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Getting users started & unstuck

Onboarding & self-service from the ground up

I design end-to-end product experiences and the UX systems that sustain them — from early foundations through growth, optimization, and scalability.

Initial company state

Medcrypt was a Series B medtech cybsersecuriity startup when I started as the first designer. The company was primarily a services company, but wanted to evolve their initial product concepts to become major revenue drivers.

Initial product state

Medcrypt had an SBOM vulnerability management early concept with a few customers. There was no in-product help, get started hubs, or help center to enable users to get started quickly and get unstuck. Onboarding was a completely manual and time-intensive process and the company needed to scale. I initiated this project to facilitate adoption, conversion, retention, and expansion.

Challenge

Helm launched with no onboarding, no in-product help, and no documentation. Every customer required manual onboarding and extensive guidance from the product team.
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The early concept app relied on modals within modals, which couldn’t be tracked, bookmarked, or measured. The application was composed of modals on modals, making it difficult for users to understand available actionsUsers had no clear path to learn the product or understand where they were in a workflow.

Approach

I designed and built Helm’s entire onboarding and help ecosystem from scratch — transforming it into a discoverable, self-guided platform.

This included:

  • Designing the first in-product navigation framework, replacing modals with breadcrumbs and shareable URLs. Mapped user paths and defined breadcrumb + URL logic across dashboards, products, and components.
  • Creating a Get Started hub to guide users through setup, as well as all underlying content
  • Building the Integrations hub for connecting third-party tools
  • Launching 2 product help centers using GitBook, with links to Help and Support from sidebar
  • Creating all UI text and in-product help
  • Establishing the onboarding content strategy

Breadcrumbs and URLs

I determined the phases, current state and future state or a new breadcrumb trail and URL structure. This scalable system was then applied to future products as well.

Where once there was no path, lo and behold, a path was created

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Years later, when important prospects need ed the support of multiple organizations and workspaces, the breadcrumb and URL structure scaled easily.
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Help centers

I created the first help centers, including all content, information architecture, and branding. The help centers helped solidify product value proposition, enable self-service, and enable quick turn-around to facilitate RFP responses and sales engagements. Note: Since I was using Gitbook, I was constrained as far as branding and display.
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SBOM vulnerability management help center

This help center can be seen at https://helm.docs.medcrypt.com
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First help center: I created this while designing full-time and had to overcome stakeholder pushback that things shouldn't be documented.

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Device provisioning and certificate management help center

This help center can be seen at https://docs.medcrypt.com

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Secure key management help center

This help center had not been rolled out when I left the company.
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Quickstart processes to get to value quickly

Each help center had a clear get started topic, bringing clarity to even the most technical of topics, like key management.

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Each help center had a clear get started topic, bringing clarity to even the most technical of topics, like key management.

Help every step of the way

I created all in-product help, from field-level to page-level, ensuring users.

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Page-level help, with links to help center topics

Empty states to get started immediately

I created empty states for all pages.
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Get started hubs as soon as you land

I determined what to put on this get started hub, setting the stage for inviting team members, evolving our integrations offerings, and upselling services for customers who needed to get through FDA submission more quickly.
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Helm Get started hub: I created all help content, linked to areas of the website I'd added or helped develop, and brought forward our integrations, which were heretofore undiscoverable. Yes, heretofore is one of my favorite archaic words. I have others, like ereyesterday and overmorrow, which are still very present in French and Spanish, and should not have fallen out of favor!

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Toasts and confirmations

In any product experience, users need to know whether the results of their actions are in progress, successful, or failed. It's also important that they not lose their work, and understand when actions cannot be undone.

very feature I create has toasts, confirmations, progress indicators, ensuring users always understand system status.

Every feature I create has toasts, confirmations, progress indicators…

Integrations hub to enhance awareness and stickiness

I created an integrations hub to evolve our integrations offerings and configuration process.

Although we had some integrations, they weren't discoverable until now. I advocated for and created the first Integrations hub.

Impact

  • First Get started experience, providing visibility to options, upsells, and documentation to get started and get to value quickly.

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