Context

🧭 Why are we here?

Thrive Global is a B2B SaaS platform that helps organizations support employee well-being through personalized behavior change programs. As the company expanded partnerships with large enterprise clients, we noticed that user retention in the first 30 days had dropped; making it harder to drive widespread use and sustained engagement.

To address this, we focused on reimagining the onboarding experience, with the goal of building a stronger foundation for long-term product success.

Problem

🚩 What are we trying to solve?

The onboarding flow was overloaded with information and lacked personalization, causing users to:

Miss opportunities to tailor Thrive Global to their personal needs (e.g., choosing preferred areas of growth, adjusting notification cadence)
Drop off before reaching meaningful engagement with the core tools
Feel overwhelmed after completing the onboarding flow with very little instructions on what to do first

This led to fewer users building healthy habits or discovering the full value of Thrive.

Evidence

🔍 How do we know it’s a problem?

Through a combination of product analytics, user research, and enterprise client feedback, we uncovered:

10% of users dropped off before completing onboarding
Session recordings showed confusion at decision-heavy moments, and frustration with long instructional screens
User interviews revealed that employees wanted to set boundaries up front, like how often Thrive would check in with them, and to prioritize what mattered most (focus vs. sleep vs. relationships)

We also heard from HR leaders that employees often disengaged early because onboarding felt “like another corporate task” rather than a supportive experience.

My Role

As the design systems lead, I owned the effort to lay a strong foundation that would improve collaboration, efficiency, and user experience across teams. This will help start building the right Lego set for Thrive.

Key responsibilities included:

🔄 Ran end-to-end design –
From research synthesis and journey mapping to high-fidelity prototyping and developer handoff
🧠 Facilitated workshops –
With PM, engineers, and various stakeholders to define key moments of personalization
🧱 Scaling with the design system –
To create modular, scalable onboarding components that could be easily adjusted for different enterprise clients
🧪 Conducted moderated usability tests –
With 15+ users to validate flows and microinteractions, iterating based on findings
🤝 Collaborated with the customer success team –
To ensure the experience aligned with B2B client goals and communication styles

Solution

💡 What’s the suggested solution?

We streamlined and personalized the onboarding experience, introducing:

A priorities selector at the start, allowing users to pick focus areas (e.g., reducing stress, improving sleep, boosting focus).
Notification customization, so users could set how often and when Thrive would reach out (AM vs. PM nudges, weekly summaries, etc.).
Progressive disclosure, breaking onboarding into smaller, context-aware moments instead of overwhelming users with everything up front.
Personalized dashboard seeds that reflected chosen priorities right after onboarding, giving an immediate sense of relevance.

All of this was built with design system tokens and components, ensuring consistency and future adaptability for B2B partners.

Impact

Quantitative

10% decrease in onboarding drop-off rates, improving overall activation
23% more users completed a first coaching activity within 7 days, indicating stronger early engagement.
Reduced support tickets related to onboarding confusion by 11%

Qualitative

User feedback highlighted the value of customization:
“I love that Thrive asked what I care about most right away. It feels less generic.”
HR clients reported increased confidence in rolling out Thrive to more teams, citing a “more approachable start.”

Belief

🧠 Why do we believe it will work?

Behavior change is deeply personal. By giving users more control up front, helping them prioritize what’s meaningful and set healthy boundaries around engagement, we designed an onboarding experience that feels respectful, relevant, and supportive, not prescriptive.

From early signals and user interviews, we believe this approach not only reduces friction but builds trust. It paves the way for deeper adoption of Thrive’s behavior change tools long term.