phone screen to the laptop and then asking people to share their screen, so we could see what they were doing on their phone during the test. We then organised the interviews using Trello cards.

Alongside the usability tests, I also talked with multiple stakeholders, more involved and knowledgable about clients requests and needs. We wrote down the data needed, which steps could be overlooked, which ones could be skipped and which ones were the most important. During these conversations, together with the back-end development team, we discovered we could access the client’s database and import most of the information, allowing a smoother experience to the employees.

Screenshots from the Mobile App onboarding

When the main steps were defined, I started designing a spider wireframe, in order to have all the logics and behaviours in one document.
The full diagram is visible here.
I then started wireframing the actual screens, using Balsamiq.

After completing the first round with Balsamiq, we discussed it internally, to check if the flow felt natural and if the copy and all information were clear enough.

This was probably the longest phase. I took on different feedback from different stakeholders and colleagues. We all discussed and exposed our ideas and sometimes they didn’t align. But ultimately we always kept in mind “what is best for the client?” So I would request meetings with the clients, to establish which information they’d need during the onboarding and how they’d use the process in their day-to-day work (always keeping in mind this was most likely be a one time only experience).

Due to technical difficulties we also had to design 2 different onboarding flows, one for the main client (where we could pull information from their database) and one for other clients, where the users would have to input all information manually (unless they’d opt to use a Linkedin API, to bring data from their Linkedin profile)

Once we agreed the steps and how to organise them, I started focusing more on the UI and how to make the whole experience a bit more interesting. From our research, one of the most popular feedback was “the onboarding is OK, but I wouldn’t use the app”. Digging a bit more on this, users revealed they expected something more vibrant. Since there are so many apps out there, and the user hadn’t even seen ours yet, the onboarding flow needed to be engaging, fast and easy.

While working on this project we also fixed the Kalido interface: the visuals of the website weren’t reflected enough on the app, so we tried not to make the same mistake while designing the web platform. I took inspiration from the website and also included some new illustrations I made. We wanted a neutral topic for the steps, in order for them to be inclusive and relevant. We decided to go for a nautical team, to represent the power of Kalido helping people navigate their network and find new opportunities.

Zeplin was extremely helpful for feedback in remote – we all could access and chat over specific elements of the design.

Results

The final result was a split onboarding with only necessary steps included, smart defaults and imported data when possible, in order to facilitate the user as much as possible.

The feedback from the different clients was positive and, altough it is still a work in progress (like every project is), it set a good starting point to onbaord users into Kalido in the most efficient way.