BUILT BY GIRLS Registration
The overdue overhaul of the registration process provided not only UX improvements, but an updated branding, and improved data used for matching pairs — the main utility of the program. It was also the first end-to-end development done by the internal product team of 3, myself, a product manager, and a single engineer.
My Role
As the lead designer and researcher on the team, I worked end to end on developing this experience. My previous research had indicated many of the main pain points, so I started from there using design and creating further research opportunities to create the most ideal product the first time around. Through collaboration with my Product Manager and Engineer, we worked to create a cohesive experience that leveraged each of our skills and expertise. I utilized several forms of research to do temperature checks on my work throughout the process and ended with pixel perfect designs delivered to our engineer.
The Challenge
The original registration for BUILT BY GIRLS was not just long, but also lacked any clear purpose for our users and our beloved brand voice was all but missing. On the backend, our matching algorithm craved better inputs to create better matches. This overhaul had long been put on the back burner, but became necessary as we looked to grow other parts of our business and also had just done a branding refresh. The biggest challenge was tackling all of this work as a team of 3, with myself leading and executing the research and design.
The Process
1. Identifying user and business pain points
As mentioned above, there were 3 key user pain points, and 2 key business pain points addressed in this project.
User Pain Points
Too long - users didn’t see an end in sight when it came to registration. It was multi-paged without any expectation setting of how much time they needed to invest to complete.
Lack of purpose - signing up for a mentorship experience should feel inspiring, but users often felt confused about what their information was being used for. They also didn’t get excited for the experience through the registration process.
Confusing questions - questions utilized for an old matching algorithm felt confusing to users who were confused about what the information was being used for and how best to answer to fit into the provided categories.
Business Pain Points
Poor quality of data - original questions were created without user validation, and therefore users often answered in inconsistent ways. For example, a dropdown that listed job roles but didn’t have a category to fit theres, or topics of interest in tech fields that students did know the definition (like UX!).
Limited data - our matching algorithm utilizes the power of overlapping words to create strong matches, and with limited data and a majority of fields using multiple choice many matches were often weak.
2. Validate new registration questions
The bedrock of this new registration would be an audit of existing question, then validation of any new questions. As an expert in survey methodology and our users, I first took the opportunity to eliminate any questions we knew were not useful to our community or the business. Next, through collaboration with my product manager we brainstormed new categories and questions we wanted to cover. A quick survey launched to members yielded over 200 responses that helped validate some of the following questions and question types.
Long Answer Personal Questions
Since our algorithm loved more words to find overlap, and our users love connecting on personal topics we tested the following “fun” questions:
If you could visit any place in the world, where would you choose to go and why?
What’s your favorite personal possession and why?
If you had a talk show, who would your first guests be?
If you could pick up a certain skill instantly, what would it be?
What's your favorite book, tv show, or movie?
In end the we kept questions 1-3 and eliminated 4 and 5. Question 4 produced a lot (like A LOT) of answers around knowing foreign languages. Not great for creating unique and personal matches. Question 5 did not produce rich answers after evaluating the survey compared to 1-3.
Role and Career Interests
A large pillar of our program used to be to match students with professionals in careers they were hoping to explore. We found this limiting, and an analysis I did of “unlikely matches” (through interviews) found that with strong personal interests overlap, a mismatch in career interests actually produced a rich relationship regardless. In order to keep some element of matching on career interests, I recategorized our role options by first analyzing the job titles of our mentors and creating a new selection of roles based on data. With these more inclusion and representative roles we sorted them based on percent representation in our community into 3 equal categories. With a survey to students we validated shared interest in these 3 categories.
Technical Roles aka "Building Tech" (roles like engineering, product management, and data/analytics)
Creative Roles aka “Creative in Tech” (roles like content, design, UX/UI, and marketing)
Business of Tech aka “Business of Tech” (roles like sales, HR, operations, finance, and customer support)
Personal Interests
The last category of questions I’d like to talk about are some of which I’m the most proud. Through user interviews with matched pairs, I discovered that most matches found deep personal connection on shared interests outside of careers. I myself have helped mentees create apps around microaggressions and creating inclusive spaces for trans folks — two causes I care deeply about. After asking the following two questions as open-ended questions, we categorized the answers to create an inclusive and representative set of answers that spoke to our users’ interests.
What are some social causes you care about?
Accessibility Activism, Animal rights, Civic Engagement, Criminal Justice Reform, Diversity in STEM, Domestic violence, Education, Elderly Advocacy, Environmentalism, Gender Equality/Feminism, Gun Violence, Healthcare, Immigration, Income inequality, International development, LGBTQIA+ Rights, Mental Health, Poverty, Racial Justice
Do you have any hobbies or activities you like to do outside of work?
Arts and Crafts, Athletics and Sports, Eating and Cooking, Entrepreneurship, Friends and Family, Gaming, Home Improvement and Decor, Movies, TV, Theater, Music, Outdoors and Adventure, Pets and Animals, Reading and Writing, STEM and Coding, Travel and Language, Volunteering
3. Improve and validate new UX/UI
This similarity matrix along with recoding values allowed us to see how questions should be grouped together.
Before designing any flows, one final step was to group our questions by theme. We knew that completing an overwhelming number of questions could easily turn a user away, so creating logical order and sharing information at key points in the journey would be vital. To group the questions, I built and released a quick card sort to a group of users. An interesting finding here was that our professionals and students grouped questions in different ways, therefore our final designs had similar questions in different groupings for the two user groups.
Now that we had our questions and content for registration, it was time to tackle the tactical UX. Based on user pain points, I had the following goals:
Users can see and preview all of the questions without being overwhelmed
Users can return to complete their profiles
Questions are grouped into categories with an explanation of why and how we use them
Based on these requirements, I mocked up 3 different options:
After testing them with over 10 students and professionals in user interviews, the overwhelming preference was for Option A.
4. Layer in new branding
Luckily, a rebranding of BUILT BY GIRLS aligned perfectly with this project. Seizing the opportunity, I built on the new brand colors and design elements to create a beautiful and seamless UI, and after I conducted two additional rounds of usability testing I was also confident it would delight our users.
Conclusion
Not only did this update successfully achieved our goals, but it was a successful first project for our new internal product team of 3. Pivoting from working with an outside agency to an internal team was challenging, but in the end incredibly rewarding as we knew we were creating a product that would not only best serve our users (who we knew best) but also provide longevity for us by investing in building things right the first time (or as right as any team of 3 can manage).
More Match Overlap
Thanks to better data, our matches went from 90% with any overlap to 99%. In matching cycle with this new registration launch we saw only 3.6% of matches with no overlap. By the next cycle it dropped to 0.7%.
More Complete Profiles
97% of all legacy students who’ve logged in since the release have updated their profiles with the new fields, and 74% of professionals have done the same.
Looks Really Cute
Our users are big fans of our brand, and thanks to this overhaul, we were able to inject our brand into the very first experience many folks have with us.
Want to see more? Check out my Invision prototypes
User Profiles and Settings Web
User Profiles and Settings Mobile
