Introducing onboarding earlier in the user journey to personalise the experience sooner, guide users toward relevant employers, and drive a significant uplift in employer follows.
Role Lead Product Designer
Year 2025
Tools Figma · Hotjar · Jira
Overview
The challenge
This project centred on designing the onboarding experience for new account creation, with a clear objective: double monthly employer follows. Previously, sign-up prompts only appeared at high-intent moments, which led to low awareness of the benefits of following employers, slower personalisation, and weaker repeat engagement.
Research
Two critical blockers
Through early research, I discovered two critical blockers hurting WORK180's growth. These weren't just UX issues, they were business problems directly impacting follower growth.
Blocker 1
No onboarding
Our business goal was to increase followers, but research made it clear how confusing that journey was. Users were prompted to log in at high-intent moments, with no guidance or context, leaving users with low awareness of the value of following employers and no path to personalisation.
Blocker 2
No explanation of value
There was no real explanation of what following an employer would do, or how WORK180 differs from a regular jobs board. Introducing onboarding would let us guide users and give them a clear understanding of how to get the most from their account and also prompt them to start following employers that matched what they we're looking for.
Process
How I approached it
As the Lead Designer, I led the redesign from discovery through to implementation, collaborating closely with Product, Engineering, Marketing, and our DEI advisory team.
Discovery
Used insights from Hotjar recordings, surveys, past research, and support data to identify why users weren't following employers earlier in their journey.
Design Workshops
Facilitated cross-functional sessions to identify opportunities and define high-impact, low-effort solutions.
User Flows & Wireframes
Mapped simplified journeys that introduced onboarding earlier and guided users toward following relevant employers.
UI Design
Created a clean, accessible, responsive design using WORK180's design system, highlighting employer recommendations and reinforcing the value of following.
Collaboration & QA
Worked closely with engineering to ensure smooth implementation, QA, and launch readiness.
Content Review
Refined onboarding copy to clearly communicate the benefits of follows and drive action.
Onboarding components
Scroll to explore
Outcome and impact
What I delivered
The onboarding experience directly delivered against its primary goal. Employer follows per month doubled immediately after launch and have continued to grow over time. Users are now engaging earlier in their journey and following employers that match their needs.
↑ Up from 323
0
Avg employer follows per month post-launch
Before onboarding: 323/month
↑ Up from 78
0
Avg new unique employer follows per month
Before onboarding: 78/month
↑ Growth
0x
Increase in monthly employer follows
Doubled immediately after launch
Next steps
Continuous iteration
Using ongoing behavioural data and user feedback to further improve follow conversion rates, while refining the mobile onboarding experience to reduce friction and drive stronger engagement.
Common questions recruiters ask. Click any to see my answers instantly.
I'm a product designer with 10 years across freelance, in-house, and startup environments. My background spans product strategy, UX research, UI design, branding, and illustration so I can carry an idea from a whiteboard conversation all the way to a shipped, on-brand interface.
I'm currently a Product Designer at WORK180 in Melbourne, working end-to-end on the employer-facing platform from discovery and research through to delivery and iteration.
Because I don't just design screens I think about outcomes. I started in visual and brand design, which means I care deeply about craft and polish. I grew into UX and product, which means I care about whether it actually works for people and moves the business.
I'm also fluent with AI-enabled workflows and front-end enough to communicate precisely with engineers. I move fast without dropping quality, and I thrive in teams where design and engineering are genuinely collaborative.
Discovery first I want to understand the problem, the users, and the constraints before I sketch a single screen. That means research, stakeholder conversations, and auditing what already exists.
Then I move fast in low-fidelity: flows, rough wireframes, quick prototypes for testing. High-fidelity comes after we've validated the approach, not before. And I stay involved post-launch data and user feedback inform the next iteration.
As a partner, not a handoff machine. I try to involve engineers early ideally in problem framing so they're invested in the solution, not just implementing a spec.
I'm comfortable reviewing implementations for design fidelity and adjusting specs when engineering constraints make something impractical. I'd rather ship something slightly simpler and well-built than something pixel-perfect and brittle.
The challenge We identified an opportunity to help young people find the right apprenticeship path with full transparency, while giving employers a way to manage applications on the other side. The tricky part was that it's a two-sided product with very different user needs, and we jumped straight into it as an experiment with almost no runway. I had a week to show a working prototype to a potential client, starting from scratch.
What I did I ran discovery and scoped the project myself, mapping out both sides of the experience simultaneously. I had to make fast, pragmatic calls about what to explore and what to park, and built the prototype end-to-end to get something tangible in front of stakeholders quickly.
How it evolved The whole process has been learning while building, taking feedback from research and changing direction based on what we found rather than following a fixed plan. That's been the real design challenge: staying structured enough to make progress while staying loose enough to respond to what we learn.
Where it landed We're currently in validation with some strong early signals. It hasn't shipped yet but the process itself validated a lot of our assumptions about what both sides of the market actually need.
Range, and where I sit between disciplines. I started in visual and brand design, so I have a strong eye for typography, layout, and polish but I grew into UX, design systems, and front-end, so I can carry an idea from a stakeholder conversation all the way to a built, accessible, on-brand interface.
That blend matters for work that lives between marketing, communications, and product. I'm also a systems thinker who still sweats the pixels.
