Fertility App Onboarding - UX Audit & Experience Optimisation

Fertility App Onboarding – UX Audit & Experience Optimisation

Improving onboarding clarity, user confidence, and early product engagement in a sensitive, high-stakes user journey.

This project was completed as part of a hiring process for a SaaS product, focused on improving onboarding clarity and user experience through interface copy.

Overview

Onboarding is one of the most critical moments in a product experience. In a fertility-focused application, it carries additional weight. Users are often navigating uncertainty, complex information, and emotional sensitivity.

This project focused on auditing and improving an existing onboarding flow to reduce friction, increase clarity, and create a more supportive and intuitive user experience.

Completed as part of a product design assessment.

Problem

The existing onboarding experience was visually clean and approachable, but several usability and communication issues reduced its effectiveness:

Key steps lacked clarity, requiring users to interpret what was being asked
Copy was friendly but not always purposeful or benefit-driven
Users were required to input complex or unfamiliar information without sufficient guidance
The flow did not consistently reinforce progress, confidence, or next steps

This created unnecessary cognitive load at a stage where users need reassurance and direction.

Objective

Redesign the onboarding experience to:

Reduce cognitive load and ambiguity
Improve clarity of instructions and inputs
Build user trust through tone and guidance
Create a more structured and supportive onboarding journey

Approach

I approached onboarding as a connected product system, focusing on how users move through the experience rather than evaluating individual screens in isolation.

1. Research Under Constraint

As this project was completed without access to internal research, analytics, or stakeholders, I conducted a lightweight research synthesis using publicly available app store reviews and user feedback.

This allowed me to ground decisions in real user behaviour and identify recurring patterns in:

User expectations when starting the app
Frustrations during setup and data input
Mental models around fertility tracking and interpretation

This approach reflects early-stage product environments, where designers often need to make informed decisions using limited but meaningful data sources.

2. UX Audit

I evaluated the onboarding flow using usability heuristics, focusing on:

Clarity of instructions and inputs
Cognitive load across each step
Consistency of tone and communication
Effectiveness of guidance and feedback

This helped identify friction points where users were likely to hesitate, misinterpret, or disengage.

3. Content & Interaction Design

Based on these findings, I redesigned key parts of the onboarding experience by:

Rewriting UX copy to improve clarity, tone, and user alignment
Introducing contextual guidance to support complex inputs
Identifying opportunities for progressive disclosure
Recommending micro-interactions to reinforce user actions

The focus was on helping users feel confident, supported, and informed at every step.

4. System Thinking

Rather than treating improvements as isolated fixes, I structured recommendations as a scalable system:

Prioritised changes based on user impact and implementation effort
Defined phased improvements to support iteration over time
Considered how onboarding connects to long-term product engagement

Key Insights

Insights were derived from a combination of user feedback synthesis and heuristic evaluation of the onboarding flow.

1. Users need clarity before they can engage

Many users struggle with fertility-related terminology and data inputs. When instructions are unclear, hesitation increases and momentum drops.

2. Emotional context shapes user behaviour

Fertility tracking is often tied to uncertainty and high emotional stakes. Users are not just completing tasks, they are seeking reassurance and understanding.

3. Lack of guidance creates avoidable friction

Users are asked to input complex or unfamiliar information without sufficient explanation or context.

4. Users think in journeys, not steps

While the onboarding flow is structured step-by-step, users experience it as a continuous journey.

Breaks in clarity or momentum at any stage increase the risk of drop-off.

5. Early experience sets long-term perception

The onboarding flow establishes how users perceive the product’s intelligence, reliability, and ease of use.

System-Level Improvements

Rather than isolated fixes, improvements were structured into a scalable roadmap:

Phase 1 — Foundation

Improve clarity and accessibility of copy
Introduce better guidance for key inputs
Strengthen onboarding structure

Phase 2 — Experience Enhancement

Add interactivity and micro-interactions
Introduce guided product walkthroughs
Improve engagement through feedback loops

Phase 3 — Optimisation

User testing and iteration
Performance tracking (completion rates, drop-off points)
A/B testing for onboarding variations

Outcome

This work demonstrates the ability to:

Analyse and improve existing product experiences
Translate user needs into clear, actionable design decisions
Combine UX writing, interaction thinking, and product strategy
Approach onboarding as a system that drives engagement and retention

The project contributed to successfully securing the role.

Reflection

This project reinforced the importance of clarity, guidance, and emotional awareness in onboarding design.

Strong UX writing and thoughtful interaction design are not surface-level improvements. They are fundamental to how users experience and trust a product from their very first interaction.