Designing the first touchpoint that turns a new user into a loyal fan.
Over half the users that download the Bleacher Report app drop off and ~70% of them never return, killing growth, retention opportunities, personalization, and business goals. I led a redesign of Bleacher Report onboarding for mobile to convert first-time app downloads into active users.
ROLE
Senior Product Designer - Project Lead
TIMELINE
October 2025 – January 2026
WHAT WE ACHIEVED
+23%
completion rate
redesign yielded a 56% to 79% completion rate within first 3 months of launch
+1.5
teams followed
users followed an average of 3+ teams within the new flow
+11%
D7 retention
users returned after 7 days of onboarding, showing value in personalization
THE CHALLENGE
Our existing onboarding experience was losing people before they ever had a chance to build a relationship with the app. Our drop-off rate told us we were asking too much too soon and giving back too little in return.
How do we design a flow users won't skip when every step we add to onboarding is a potential drop-off point but skipping steps meant users arrive at an impersonal feed — leading to poor retention of active users.
Business Impact
Notification opt-in sat at 66% among active users, yet we weren't surfacing it during onboarding at all. Registration was a tiny button at the top left of the page with no incentive. Both the user and the business were losing out on value before the app even opened.
64%
of users never complete onboarding
either dropping off at app open or abandoning within the flow
71%
of the users who drop out of onboarding will never return
My Role & Scope
As the Senior Product Designer leading this effort, I owned the onboarding experience end to end, from initial strategy through shipped product. I partnered closely with UX research, data analytics, product management, engineering, and a UX copywriter to make sure every decision was grounded in both user insight and technical reality.
The scope covered the full onboarding funnel: the entry point, team and topic following, notification opt-in, account sign-in, and the in-app success state. Related touchpoints like search, in-app following prompts, and alert prompts for users who skipped onboarding were included in the broader project but for the sake of this case study, we will strictly be going over the onboarding flow.
Before
Landing Page (1) and Alerts (3) were completely removed prior to 2024
After
Process
Utilizing lean UX and cross team collaboration to determine goals, shape timeline and begin the design process
I started the project by partnering with UX researchers and data analysts to confirm onboarding was a problem that needed to be solved. Together we reviewed research from prior WBD launches, competitive onboarding benchmarks, and our platform's behavioral data. These findings gave Me and Product a baseline for our requirements and showed that improved search would require cross project collaboration to move forward. I then wired flows and rapidly prototyped solutions, and led a collaborative review with product and engineering to align on direction and identify where A/B testing could resolve differing opinions.
Goals
Increase Community Follows
- show local teams and improve search capabilities (currently 32%)
Increase Alert Opt-In
- Provide more information on the value of alerts and give the opportunity to adjust preferences (currently 76% across app)
Increase Registration Starts
- properly sequence Sign Up flow and present the value of creating an app. (currently >1% 🫣)
Decrease Abandonment Rate
- a simple, engaging and purposeful flow
Early Stage Wireframe Ideations
Ideation
I led design jams and critiques for Onboarding to review various flows, from out-of-the-box ideas to tweaking our current system and riffs on industry standards. As a relatively new designer at Warner Bros., I found it essential to gain institutional knowledge throughout my design process from my fellow colleagues and present my work for honest critique from a team who all had the same end goal.
Our Approach
Present Value Upfront
- Rely on visuals and animation to do the heavy lifting with copy supplementing
Skippable Steps
- Reducing pressure to drop off by allowing the user to skip any step while saving anything that was completed ahead of the skip.
Building Investment
- Show payoff for each step completed and build investment in the app before asking for account registration
Progress Visibility
- Progress indicator gives a sense of how short the process is/ how close they are to being done.
Risks We Took
Adding Communities: High Drop Off Risk, Higher Reward
Data over the past 5 years showed us that B/R users are 68% more likely to retain at a MAU if they follow 3 or more communities. This retention is because they have a personalized feed, personalized notifications and personalized social alerts which all work to create an app the user actually cares about.
We decided that if a user has followed 1 or 2 communities we would present them with an upsell to follow more communities. The design is different from the previous community selection page; simplified chips, AI-generated communities, and a very easy way out. We are not showing this to users who have followed no communities, assuming they do not care about communities at this time more than they are about skipping through onboarding and we cannot force motivation.
What we tested
Notification Opt-In: Progressive Onboarding vs. Progressive Disclosure
- Option A: Emphasis on speed of alerts with an active motion creative & the ability to customize notification preferences. Giving the user optimizations up-front, informing them of the value and guiding them through customization which we assumed would be preferred after user research suggested users were worried about overwhelming amounts of notifications
- Option B: Emphasis on the type of alerts with an active motion graphic based on the communities the user has followed. Sole action of ‘Turn on Notifications’ in onboarding, hiding complexity upfront and relying on a gradual instruction to take further action once the user is in the app
A.
B.
