Trello Onboarding

For this project, I was the lead designer responsible for reimagining Trello’s onboarding experience at a pivotal moment in the product’s history. After 13 years as a team project management tool, Trello made a strategic pivot to become a personal productivity platform focused on individual users.

The Challenge: A Complete Onboarding Overhaul

With Trello shifting its focus, the onboarding experience needed a complete redesign to align with this new vision. My role was to ensure that users not only understood Trello’s new personal productivity tools but also felt immediately comfortable using them.

Key Contributions and Approach

I led the design of the entire new onboarding flow from the ground up. This involved:

• Creating a Seamless First Interaction: We decided that instead of just telling users about the new features—Inbox, Planner, and the traditional Board—we’d have them actually start by adding their real to-dos directly into the Inbox. This hands-on approach made the onboarding feel practical and engaging from the first moment.

• Focusing on What Matters Most: Through extensive research and iteration, we discovered that teaching users everything at once would be overwhelming. So we made a strategic trade-off: we prioritized the Inbox and Board features in the initial onboarding and introduced Planner later. This allowed us to guide users step-by-step and ensure they felt confident with the most important tools first.

• Incorporating Educational Content: I designed and animated a series of “how-to” videos with voiceovers, embedded directly into the onboarding flow. These videos served as a lasting resource users could revisit any time, reinforcing the idea that education is key to a successful product experience.

The Result: A Seamless and Engaging Onboarding Experience

Once users completed the onboarding, they were dropped directly into their new Trello workspace, already populated with the tasks they’d added. This created a seamless transition from learning to doing. The success of the launch was evident: millions of users have since gone through this onboarding experience, and it has significantly contributed to Trello’s successful pivot into the personal productivity space.

In short, this project was about more than just a redesign—it was about guiding users into a whole new way of thinking about Trello. I’m incredibly proud of the impact we made and the role I played in making it happen.