```cv
gallery
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```

## At a glance

**Problem**:

* 35% of users never clicked on “Create account”

**What I did**

* Research why people downlaod an investment app, what they are afraid of and what they want to get out of it

* Steered away from PO’s initial recommendation

* Interaction design, prototyping, usability testing and copywriting of new “Welcome screen” solution

**Result:**

* Improved account creation started rate by 9%
* Improved account created rated by 12%

## The problem

In order to invest with BUX our users need to create an account. But after downloading the app about 35% of users never start the onboarding process. We don’t really know why that is the case. We assume it’s because the first impression of BUX is not aligned with what users expect.

## What I did

### Understand why people come to us

First we user-tested the existing welcome screen. We learned that people expect to learn how they can use our app to achieve their investment goals. From existing JTBD research we knew that people invest with us to build long-term wealth. But they don’t feel confident enough to take the first steps. The new welcome screen should address those issues.

### Steered away from PO’s initial recommendation

Initially a PO approached me to solve a completely different problem. His hunch was that highlighting the free share users get after creating their account will improve conversion. My gut feeling told me that instead focussing on showing users their potential outcomes (by investing with us) would be a better approach. After conducting user research we got buy-in from the PO to approach the problem in a different way.

### Designing & Prototyping the new “Welcome Screen”

The new welcome screen should tell a story. A story that makes the user imagine a future where their financials are taken care of. The interface should represent this story.

After about a dozen different prototypes (some very exotic) I decided to re-use instagrams popular story format to create a new welcome screen that would focus on outcomes instead of features.

## The result

The new design was a success. After running it as an experiment for a subset of users, the following happened:

* Account creation started rate went up by by 9%

* Account created rate went up by 12%

The new interface is now rolling out to other languages and countries.

## Why designers should challenge Product Owners

This project is a great reminder why it always pays off to challenge a project proposal. In this case my gut feeling told me the PO’s proposal wouldn’t move the needle as much as they expected.

To prove my gut feeling I asked for one week of design & research time.

First I explored some design directions that the PO proposed. Sometimes it helps to visualise an idea in order to realise that it’s not worth pursuing.

At the same time I conducted user research and collaborated with business intelligence to gather hard evidence. This would help me in my case to prove that there is a more critical problem space to explore.

I presented this to the product team - along with my proposal of what to focus our resources on instead - and ultimately got their buy-in to pursue the direction I proposed.

Case Study: Onboarding investment app

```cv
gallery
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```

## At a glance

**Problem**

* Small business owners don’t have the technical skills to sell digital giftcards

* We saw a business opportunity and wanted to validate it by building an MVP

**What I did**

* Uncovered small business owners needs

* Used design to create a shared vision within the Team

* MVP design & development, brand identity, marketing assets

**Result**

* 9 small businesses were selling via our webapp within the first two weeks

* Hundreds of dollars worth of gift cards sold within the first two weeks

## The problem

In early covid days few friends and I saw an opportunity to help traditional businesses (hairdressers, local supermarkets, yoga studies, etc..) overcome their short term financial losses as they were forced to close shop. A trend in increased giftcard sales led us to believe there was a potential business opportunity: It was too expensive, technically challenging and time inefficient for small business owners to set up their own web store.\
\
We wanted to validate our assumptions by building a webapp that enabled small business owners to sell (digital) giftcards within 5 minutes, without any tech and design knowledge.

## What I did

### Uncovering small business owners needs

We gave ourselves 4 weeks to develop the first MVP. It was therefore crucial to find the right scope. I spoke to several small business owners in my network to uncover what kind of giftcards they are selling, how they redeem them and most importantly what ways they would prefer to collect money (see next page).

### Using design to create a shared vision

We were a team of 4 (2 devs, 1 legal/business person & I), distributed across 3 time zones. We were about to create an MVP that so far only existed in our imagination. To get everyones ideas out of their heads I lead an internal remote design studio session. The outcomes of the session were two low-fi scribbles of the product. I took up the fidelity a notch and created two clickable prototypes. We ran them past some business owners and other people in our network before we decided on a winner.

### Product development, brand identity & marketing assets

Alongside the two Rails developers I was responsible for the frontend. I shipped a production ready frontend using HTML, TailwindCSS and Ruby on Rails. It consisted of three parts: Business owner Backend, customer Frontend, landing page. As we were starting completely from scratch I also created a little brand identity along the way.

## Result

9 merchants were selling hundreds of dollars worth of giftcards within the first week. We validated our business case and continued iterating on it. \
\
We launched on Producthunt, built in public and blogged about our approach to product development.

## The V in MVP or how we launched without Stripe

Very early on in the process we started talking about payment solutions. Certainly we'd need Stripe or at least Paypal to launch an e-commerce microservice.\
\
But this would've set us back at least two weeks. And we didn't even know if anyone wants our product. One of the developers mentioned doing manual payments, essentially putting the burden of collecting money on business owners. \
\
After running the idea by some business owners we learned that they were fine with putting in a bit more effort initially if it meant they can start selling giftcards right away. They saw enough value in our solution that it was worth the tradeoff. \
\
So we launched without a payment provider. \
\
A week went by and the market responded positively. We knew it was worth investing more time. Two weeks later we launched our Stripe Connect integration which made life for users much easier.

