Denys

2024

Drawer Academy — onboarding & help center

Built the onboarding and help-center infrastructure that let support scale without new hires.

Role
Design Lead — service design, IA, UX writing, content system
Team
1 PM, 2 engineers, customer success lead
Timeline
16 weeks · ongoing

Context

[ Why onboarding mattered at this stage: every new account needed a 45-minute call; CS couldn't keep up with sales; trials that didn't get a call rarely converted. ]

[ What existed before: a Notion page? Loom videos? A chat widget? Be concrete about the mess. ]

Problem

[ The measurable gap. E.g. trial-to-paid was X% with a call and Y% without. Or: N% of support conversations were "how do I…" questions already answered somewhere. ]

My role

[ You designed the system, not just screens: the onboarding checklist, the help-center IA, the article template, the tooltips-in-product pattern, and how CS writes new articles without design. Say what you owned and what you handed off. ]

Process & key decisions

Mapping the questions

[ How you audited support conversations (Intercom export, tagging, clustering). The top clusters and what they told you about the product. ]

Clustered support questions
Support questions clustered by product area — [what stood out].

Decision 1 — In-product first, help center second

[ Why the primary surface is inside the app (checklist, empty states, contextual tips) and the help center is the fallback. What you deliberately did not build. ]

Decision 2 — A content system CS can run

[ The article template, naming rules, and review flow. How you kept quality without becoming the bottleneck. ]

Decision 3 — [name the decision]

[ Another decision with a trade-off. ]

Solution

Onboarding checklist in the product
The onboarding checklist — [caption].
After
Before
BeforeAfter
Help center before and after the redesign.
Help article template
Article template — [caption].

Impact

+18 pts
Trial → paid without an onboarding call
Vs. previous quarter
−52%
'How do I' support conversations
Intercom tags, 12 weeks
0
New support hires needed
While accounts grew [x]%

[ Replace with real figures and how you measured them. ]

What I'd do differently

[ What you'd change in hindsight — sequencing, tooling, ownership. ]