Welcome to Dice, where tech connects

Role

Lead product designer

Platforms

iOS & Android

Credits

Copy by Matthew Lyons

Let's start off on a good note

The Dice app has been around since 2014, and like a lot of apps, it wasn't very friendly when a user would launch the app for the first time. 70% of Dice users are on iOS and they would see the common permission dialog to allow for push notifications. Let's break that down for a second. Let's imagine we go to a party and we meet a new person. We spend a minute or two doing small talk and they ask you for a favor. You would be put off by that as you just met this person. Why is it not socially acceptable to do this but it is for our digital products? 

First time UX

So whether it was a new user or a returning web user, they were not seeing a very welcoming experience and nor were they introduced or reminded of the value of Dice. This project came at a time where new exciting marketplace features where going to come into the app and so a we needed to set the tone for what was to come. 

Onboarding approach

Through a competitive analysis, I discovered that most competitors were utilizing their onboarding experiences for one or two of these reasons. This begs the question as to, what is the business goal for the use of this onboarding experience? 

Permissions

Whether its granting access to your camera roll for a picture editing app, or allowing for notifications in a messaging app, apps take this first time experience to get users to opt-into permissions.

How to use ui

For the most part, there are a lot of similarities in apps user interface but there are some task like getting an uber for the first time that a tutorial as to how to use the app is helpful for the user. 

Sign in or sign up

Registrations can be one of the most important KPIs a business is tracking. A first time UX can be a great opportunity to show the user the value of registrating or getting returning users to sign in and access the app.

How might we?

GOAL

Improve sign up

Opportunity

How might we motivate users who downloaded the app to sign up?

Hypothesis

If we showed the benefits of why a user should sign up to Dice at launch, that could lead to more sign ups, which could lead to more saved jobs, job alerts, and internal applies. (Top KPIs)

Crazy 8's

So we understand the problem, now comes the ideation. I facilitated a workshop where I invited someone from product, marketing, and myself to do an excercise called crazy 8's. It is a fast-sketching exercise that challenges people to sketch eight distinct ideas in eight minutes. Honestly, it's quite the rush, I highly recommend it. 

Before getting into our sketching, I asked the team to bring an example of an onboarding experience they really like. Each person got a few minutes to talk about their example and then we got the chance to do some dot voting as to what example we all liked.

Andrew, from marketing, brought Evernote. Evernote is a sandbox tool that you could pretty much do anything and everything in. They have these presets during their onboarding to get you to either create a to-do list, create a doc for a meeting, write down an idea, or just a blank sheet. This got us all thinking about how we could create a slide for each one of our personas to make sure there is a value proposition for all. 

There is the active seeker - someone who is currently out in the job market and is looking for a job. The passive seeker - someone who keeps an eye out for what is out there but is waiting for the perfect opportunity. Lastly, the seeker in between - these users are people who are not really looking for a new job but would just like to keep a pulse as to whats going on in the industry. 

Let's test ideas

Having had the opportunity to sketch with the team and individually, it was time to start putting this ideas digitally. During this time, I collaborated with a copywriter, Matt, to come up with some strong language sorrounding the value propostions.

I designed out the entire onboarding flow and used those wireframes for user testing. 

Welcome page

Sign up page

Happy technologist at work

While trying to match the visuals with the copy - I landed on creating this film strip animation of technologist being happy at work. This first welcome page is driven to motivate those active seekers to create an account on Dice.

Get your name out there!

Here I compilled some clips of people interviewing for jobs. This was a good opportunity to show what it is like to interview for a job in 2021.

For the in between job seeker

This page shows the varity of topics a user would see in the Dice news tab on the app. Anywhere from salary, new technologies, and remote work.

Conventional solutions can be fun!

This was a project where I felt like I was able to propel my craft because of all the high fidelity prototyping I did. One of my favorite designers, Andrew Allen, has a strong philosophy about not making boring apps that I have taken to follow. Dice, has a long way to go to really push that philosophy but I thought this project was an opportunity to express something unique about what it is like to get a tech job in 2021.