Problem

47% of Displayr Trialists were successfully uploading data, meaning more than half of users could get any value from the product.

Discovery

I rand a mixed-methods discovery to understand where users were dropping off and why.

Event Funnel Analysis

Tracked three key events week-on-week to find the exact drop off points:

1. Trialists started

2. Clicked “Upload data”

3. Completed upload process

Hotjar Session Recordings

Watched User sessions to see what users were doing and possible reasons why they didn’t complete the process. These gave directional signals but were hard to interpret user intent without verbal context.

Usability Testing

Asked participants to:

1. Create trial account

2. Upload data ( a sample data file was given to users on the device)

3. Generate report using Research Agent

4. Export report to powerpoint

This covered the full onboarding flow, plus how users interpret the new conversational UI

User-facing team conversations

Talked with Product, Customer Success and User support teams across four countries to understand the mindset of market researchers.

Results

Before discovery, it was assumed that this was a UI problem: users couldn’t find how to upload data. The discovery reframed it. Users knew how to upload but, they didn’t want. Why?

Three hypotheses

1. Security Concerns - Users were concerned about security when uploading real PII to a product they were trialing

2. Workflow Unfamiliarity - Users weren’t familiar with Displayrs workflow: Upload → Create Chart → Configure Chart

3. Time-to-value - Users wanted to see what functions Displayr could perform without wanting to have to upload data

Solution

The redesigned onboarding surfaces sample data as the default entry point. Users can create and configure charts without manual uploading, reaching a working visualisation in seconds.

This addresses hypotheses 1 and 3 directly. Sample data removes the security concerns and lets users see the products value immediately. Hypothesis 2 is partially addressed. Users still meet the upload → create → configure flow, but they encounter it with sample data first, lowering the cost of a user learning it.

The mockup above and thumbnail were generated by Claude Code using the Displayr design system and the solution brief. The solution ships end of Q2 2026