Microsoft Hooked Scenarios
Description
The scope of this project was to research and design a multi-faceted experience with the intended purpose of increasing user engagement on the Power Apps platform, under Microsoft’s Business Applications Group (BAG). Power Apps at its core is a Platform as a Service. It allows you to create mobile apps (Makers) that run on any platform and with almost any Internet browser. However, the platform was seeing a consistent drop-off in its monthly active users (MAU). As an organization, we wanted to address these issue through a series of features, intended to reengage our users and get them active in the community again.
This project was also to work in tandem with another experience being built out, a guided onboarding tutorial for first time users. The purpose of the tutorial experience was to educate our new users to the general layout of the platform and its capabilities, and to then save and publish said app. The Hooked scenarios would follow immediately after.
UX/UI Designer
RESPONSIBILITIES
Comparative/Competitive Analysis, Heuristic Evaluation, Wireframing, Hi-fidelity Mockups
The problem
Power Apps Makers are not actively managing or improving upon their apps, which drives low user satisfaction; month-over-month, over 40% of production app Makers (48K Makers) became inactive.
Makers must also proactively check their apps; the current experience requires Makers to open the app analytics dashboard in order to learn about their app usage. This ultimately drives low satisfaction for our users, with a reported NPS score of 2.33% (based on 4,799 responses within a span of 28 days)
Because makers don’t improve their apps, users are stuck with subpar experiences. This has resulted in disengagement from both Makers and Users.
I was tasked with creating an experience that would reduce overall customer churn and increase stickiness of acquired users via variables like rewards and investments, by gamifying the learning experience and surfacing community stats to user profiles.
requirements included
1. Design an email campaign with pertinent information and access to user feedback, in order to motivate Makers into returning to the platform, as well as spend more time improving an existing app or creating a new one.
2. Opt-in to notifications that will alert Makers about new users and app usage, as well as provide access to general feedback. This will also potentially serve as the entry point to the more in depth app analytics experience.
3. Analytics dashboard, that will provide app analytics on a more granular level, with specific follow-up actions to be taken, community rankings, user feedback, app usage, etc.
hypothesis
A major inspiration behind this overall project came from the book “Hooked: How to Build Habit-Forming Products” by Nir Eya. In the book, the Hooked model is a framework for building habit-forming products that are defined by 4 key stages: Trigger, Action, Variable Reward, and Investment. The theory suggests that each time a user goes through the loop, the habit is reinforced, becoming “stickier“.
Do users like my app?
We hypothesized that Makers will begin to perform “deepening engagement” actions (refining an existing app with positive outcomes) if they are made aware of the app milestones and user feedback that are available. Our hope was that this would result in two outcomes for our Makers:
Expanded reach: Makers will opt-in to health status email of their apps if we provide it as a default option when they save an app. We’ll know this if the links in the emails are clicked and they go to the analytics page.
App improvement: Makers will either get validation, or see user pain points that give them a reason to invest in more work if we notify them of existing user feedback. We will know this if we see an increase in the number of Maker activities (save and publish app) in the people who click on the link in the email we send out.
Initial user Research
Makers were interested in their app analytics, with our data showing that Makers would often check their analytics when prompted, through both email and while in-app.
On average, the same email was reopened 2.3x, with the link to analytics being clicked on an average of 1.9x.
This indicated that what we had was working, but it just needed improvement. Specifically, we needed to improve opt-in mechanism so more people get notifications, in order to expand our reach, but to also increase the effectiveness of our content. Our current Click to open rate (CTOR) stood at 40% (a good score falls between 20-30%).
comparative/competitive analysis
A comparative/competitive analysis was conducted on some of Microsoft’s competitors, in order to assess their approach to user retention.
1. iTunes Connect allows users to opt-into weekly emails that provide up to date analytics, where the user is able to manage this status through their user profile.
2. Linkedin provides an email anytime someone outside your network has viewed your profile, or wants to join your network.
3. Google Play Console allows events-driven notifications to be pushed directly to the mobile app.
User journeys
To make gains on MAU and drive retention, we needed to better understand the user journey for both our first-time makers as well as experienced makers. This time would allow us to analyze/implement the telemetry needed to see existing usage patterns/retention curves, experiment while in production, then iterate again as needed, based on the observable drop offs.
The proposal was for the team to operate on a short engagement model that would emphasize on measurable results within weeks, not months. To bring end-to-end focus, each project in the “immediate backlog” would be atomic: a second project in parallel would not be started unless the exit condition for the first was completed. Therefore, we started by making the necessary revisions to the existing user journeys.
It was decided to introduce a nurture campaign that shares insights into app usage. We will trigger Maker re-engagement by telling them how their users like their apps.
0.0 - Opt-In to Notifications
New apps will receive a notification whenever an app is shared for the first time.
Existing apps will receive a blog and in-app toast, advertising the availability of analytics notification (go to app settings enable notification through email), such as total number users per app, and when new user feedback has been provided.
1.0 - Emails
Periodic emails displaying three sections: overview to show total people impacted, drill-down into app usage (and previous week Deltas) that will link to relevant data, and a call- to-action to highlight our blog and analytics capabilities.
2.0 - Analytics Dashboard
Add a new analytics page to show overall SAT and user feedback for the last 28 days.
Add recommended follow up actions:
For usage: share your app
For perf: run solution checker
For user feedback: common UX patterns, solutions checker
Translating and focusing
Next, we began unpacking the problem and began to translate our findings into features and potential components, to give them definition.
Defining the features for the different stages
Exploring treatment options for Settings experience and other potential ingress points for notifications opt-in
0.1 - Opt-In to Notifications (new apps)
To maximize reach, notification for all apps will be opted-in by default. If local laws require, the maker will have an option to opt-out when sharing.
Note: In the US, this opt-out option will not be shown. To turn off, Makers will have to go directly to settings.
0.2 - Opt-In to Notifications (existing apps)
For existing apps, Makers can go to their platform settings (implementation in progress) to manage the different notification settings for each individual app. There will be a blog and an in-app notification to introduce Makers about this feature.
Event driven notifications will be surfaced in-app. Some different things that we would feature through this panel would be: app has reached a certain number of users in the past 28 days, an app has received very positive or negative feedback.
1.1 - Notifications (emails - 1 app)
Makers with only one app will receive a periodic email, that will feature app statistics, such as the total number of ratings received. Also included will be a link to the Maker’s platform profile settings to add more apps for tracking.
1.2 - Notifications (emails - 2+ apps)
Makers with two or more apps will receive an aggregate email featuring a breakdown of the different ratings received across all the different apps that received feedback, as well as a list view of their apps from most to least feedback.
2.0 - Analytics Dashboard
TOOLS & TECHNIQUES
Pen & paper, Figma
User Research, Scenarios, Personas, Comparative/Competitive Analysis, Heuristic Evaluation, Wireframing, Hi-fidelity Mockups