Pro Tools

Role

UX Designer
2023-24

Tools

Figma
Qualtrics
Ethnio

Skills

Design Leadership
User Research
UX Design
Visual Design

The Opportunity

Ancestry’s Consumer Insights team conducted a series of studies to explore unmet customer needs and promising opportunities to meet them. After collecting extensive customer feedback, they identified a Pro add-on package as an especially promising business opportunity.

The team dug deeper and outlined key features, pricepoints and characteristics of users who would most likely upgrade.

When presented with a potentially big business opportunity, the executive team greenlit the project and anointed it as a top priority. I quickly transitioned to lead the design of five new features that needed to launch within months. 

The team’s business objectives centered on convincing experienced users to purchase a Pro upgrade by offering robust family research tools.

Scope & Planning

My Product Manager partner and I quickly identified the key pieces of our minimum viable product. Based on conversations with stakeholders and customers, we aggressively aimed to design, build, and release the following five features within five months:

• Tree Checker. Introduce a new service that analyzes the customer’s tree and flags potential errors. Offer flows that clearly depict problematic tree information and paths to resolution.
• Advanced Filters. Offer new ways to filter family tree information. The new filters would allow customers to swiftly locate ancestors and gain new family insights.
• Charts & Reports. Distill complex family information into easily-digestible and standardized genealogy reports.
• Maps. Overlay the customer’s tree onto a map. Offer new tools to help customers understand the social and geographic forces that shaped their ancestors’ lives and the communities that surrounded them.
• Insights. Highlight fun and interesting facts about the customer’s tree. Present them in an engaging format that encourages the user to share and collaborate with others.

With such an aggressive scope and timeframe, the design team quickly ballooned to five designers. I led the design team while also taking on several key individual contributor responsibilities. Namely, I designed Pro Tool’s most requested feature, Tree Checker. I also drove the overall Pro Tools design process forward and shaped the full package of features. 

Process

I quickly gathered relevant insights from past user research. I synthesized these findings and presented them to the broader team to help orient our work toward top user needs.

Past studies revealed some key insights about our target customers. They:

• sought better ways to manage and navigate a large family tree
• valued accurate and better quality family research
• sometimes wished to focus their work on a specific area, family line or person in their tree

The team used these to inform designs as we moved forward. 

Leading the Design Process

In addition to designing individual features, I also:

• Determined MVP functionality for all Pro Tools features
• Defined key milestones and communicated them to the team
• Initiated and led user research studies
• Led design feedback and ideation sessions
• Provided strategic feedback and support to ensure a smooth marketing rollout
• Took on additional individual contributor responsibilities when team members took vacations
• Ensured that all new features employed clean visual design and complied with accessibility standards and our design system
• Coordinated the handoff of 5 new features with several developement teams
• Gathered, synthesized and responded to user feedback during a 2-week beta period

Responding to User Feedback

Early in the process, I initiated and led several usability studies using prototypes. During the beta test period, I also monitored user feedback and led a study that focused on the beta experience. These uncovered several key insights and improvements:

• Overall, the new features seemed appealing and useful. Participants almost always expressed excitement and seemed eager to try them out. The features seemed to effectively address several key pain points.
• I updated messaging to improve usability and better align with user goals. For instance, we renamed a group of filters called “Events” to “Events & places” after discovering that users frequently sought to filter by a place. 
• Improve the first-time experience for the map. Participants expressed excitement when first seeing their family tree on a map. But they often seemed overwhelmed and struggled to quickly formulate a task or goal. The team concluded that a choreographed first-time experience could help orient users towards fruitful paths forward. 
• Streamline error-checking. I modified pieces of the error-checking flow to help streamline and clarify the process. For instance, when a user clicked on an ancestor who had a potential error, I changed the behavior so that the page opened in a new tab.

Launch & Results

The Pro Tools design team hit all its milestones which helped lead to a successful and timely launch. The team monitored metrics and feedback. Some of the highlights included:

• Pro Tools dramatically surpassed expectations and became a big success. It attracted over 200,000 repeat users and generated an additional $15 million in revenue within the first year of implementation.
• The majority of negative user feedback centered on pricing. Many users didn’t like the additional fee that Pro Tools required. Some users expressed that they would try it for a month or two and then cancel because they didn’t want to pay the additional cost over time.
• Based on user feedback, the team determined that navigation and onboarding needed some improvements. Some users struggled to find all the new features after upgrading. Others complained about the lengthy waiting period that occurred immediately after upgrading.
• Users generally expressed positive sentiments about the individual features. We did not find any major usability issues or other gaps in the experience aside from navigation. Most of the user feedback focused on feature enhancements which we regarded as a positive signal. 

What I Learned

• Mind where the seams meet. The Pro Tools team concluded that many lapses in navigation and onboarding arose because of gaps in responsibilty. Portions of the Pro Tools experience did not have crisply defined owners and, as a result, slipped through the cracks. In the future, I plan on mapping out the end-to-end experience to ensure all the critical pieces have clear owners.
• Ambitious goals that center on customer needs can inspire teams to make significant leaps forward. Passion and energy proved to be a key ingredient in the success of Pro Tools.

Also find me @

© 2023 Kevan McGowan Design. All rights reserved