Doing Freemium Responsibly

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

This is the 2-min summary!

Case study 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.

Planning

I had a discussion with several members of my company to ensure we were all on the same page. 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 test this.
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While I waited for participants to sign up for testing, I was also making low-fidelity designs for the website, pricing page, launcher and export phase of our app.

The design/develop paradox

We had limited resources, including dev time. But making changes to the app is complex. We can't test what does not exist. How did I solve this?

The answer is that we're not testing software here - we're testing the user's satisfaction with our messaging and freemium model. A prototype of the journey will be enough to give us what we need.

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

Most of the feedback was promising for our freemium model. There were some ambiguities we could work on though.

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.

Results

The purpose of this UX research project was to ensure that we responsibly switch over to a freemium model.
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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.

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