Option B had an 18% higher completion rating than Option A
Cross Project Collaboration
Optimizing Search
Getting the "adding communities" step right for everyone was a challenge. Most research pointed toward showing popular or local teams, but that logic breaks down fast for the diehard Cowboys fan who grew up in Dallas and now lives in Pennsylvania yet would never root for the Eagles. for those users, search is essential. Our existing search fell short: no partial matches, no typo tolerance, and results sorted chronologically, so ten small Eastern European soccer clubs could outrank your favorite NBA team. That meant Search, a parallel project to Onboarding, had to be defined and greenlit before Onboarding could launch.
Visual Design
Focus on Brand Introduction and Value Translation
The visual design for this project changes throughout the course of the project many times. If there was one thing I could go back and do differently, it would be how I handled the visuals. I started with a couple mocks of visuals based on various connecting projects that have visual design as well (i.e. registration which branches off of onboarding) and our current style guide. I brought visuals in during early reviews which caused attention to silo and opinions to fly in. Visuals became a core part of reviews with executive deciding the punchy, bold copy would best convey our value message. I worked with our Motion Designers to bring the visuals across screens to life.
What Shipped
Onboarding was fully integrated into B/R’s 2.0 design system, I documented a final spec file and led reviews with engineering. Alert opt-in & Account integration both surfaced at the right moment, not buried in settings or served in pop-up modals. All copy, buttons, indicators, icons/logos passed WCAG required & recommended accessibility while QA ran accessibility testing on stage builds. Successful immediate personalization for users to arrive at a home page featuring their followed communities and confirmation of their feed being personalized. Built a foundation for data collection & experimentation; Modular steps with varied alert pages ready to test along with copy. Net new features will set a baseline for us moving forward.
Improved Communication & Brand Establishment
- B/R had evolved over 6 years to become a mix of new experimentations on top of an old structure of Sports content consumption. Entering a new era of the app allowed us to hone in on the brand impression we want to make on new users. Bleacher Report is now about personalization, exploring communities, getting top news the fastest and creating a social hub for B/R users through account creation.
Step 1
Welcome & Follow Communities
Before
Welcome screen had copy heavy description of B/R with the only branding being the logo. Then the Community selection was divided into Featured, Sports and Interests which caused confusion. The ability to search was tucked away.
After
Welcome screens immediately invites the userwith visuals that establish the bold, punchy B/R brand while the copy declares the value. We kept CTAs simple, only having them present when an action can be taken and removing disabled states. We included optimized search in a prominent position and included a progress indicator at the top to encourage the user through a short process.
Product Compromises
Community Selection Screen
- Design and Product disagreed on whether or not to show all B/R community offerings in the following section. Product wanted to show every team, league, and interest, letting users sort through the full list. Design cited research showing users who selected a team spent only 30 to 40 seconds on the page, suggesting no one browsed the full list anyway (it remained searchable regardless). Adding horizontal tabs for leagues and interests, Design argued, wasn't worth the performance cost or cognitive complexity it added.
- Engineering assured Design that performance shouldn't be noticeably slower with the full library of options if we built in loading lists. The new tab style we chose was subtle enough that we thought it may be something that users who don't want it, don't notice it, and users who do want it, see it.
Step 2
Notification Opt-In
Before
B/R1.0 had an extensive customization step for notification opt-ins but by the time we started this redesign, it had been cut from the flow completely; an ask from executives who wanted to 'just get more users in the app'. The only Notification opt-in B/R currently had in place was a pop-up modal in app.
After
Looping Alert Animation comprised of a mix of alerts based on communities the user chose to follow (programmed generic will be default). The persistent cart at the bottom enforces the relationship between followed communities and personalized alerts.
Step 3
Account Opt-In & Onboarding Success
Before
Account opt-in has never been an individual step in the onboarding flow for B/R, it was solely a button at the beginning of the flow hidden underneath the primary CTA to start onboarding.
After
With the North Star of our 2.0 App revolving around social integrations, we felt there was great value in showcasing that users needed an account to utilize social features. The progress bar at the top is complete, indicating this is the last step of onboarding. Again, I designed the copy to be bold to convey the value of account registration; social abilities. The rotating animation displays key social features such as posting, commenting, polling, and firing. The persistent cart is here to keep the user understanding that this is all related to their personalization.
Outcome
Changing the way NFL fans watch football
This work put the NFL on the map as one of the few mobile applications that can *legally stream live football games. We expanded over the course of two years to ensure fans had quality experience on Web and CTV as well. Through collaboration and trust, our team was able to go through heavy executive pressure and intense Reddit scrutiny to iterate across launches and deliver a streaming platform that allows seamless game watching throughout various phases of the season, with an emphasis on new live content. This project also set the baseline for future streaming goals and possibilities and allowed us to have a deeper understanding of our user base.
Nothing was cooler than watching the first product I lead to launch get pulled up by the guy sitting next me on the plane.
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