Protecting IP with Seventh.AI
Onboarding Redesign Case Study
Overview
A Startup Software Developer (SSD) is just starting out with their company. They have an idea that will change the way their industry is seen. They share their idea with a close friend who is also a business owner and their friend suggests that the SSD patent their idea to add value to their company while also protecting their idea. However, the SSD has never filed for a patent.
They were told about Seventh.AI as a safe and affordable way to prepare their patent portfolio. They go to Seventh.AI’s website and upon exploring they aren’t sure of the exact benefits of using Seventh.AI. They decide to sign up to see if they can learn more. When they begin the initial question assessment during onboarding, they are quickly confused by the terminology and are unsure of the answers to put. They are also hesitant to enter personal business information because they want to protect their idea. They’re unsure how long the process will take and how much more information they need to provide. Is there a way this process can be improved?
Team
Rena Greene
Raven Alexander
Nelson Medina
Duration
3-Week Sprint
Tools
Asana
Zoom
Notion
Figma
Miro
Mural
Google Suite
Google Calendar
Approach, Activities & Scope
This design project was conducted over a 3-week sprint with a team of 3 UX specialists. We each contributed equally to each part of the project from start to finish, including research, designing and prototyping.
Project goal: To collaborate on redesigning the B2B SaaS signup and onboarding process of Seventh.AI’s new platform.
Problem/opportunity: Users don't see the value in the onboarding process.
Target users: Founders and heads of startups. People who want to add value to their existing business.
Scope: Applying the UX process to the redesign of the signup & onboarding process to deliver a clickable walkthrough prototype of the new redesign.
Key considerations: Make the process less manual, more automated. Ability to capture more user information without overwhelming them.
Key constraints: Lack of Quantitative Data. The actual product has not been finished/released. Research will be contingent on the Beta platform availability.
"How do you find that unique thing that is patentable?"
-Angela Lau, Co-Founder of Seventh.AI
Who is the Company?
Seventh.AI helps venture-backed companies find the business value in their intellectual property.
Company Website: Seventh.AI
Observations
The company was founded by Alexander Polyansky, and the questions asked in the current onboarding process are questions that he had asked clients as an ex-USPTO examiner. He wants to help people who don't know much about patenting to get a patent. He thinks that if someone has an idea and they don't know how to file a patent, that they might not file at all. Seventh.AI seeks to make the process safe, easy and affordable. Their Patent Wizard helps the user obtain a provisional patent portfolio, a collaboration tool for their legal counsel.
Competitive Analysis
A competitive analysis studies the industry standards and feature availability among Seventh.AI’s direct competitors.
Insights
Most competing companies do not offer online enrollment.
ClearAccess IP is the only company that offers this option but their enrollment application is not part of the onboarding.
Instead of online enrollment, these companies encourage the user to contact them directly.
Chatbot technology is only offered by one other company.
Seventh.AI is the only company that offers patent research.
Comparative Analysis
Comparative analysis studies the industry standards and feature availability among Seventh.AI’s indirect competitors.
Insights
After reviewing indirect competition, it was concluded that a subscription service may be cheaper than fees per service. In-house attorneys/ contract review are useful to the user and the business. Implementing educational guides can help the user understand complicated concepts better. A "To-Do" list is helpful to keep users on track. A fast application process can reduce churn rate.
Heuristic Assessment
When looking at the current beta platform we can see that it needs some work when it comes to the way that the user flows through the onboarding process. Click the image to view a screenshot of the original design.
On the current platform, the process indicator does not properly showcase where the user is in the process. There is nothing differentiating one step from the others. This could potentially confuse the user if they want to go back and fix something that they didn’t understand or complete the first time.
In addition, the format of the answers could leave users confused, if the user is not able to see at a cursory glance all the information that they have selected they could be unsure if they have selected the options they meant to.
Major Takeaways
Overall, the user needs to be able to come to the onboarding process, see what they are going to need to fill out, understand what they are filling out and why, and to be able to fix their mistakes or come back to the information later to make changes.
User Interviews & Task Analysis
The objective of the user interview is to obtain qualitative data from users studying their habits and behavior. Task analysis studies the user’s behavior while following a task directed by the designer.
After looking into the current onboarding process we wanted to understand how users felt about it. So we conducted some interviews to learn their behaviors and motivations for using a service like Seventh.AI.
Main Takeaways
Overall the users felt like the questions that were asked of them on the onboarding process were relevant to the conversation of filing a patent.
They believed that Seventh.AI was gathering this information to help them in the future with their patent process.
They experienced friction in their understanding of what was going to happen next.
Most users during the interviews were not completely aware of exactly what steps Seventh.AI would take to help them.
Most users were concerned about confidentiality and said that they were hesitant to sign up unless they knew that Seventh.AI had attorneys on staff to help them.
They needed to understand that Seventh.AI has expert advisors there to help them.
"These are the kinds of questions you should be asking."
-[name redacted for user interviewer’s privacy]
Journey Mapping
Customer journey or (experience) mapping is a strategic process of capturing and communicating complex customer interactions. A journey map illustrates a persona’s processes, needs, and emotional state across their interactions and relationships to satisfy a need.
Insights
Creating a journey map helped us track the users steps through the patent filing process. At this step we can see at which point in the process Seventh.AI will take over and make the user’s process easier. The low points on a customer’s journey experience are key insights into how Seventh.AI can alleviate those points and create a more enjoyable experience for their user.
Affinity Mapping
Affinity mapping is a tool often used to organize data and ideas, affinity diagrams are used for analyzing and synthesizing user research findings by patterns and themes.
