A better head start — fixing the first five minutes

Project overview

This is a personal project in which I reimagined an onboarding experience to make it more structured, engaging, and user-friendly. The original onboarding was dense, text-heavy, and lacked clear sequencing. I redesigned it into a 5-minute microlearning experience using visual design, adult learning principles, and task-first sequencing.

Purpose: to practice applying instructional design skills, and to show how I would improve real-world onboarding challenges.

My role: Instructional design, visual design, build
Tools: Figma, Articulate Rise 360
Audience: New users of a creative production platform
Runtime: 5 minutes, self-paced

The problem

As a UX designer using the platform, I noticed the onboarding experience was difficult to follow — relying on disjointed quiz questions and walls of text without a clear structure.

This created challenges like:

No clear end-to-end workflow
Confusion around how platform elements like AI, briefs, and variations fit together
Uncertainty around what to do first
Low learner engagement and cognitive overload

I saw an opportunity to apply instructional design thinking to improve the learning experience.

The goal: fast, confidence-boosting onboarding

Redesign the onboarding to be:

Lightweight and fast
Visual and engaging
Task-centered
Structured to build confidence and reduce friction for new users

Onboarding screen titled “Your creative, your control — AI assists your workflow, but only when you want it to”, with a short bulleted list beside a tablet mockup. — Explains customer control and transparency with short, visual-forward content.

My approach

1. Prioritised only what new users need to know now

Using adult learning principles (Knowles’ and Mayer’s), I stripped away extraneous content and focused on key onboarding tasks:

Navigating the creative workflow
Understanding AI, briefs, variations, and brand profiles
Getting to the first project submission quickly

2. Applied task-first sequencing + visual clarity

I used a visual-first design in Figma and developed the experience in Rise 360 to:

Support scanning and reduce cognitive load
Organise content logically, with clear next steps
Scaffold new concepts progressively

3. Replaced text-heavy info with visuals and scenarios

To make the experience feel intuitive and engaging, I:

Replaced paragraphs with annotated visuals
Used microcopy to simplify decision points
Designed a clean linear flow that mirrors the platform journey

Visually organises required brand inputs for quick reference.

Onboarding screen titled “Reviewing your creative”, with numbered annotations pointing at version history, annotations, comments, and the reviewer panel. — Visual guide to the creative review workflow, highlighting key features to support user understanding and task clarity.

The outcome

This redesigned experience:

Builds a clearer mental model of the platform
Reduces cognitive load from dense content
Supports learner confidence and action
Shows how onboarding can be more intuitive and impactful

This was a self-directed redesign rather than client work. It represents how I identify user pain points and apply instructional design to solve them, and it reflects my growth transitioning from UX into instructional design.

Reflection

This project was a turning point for me — it helped me see how instructional design, learning science, and UX can come together to solve real user challenges. It gave me hands-on practice applying:

Adult learning theory
Visual learning strategies
Task-first content sequencing
Scenario-based learning principles

And it solidified my desire to move into corporate instructional design.