Designing Onboarding for a Multi-Platform Product
Client
7pace
Role
Product Designer
Year
2023
Context
7pace Hub was an exploratory product, a unified layer for accessing time tracking data across Azure DevOps and GitHub. I designed the sign-in and onboarding flow, the first thing every user encounters and the moment most likely to cause early drop-off.
Multi-platform products have a specific onboarding problem: users need to understand a new system AND connect it to systems they already use, usually before they have seen anything that makes the effort feel worth it.
Problem
Early versions asked users to do too much, too soon. Account connections, permission grants, and setup choices were front-loaded before users had any sense of what they were getting.
The friction was not a bug. It was a design decision that made sense to engineers building the system but not to users encountering it cold.
Concept
I redesigned the flow around a single question at each step: what is the minimum a user needs to understand right now to keep moving?
Progressive disclosure was the main tool. Surface only what is needed at each stage, defer complexity until the user has enough context to handle it. Clear system status throughout so users always knew where they were, what was connected, and what still needed attention.
The goal was not just to reduce steps. It was to change what users felt about each step, from "this is confusing" to "this makes sense, I know what is happening."
Outcome
The onboarding created a clearer entry point into a complex system, reducing initial friction and making it easier for users to connect accounts and get started.
