Doing Freemium Responsibly

Researching how to properly convert to freemium, and solving a paradox.

This is the full case study!

2-min summary here.

Skills demonstrated

User Research
Testing
Affinity Mapping
Ideation Brainstorming
Mockup
Prototyping
Primary Research
Secondary Research
Persona
Storyboarding

Platform

VR and Web

Main Tools

Figma
Miro
Google Meet
Google Suite

Date Range

Jul 20th 2021
to Aug 31 2021

Intro

Mid-2021, word came from our exec team that our products are going to be free to use. Business reasons aside, this was an exciting opportunity for more people to experience the joys of creating cool stuff in VR, and that was my motivating factor.

Planning

Soon after, I had a discussion with several members of my company to ensure we were all on the same page on what some of these changes will look like and how we might approach them. Granted, there were still a lot of unanswered questions, but we knew that we had to revise:

One limitation of the free version was that it would export to a public gallery, viewable by everyone. As a company, we knew we wanted to test whether people would be okay with this - with this limitation, is free good enough for them? I knew I had to play an active role in this big transition because this directly affected our current and future users.

Discussions with my teammates and execs made it clear that we were targeting users who had many similarities to our existing users, but with less of a professional edge. By going free, we were also appealing to users who simply enjoyed creativity as a hobby.
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I used two test participant recruitment websites to find 5 testers who fit that persona adequately. While I waited for participants to sign up, I was also making low-fidelity designs for the website, pricing page, launcher and export phase of our app (free users can only export to the public gallery).

The design/develop paradox

While doing this I came across a problem - the devs have very limited resources. I couldn't ask them to make changes on some whim and test the complicated journey with participants. Unlike 2D mobile/web based solutions, each implementation here was many weeks of commitment and problem solving for the developers. How did I get around this problem?

The solution was in realizing that we're not testing software here - we're testing the user's satisfaction with our messaging and freemium model. There was no need for them to actually get in the app as long as they got a clear understanding of our journey. A realistic prototype of the journey will be enough to give us the insights we need to do this properly.

It was clear what I had to do - I had to make a convincing looking prototype of our entire planned journey, from our homepage until the user exports something, and get their feedback that way. So I did just that.

There were still some unanswered questions about our monetization model and public gallery. In this first phase of design, our messaging was  still vague at times, and the public gallery was not yet viewable.

First tests and findings

I scheduled and conducted the tests with the simulated journey. The focus of this test was partially to check the integrity of our onboarding journey, but mainly to see how users felt as they understood what our freemium model meant for them.

I compiled notes from all 5 tests into an affinity map:

Most of the feedback was promising for our freemium model. Generally, the participants liked the idea the fully featured app, and the intention behind our free model. There was definitely some confusion about what we meant by "creative commons", and unanswered questions about how monetization of work would happen under this license.

By this point we had also landed on how the public gallery would work, so I designed and included functionality for that in the post-export phase in the simulation.

I prepared for round 2 with a different set of impartial testers.

Second tests and findings

After scheduling and conducting the second round of tests, I knew we had a good list of takeaways to inform our freemium model's direction. I compiled an affinity map and here were of the takeaways:

I prepared a quick presentation for my company to understand the takeaways. I'm a firm believer in the dissemination of knowledge within a company, regardless of the role they play. Everyone should know what I had gathered from these tests. As part of the presentation, I highlighted the main issues that came up and a potential solution to it.

Results

The purpose of this UX research project was to ensure that we responsibly switch over to a freemium model. Knowing what the users thought about our take on a free model, and how they would learn the details, is essential for us as a company and our users' satisfaction.

With this knowledge, we knew what the users did, and did not, care for as far as a freemium model goes, and how to adequately inform them at various points of their journey. As a bonus, I was able to squeeze in the design and testing of a barebones version of our public gallery.

With everything we had learned and designed, we were able to pass this information to the developers, who eventually incorporated most of the designs and changes in the apps.

Lessons Learned