Reel Talk Onboarding
Designed a lightweight onboarding flow that helped first time users discover relevant movies, shows, and communities faster through early personalization.
See the Friction
New users entered Reel Talk without enough guidance, which made discovery feel broad and impersonal. Without early signals about their interests, it was harder to surface relevant content and harder for users to feel immediate value.
Role
Product Designer
Company
Reel Talk
Product
Responsive website
Industry
Social Media
Year
2024
Capture Early Signals
Collect user preferences early to personalize discovery from the first session.
Guide Without Interrupting
Use lightweight tooltips to introduce key actions without adding friction.
Know the Users
I studied how first time users approached movie platforms and where they hesitated. While users had different ways of engaging, they shared one early need: finding relevant content quickly without too much effort or guesswork.
Research showed two common entry patterns.
Key Insight
45% of surveyed users (20) said onboarding would help them find content faster, which validated lightweight personalization as the right direction.
Start with Research
The initial MVP dropped users directly into reviews and posts without a guided entry point. That made discovery feel broad and harder to navigate, especially for first time users who had not yet built any connection to the product.
What Research Revealed
Research confirmed that users were more likely to continue when the experience felt relevant early on. This validated onboarding not as an added step, but as a way to reduce uncertainty and create stronger personalization signals from the start.
Shape the First Session
I redesigned the first session as a connected journey that helped users move from sign up to relevant content faster.
Early preference selection created stronger personalization signals, lightweight guidance reduced confusion, and tailored recommendations made discovery feel more relevant from the start. Together, these elements helped users enter the product with more clarity and less guesswork.
Design Process
I iterated on the first session to reduce friction, improve guidance, and make discovery feel more relevant from the start.
Made Preference Selection Lighter
The first version required users to select genres and favorite movies before continuing. While this improved recommendation signals, testing showed that the longer flow added too much friction early on.
The final design simplified the steps and added a skip option, making personalization lighter while still capturing enough signal to improve relevance.
Final Design
Simplified the preference steps and added a skip option, making personalization lighter while still capturing enough signal to improve recommendations.
Made Guidance More Flexible
The initial flow used non skippable tooltips to introduce key features. Although this improved visibility, testing showed that forced guidance slowed users down and made the experience feel too rigid.
The final design made guidance lighter and easier to dismiss, helping users learn core actions without interrupting exploration.
Final Design
Made the tooltips simpler and easier to follow, so users could learn key actions with less friction.
Improved the Feed for Faster Relevance
The earliest feed surfaced content in a more generic way, making it harder for first time users to know where to start. Later iterations improved relevance, but the experience still needed clearer prioritization.
The final design used early preference signals to surface more relevant movies, posts, and communities from the start, helping users find value sooner.
Final Design
Used early preference signals to surface more relevant movies, posts, and communities, making the feed easier to enter and more useful from the start.
Measure the Impact
After launch, the onboarding experience helped more new users reach the home page successfully, engage with content earlier, and spend more time exploring the product.
Home Page Completion Rate
+18%
More users completed onboarding and reached the home page successfully, improving the first step of activation.
Early Engagement
+22%
More users completed onboarding and reached the home page successfully, improving the first step of activation.
What This Project Really Taught Me
Align early
A strong first session comes from aligning product goals, user needs, and technical constraints early, not from design working in isolation.
Testing helps teams resolve tradeoffs
Feedback made it easier for the team to balance guidance with flexibility and move from assumptions to clearer product decisions.
Thank you for taking the time to view my portfolio.
Let's create impactful product together!