GitLab new user onboarding — UX strategy

Table of contents:

• Onboarding Stages
• GitLab Adoption Stages
• User Scenarios
• The 4 Forces

Onboarding Stages

• 0 Start (UX strategy issue (placeholder))
• 1 First mile (UX Strategy issue)
• 2a Continuous onboarding (UX strategy issue)
• 2b The explorer experience (UX strategy issue)

We're focusing on 1, 2a and 2b now, but at some point, we'll need to look into what precedes those. We should look into:

• Where do users come from into our onboarding journey? What are the entry points?
• What are their expectations at this point? How could we manage their expectations?
• How can we use their starting point to improve their journey/experience?
• This is the beginning of the funnel, how can we get more users into it?

Other focus areas:

• Sandbox project?
• Empty states
• Invited user experience
• Emails (automated)

GitLab Adoption Stages

From our existing work here.

1. Testing GitLab, if value recognised move to 2 (Individual, I've heard of GitLab, I wonder what it's like)
2. Pilot team adoption (Team, Can GitLab do what we need it to do?)
3. Company-wide adoption (multiple teams)

Bottom-up adoption usually starts with an individual or a small group of individuals advocating for GitLab because they found value in it.

Top-down adoption usually starts with it being delegated from the top of the company. GitLab is tested among other tools to see which one supports their workflows best.

Mural

User Scenarios

From the 3 stages of adoption, we can derive 3 user scenarios, evaluate the likelihood of them to happen, user's interest level in GitLab at that stage, their goal, key onboarding areas and compare it to our goals.

Mural

Here are the scenarios on a chart of likelihood and interest in GitLab. The key thing to recognise is that as we do a good job in one step, it has a positive impact on the next one. For example, if we do well in scenario 1 and help the user recognise the value of GitLab, it will increase their interest in GitLab and with that the likelihood that they'll move on to scenario 2.

Scenarios by default	Scenario 1 done well impact	Scenario 2 done well impact

Mural

How do we increase the likelihood of users moving to the next scenario?

• Create a First Mile flow that goes beyond basic setup and shows the value of GitLab
• Adapt onboarding to the user role, help set up advanced features & integrations
  • Better empty states
  • Guided feature tours
  • Continuous onboarding
• Project overview & group overview redesign to make them more top-level overview pages (with room for promoting other cool stuff GitLab offers)
• Adapt First-mile flow for invited users

The 4 Forces

Another exercise/chart that can help us design a better onboarding on the long run is the 4 forces chart.

• What are the things that push and pull users towards our product? How can we showcase these better?
• What are the reasons to stay with their current setup (habit & anxiety)? How can we alleviate these?

Mural

Could help us with:

• Continuous onboarding
• Landing pages (start of the funnel)
• Improving the marketing website (start of the funnel)
• Email automation
• Blog posts, case studies etc.