Overview

The Challenge

The current HP printer setup and onboarding flow within printer software, HP Smart, is lengthy, lacks a progress indicator, and does not provide specific guidance about features beyond basic printing. This has led to user pain points and a low net promoter score. Specifically, there are three main user pain points to address:

1. Setup complexity leads to user fatigue and friction.

2. Unfavorable timing for service offers.

3. Challenges in discovering the printer’s capabilities

The Solution

The strategy is aimed at streamlining and standardizing the setup process to enhance mobile app experience. This involves ensuring users have a functioning printer before presenting them with service offers and adding a user onboarding flow.

Problems

However, we can only develop one solution for all user groups

So, we need to find out their common behavior patterns and main pain points. I created a user journey map to identify what are their common pain points. Luckily, I found out they were all very struggling during the second half of the setup.

Based on that, we can clearly define that we’ll focus on these common friction points for our north star experience. We want to improve user experience to help users get a more fluent setup process.

Prioritize 3 user pain points to solve

Considering the timeframe for this project being 2 months, we need to prioritize user problems to solve. After discussion with PM and design lead, we decided to focus on 3 user pain points.

Design Challenge 1

Service offers during setup lead to confusion and drop-offs

Looking at the current printer setup flow and screens, we can see that it contains too many steps. In addition, in the middle of printer setup, we ask users to create an HP account and sign up for ink delivery services. As a result, many users reported that there are too many choices to make and they feel overwhelmed.

IDEATING SOLUTION

Printer setup first, then service offers

To address this problem, I proposed a new user flow: we let users first go through the entire printer setup process, then present them with service offers that they can set up later. The goal is to make user flow more linear and easy to follow, while letting users have a functioning printer as quickly as possible. 

How can users know where they are in the setup process?

After improving the user flow, I identified an issue with user interface. There is no progress indicator on current user interface. Therefore, users are unsure of where they are in the setup process or how many steps are left, which makes them feel confused and frustrated. 

Separate setup process into three parts

To improve this experience, I separated the setup process into 3 parts, and introduced a setup overview screen at the start of each step. Step 1 begins with network setup, because it is the first friction point for all 3 target user groups.

IDEATING SCREEN

Design explorations | step overview

I did design explorations for step overview screen. I created 6 options. To get feedback, I presented during our weekly design review and did a quick concept testing with design team. We chose option D. Because it clearly lays out 3 steps in the setup flow, and it’s not text-heavy compared with other options.

Incorporate new UI pattern

During the time I worked on this north star project, our cross-functional design team was creating a new HP app. That app will eventually replace the current HP printer software. For this project, I leveraged the color palette and design components defined by another design team to rebrand new screens.

How the new screens fit into setup flow

They serve as a checkpoint screen at the start of each step, indicating users where they are in the setup experience. 

Design explorations | progress indicator

I also considered many details. One example is progress indicator. After an internal review, we decided to use option D. We analyzed the pros and cons of each design. For instance, option A has a problem when applying different languages, because some languages such as German, require more space. We chose option D because it looks clean and highlights the current step out of 3.

Design explorations | first print experience

We also bring our presentation to VP. After the discussion with the entire team, we aim to create a more personalized and flexible experience that allows users to test the printer according to their primary needs. Some users may prioritize photo printing while other may focus on document printing. So in the new design, we offer options to print a photo, document, or test page to try out the printer.

After I presented 4 options to 3 design leaders, we chose option D. Option A has accessibility and readability issues. Among the other 3, option D is most visually appealing and makes greater use of white space.

DESIGN VALIDATION

Compare north star version with current flow

I collaborated with research team to launch A/B testing for north star experience. 68 out of 100 participants preferred the north star experience over the current one, they found the new experience to be easier to understand, more informative, and faster than existing experience, and users appreciated being able to print quickly on the new experience.