Case Study: Support Your  Locals

```cv
gallery
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```

## At a glance

**Problem:** 

* Merchants were spending too much time manually processing support requests.

* Merchants were on the verge of churning.

**What I did:** 

* Researched where most customer requests come from

* Designed the flow & UI of the portal and made tradeoffs

* Front-End development (HTML, CSS, Rails) & onboarding merchants

**Result:** 

* Time spent on customer requests dropped by roughly 50%. 

* Retained 100% of merchants

## The Problem

The Firmhouse Platform is e-commerce SaaS for merchants that sell physical product on a subscription basis ("Shopify for subscriptions"). Merchants were spending a lot of time manually processing orders and support request of their customers. So much that they were considering switching to a competitor. \
\
The goal was to retain all those merchants and to reduce time spent on customer support by developing a self service portal for their customers.

## What I did

### Research where most customer requests come from

I spent quality time talking to merchants to understand which customer requests were occurring most frequently. Speaking face to face enabled me to understand the urgency of this problem. Although every merchant spent time on slightly different customer requests there was still a very clear overlap amongst merchants. That new knowledge allowed us to set the scope for a first version.

## Designing the flow & UI of the portal & making tradeoffs

I addressed all the tasks a customer needs to perform in a low-fi prototype. A big constraint was the integration with Shopify. The prototype served as a great base to discuss and iterate internally on the feasibility: After all we only had 4 weeks to develop an initial version so we needed to prioritise ruthlessly. But as we would learn later on there was one crucial aspect we overlooked and made us reprioritise. (see next page).

### Front-End development of the initial version & onboarding merchants

I teamed up with a backend developer (Rails) to deliver the initial version. My responsibility was the frontend (HTML, TailwindCSS & Ruby on rails). On a daily basis I pushed code to Github, reviewed PR's and fixed the occasional failing test. All the code I shipped was production ready. Once fully developed I was also responsible to onboard merchants to the new feature.

## Result

Time spent on customer requests dropped significantly. Merchants were very pleased. Most importantly, none of them churned. \
\
This new feature would go on to become a key feature of the Firmhouse Platform and a great differentiator for merchants that choose to use Firmhouse.

## An example of why showing unfinished work is so important

About 1.5 weeks into the development we had a first working version that was very rough around the edges. I decided to show it to one of the merchants who is always very eager to give feedback on early versions. It turned out that this saved us a lot of headaches down the road.

### The big aha-moment

A core feature of the self service center is the ability to let customers add new products to their upcoming order. When showing the first version to a merchant they quickly noted that it was missing one important part of their Shopify integration. After speaking (again) to other merchants it turned out that all of them were relying on it. And without taking it into account the feature would be unusable. We consolidated the user tasks list and made a decision on which feature to drop. Making that tradeoff meant disappointing some merchants but overall the tradeoff was an easy one

### Learning

Usually this insight should have surfaced much earlier. But due to its technical nature we simply overlooked it. Sometimes it can seem daunting to expose unfinished work but in this case it allowed us to correct a mistake we made earlier in the design process and ultimately ship a feature that would've otherwise been dead on arrival.

Case Study: Self Service Center

Product Designer Partner

How to manage your side project — now that everyone is working from home

Sharing some async practices to manage work in sideprojects

Five things I learned at General Assembly’s User Experience Design Immersive program

In March 2015 I took a ten week UX design bootcamp in London.

24hours in 3 minutes — what we shipped during the #24hrstartupchallenge and why

My thoughts after participating in a 24hour startup challenge

Four weeks — Four learnings. Conclusions after working remotely from Bali

I tried the "digital nomad thing" for the first time in 2017

I'm passionate about sharing my dance journey. That's why I ran a weekly newsletter aimed at men to become better Salsa & Bachata dancers. The focus was on creating confident leaders that everyone loves to dance with.

Weekly newsletter for dancers

Creating a new “Welcome Screen” to improve account creation rate

Onboarding for investment App

Creating an easy way for small business owners to sell gift cards online

Support Your  Locals

Designing a portal to let subscribers manage their product subscriptions

Self service  center

I'm a passionate Bachata dancer. During peak covid I co-hosted a podcast interviewing international dance artists around the globe. After 22 episodes we called it quits.

Bachata Podcast

Weekly Newsletter for dancers

I'm a passionate Salsa & Bachata dancer. During peak covid I co-hosted a podcast interviewing international dance artists around the globe. After 22 episodes we called it quits.

Champ helps tournament organizers in setting up and managing their tournament(s). On the match day(s) itself, Champ provides a handy mobile app for participants to stay up to date in real time.

Champ Tournament

Creating an easy way for small business owners to sell giftcards online

Support Your Locals

Design team of one at an early stage B2B e-commerce startup going through 2 pivots, working closely with global brands such as Nestlé, Sonos & ING.

Product Designer

With 1M users BUX is Europe’s fastest-growing mobile broker. Responsabilities: 

* Onboarding: I spent 7 months in the onboarding team, creating a  smooth first user experience for a new generation of retail investors
* Core features: I spent 5 months working on core features such as portfolio insights, extended trading hours and adding Google/Apple Pay as a deposit method

(Senior) Product Designer

Designed and delivered complex websites & marketing campaigns in one of Switzerlands leading Digital Agencies.

Interaction Designer

Senior Product Designer II

My designs help companies launch fast, raise capital or simply grow their product.

Yann Schaub

2023