Day One had launched its MVP, but the experience felt clunky, overwhelming, and uninspiring. Forms stretched endlessly. Dashboards looked like digital graveyards. Users were dropping off, confused and fatigued. I wasn’t brought in to create something new. I was brought in to resurrect what already existed — and shape it into a product people would actually love to use.
The Problem:
Day One's MVP was functional but far from user-friendly:
Four-page onboarding forms scared off new users.
Profiles felt cluttered and uninviting.
Dashboards had no clear flow, making navigation painful.
Overall design felt cold, bland, and transactional.
My Mission:
Shorten, simplify, and humanize the onboarding process.
Transform the platform from form-driven to experience-driven.
Modernize the UI without compromising technical feasibility (Ant Design library constraints).
Work within agile sprints and adapt to late-stage client decisions without letting design quality slip.
Diagnosis: Spotting the Critical Pain Points
The deeper I dived into Day One, the clearer the core UX failures became:
Cognitive overload: Long forms with no segmentation or progress markers.
Zero emotional engagement: Bland UI offered no motivation to complete onboarding.
Confusing dashboards: No logical information hierarchy or visual flow.
Lack of visual breathing space: Everything felt crammed and transactional.
Strategy: Less is More
Rather than patch the platform piece by piece, I advocated for restructuring critical journeys from scratch ; particularly the first touchpoints: signup, onboarding, and dashboard.
Final Outcomes
Condensed onboarding into a 2-step flow instead of 4 chaotic pages.
Reimagined dashboard into modular, task-focused sections.
Smarter profiles: Information hierarchy based on relevance, not form order.
Visual upgrade within Ant Design constraints: clean spacing, modern typography, minimalistic color tones.
Impact: Measurable, Meaningful Changes
Simplified the onboarding flow, leading to reduced bounce rates and higher completion.
Improved talent matches by combining AI logic with cleaner, structured profile designs.
Increased both talent and seeker signups within months of implementing new UI.
Maintained close coordination with the Product Owner and developers to ensure fast decisions and seamless integration within Ant Design limitations.
Advocated for design-first thinking in the absence of a UX researcher, balancing creativity with feasibility.