Insights
The biggest hurdle to the company is that users do not understand why they are giving their information to Seventh.AI and that they don't see the value in the product/onboarding process.
The questions are not clear enough, they don't know what the end result is. Our affinity map shows that most users had issues with various aspects of the onboarding process, from beginning to end.
"What will the end result look like?"
-[name redacted for user interviewer’s privacy]
Key Takeaways
It is imperative for the platform to state from the beginning what the onboarding goals are. The user may be willing to complete the onboarding but the lack of information is discouraging to them.
Full company transparency and concise wording will help the user understand what is being asked of them.
Problem Statement
When starting the patent process users that turn to Seventh.AI are unaware of the purpose and benefits of Seventh.AI’s software and the value that they get after disclosing their information on Seventh.AI’s onboarding process.
Design Hypothesis
By explaining Seventh.AI’s benefits up front, users will be more willing to divulge information about their companies and ideas. We’ll know this to be true when we see an increase in customer acquisition.
Target User
Start-Up Software Developer
Behaviors & Attitudes:
They want to learn more about how to protect their intellectual property.
They want to increase the value of their business.
They are protective over their idea and are hesitant to share it with others.
Frustrations & Pain Points:
Frustrated with the sheer amount of information needed to file a patent.
They cannot afford to hire a patent attorney.
They need guidance identifying the unique qualities of their IP.
Key Features
Based upon the feedback received, the team decided on these key features for the rollout of the new onboarding process. Without the Must-haves, the project’s skeleton would essentially fall apart. These features provide the highest return value, with the lowest risk to implement.
Must haves:
Pre-Onboarding
Pre-Onboarding Statement
During Onboarding
Navigational Breadcrumbs
Instructional Text
Explanation of each question
Multiple-select options
Registration form
After Onboarding
Meeting scheduling
Completion/success screen
Should have:
Clear Terminology
“Other” input box
Help/Assistance
“I don't know/Let's discuss later”
Could have:
Research discovery
Chatbot/”Call us”
Won’t have:
Confusing terms
No explanations
User Flow Chart
We needed to tackle which paths our target user would follow to reach their goals. User Flows were created to track the progression of the general onboarding screens. Click on the images to view larger.
Sketching & Design Studio
A design studio is a type of UX workshop that allows UX professionals to explore a wide set of ideas and also create a shared vision to move forward within a short amount of time.
Insights
We started out sketching the main pages for the project, the initial login page, the registration page, a question format page, and the introduction pages. We wanted to create a consistent format to be used throughout the entirety of the wireframes. Some key takeaways to focus on were a more clear progress indicator, more visually appealing questions and answers, and adding registration information and the option to schedule a meeting with the business.
Wireframes
Insights
When starting to create our wireframes we broke up our site map equally and each took to creating a section of the wireframes. We made sure to have deactivated, inactive, and active states of forms and cards in an effort to provide the user with clarity as to what can and cannot be done.
Insights
When getting ready to start our user testing we ran into trouble when our client would not provide us with any users to be tested, instead they requested that we interview members of their staff in an effort to not over stimulate their users. We used the website Maze.Design to allow users to test out the functionality of the project.
Users asked about the wording of some questions, and needed additional clarity.
Users mentioned wanting to know what they were in for from beginning-to-end depending on the paths chosen.
Users requested more visual impact to make paths seem more intuitive.
Findings/Iterations
From this feedback, we made further iterations to solve the concerns our testers noticed. These include reviewing the wording, changing the spacing and formatting of pages, and condensing some of the answer fields for ease of use.
Set expectations before and after the onboarding process to help the user know that they are on track.
Refined the multiple choice questions and made it clear to the user that they may choose more than one answer.
Redesigned the progress indicator so that it doesn’t draw too much attention and keeps the user focused on the question.
Prototype
After concluding our usability tests and synthesizing all the feedback received from participants, we took the following steps to finalize our hi-fi prototype. Please click the following link to see the prototype in action!
Live Prototype Link
“Raven and the team were able to re-cast our onboarding user experience, complete with new graphics in under 3 weeks! Awesome job!”
-Cathy Lippert, COO of Seventh.AI
Expectations
We understand that since this platform is not live yet, we did not have any benchmarks to compare our data against to measure the success of this onboarding process. We understand that customer acquisition is the ultimate goal but we were ultimately not able to track data for acquisition. We strongly suggest that by explaining the value and benefits of enrollment before onboarding begins, users will feel confident to proceed forward. This information would be very useful on the home page. We predict doing so will give Seventh.AI a low bounce rate and high rate of customer acquisition.
Next Steps
The user might need some additional help to navigate the platform itself, so the introduction of a light tutorial as they first arrive to the platform could be beneficial in helping the user understand how to use the onboarding service.
We suggest the company adds an option for the user to schedule an appointment to talk to an advisor within the platform, so that they can get experienced help when they need it.
Reflections
Throughout our research process it was challenging to find target users for interviews/testing, because Seventh.AI’s target audience is rather niche. Our team’s top wish is to see this platform tested within that market segment to better refine and reiterate the design of it. We learned a great deal about intellectual property, filing patents and what business owners’ thought processes are when it comes to protecting their ideas. Our team was able to handle time management efficiently, even though the three of us were working across 3 separate time zones. We were especially diligent trying to find and record as much research about Seventh.AI’s competitors as possible. Our only regret was that we were not able to test the product with actual target users, although that choice was out of our hands. We were actually able to implement more features than we originally planned by the time we finished the sprint. Overall, it was a great experience!