Project One : Doorknock Property Agent Portal
Enhancing user engagement through a free trial onboarding experience, and optimizing the onboarding flow to support seamless adoption, confidence, and retention .
Role
Product Designer
Team member
1 x Product Designer (me)
1 x Project Manager
1 x Business Analyst
Duration
8 Sprints (2 weeks x 4)
A screenshot showcasing the onboarding free trial designed to help property agents explore how the Doorknock app can be used as a lead generation tool.Context
Doorknock is a mobile-first platform designed to help real estate agents identify, engage, and connect off-market buyers and sellers more efficiently.
Despite its potential, the app faced significant usability issues. Many agents struggled to understand key features and benefits, and the overall value proposition was unclear—leading to low engagement and limited adoption.
This case study explores a key UX initiative: redesigning the onboarding experience through a free trial that highlights premium features. The goal was to improve clarity, demonstrate value early, and boost user engagement before requiring sign-up.
Redesigning Onboarding Through Agile Sprint Execution
I took over the existing app design and used Azure DevOps with agile sprint planning to structure tasks, track progress, and align the team during the onboarding redesign.
Problem Diagnosed
Doorknock is designed to help real estate agents find and connect with off-market buyers and sellers. However, many agents had trouble using the app. They didn’t understand what the app was for, how to use it, or what value it offered.
The main issues were poor usability, unclear navigation, and a lack of guidance. As a result, agents felt confused and unsure, which led to low sign-ups, weak engagement, and poor retention.
These challenges showed that a clear, helpful onboarding process was needed to introduce the app’s value, guide users through key features, and build their confidence early on.
Problem Discover & Learn about user
User interview to identify the root of the problem
To understand the root cause of low engagement, I interviewed real estate agents and discovered a recurring theme: users didn't clearly understand the app's purpose or how to use its features effectively. I translated these insights into a Lean Canvas to define user pain points, align business goals with design strategy, and shape the foundation for ideation and testing.
Using Empathy Mapping to Uncover Agent Needs and Improve Prospecting Workflows
I leveraged empathy mapping to understand agent's real needs and workflows. It uncovered pain points and helped define essential features to better support their off-market prospecting and client interaction.
Refining Personas to Reflect the True End User
One of the existing personas used by the company was a property investor. However, from a UX perspective, this persona was misaligned with the core purpose of the Doorknock app.
Property investors typically own or sell property but do not act as real estate agents. They are not involved in day-to-day prospecting, lead generation, or client management—key functions the app is designed to support. In other words, they do not "wear the hat" of an agent.
Including this persona in the design process diverted focus away from the app’s true end users. To ensure the product meets real user needs, it was essential to redefine the user personas and focus on active real estate agents who engage directly with off-market buyers and sellers.
To better align with the real users of the Doorknock app, I defined three key personas:Independent Agent – A solo real estate professional managing their own prospecting, client engagement, and sales pipeline. This persona reflects the growing number of self-managed agents leveraging mobile tools for agility and efficiency.
Agent with Team Members – An agent who operates within a team, sharing leads, coordinating tasks, and collaborating on sales opportunities. This persona represents agents who require workflow visibility and seamless communication within their team structure.
Real Estate Business Owner – An agency owner responsible for overseeing multiple agents, monitoring performance, and scaling operations. This persona needs high-level insights, lead tracking, and management capabilities to support business growth.
These personas are well-suited to today’s property industry, where mobility, collaboration, and performance tracking are essential. By grounding the design process in these user types, the case study stays focused on delivering practical, high-impact solutions for those actively driving property transactions—ensuring the Doorknock app supports real agent workflows and business goals.
Problem statement
To address these challenges, it became clear that a focused, relevant onboarding experience was needed—one that introduced the app’s value early, guided agents through key features, and aligned with real-world workflows of independent agents, team-based agents, and business owners.
Critical insight emerged: users don’t fear commitment as much as they fear the unknown. A traditional trial feels transactional, while a guest pass feels like an invitation. At the same time, an unhappy flow, too many steps upfront, reduced adoption. The more effort required at the start, the less likely agents committed. This highlighted the need for a fast, frictionless trial that built confidence quickly.
Based on the problem statement, I developed the hypothesis that a targeted onboarding experience:
Hypothesis: If we create a focused onboarding experience that clearly communicates value, guides agents through key features aligned with their workflows, and frames the trial as an inviting guest pass enhanced with soft perks that deliver immediate, tangible value, then users will feel more motivated to explore, leading to higher engagement, adoption, retention, and upgrades.
Success measure
To assess the impact of the new onboarding design, I focused on two key metrics:
Onboarding Completion Rate: Percentage of users who complete the entire onboarding flow.
Trial-to-Signup Conversion Rate: Percentage of users who convert from the free trial to a full account after onboarding.
Defining the Solution Through User Stories
Based on the problem statement and research, I created user stories to guide a user-focused onboarding experience. Looking at the journey from the agent’s perspective defined tasks, motivations, and the app’s role.
This ensured the onboarding flow matched workflows, explained value clearly, and helped agents get started with key features.
Research also confirmed agents needed a digital tool to support their daily tasks. The core jobs this design supported included:
A landing page showing property leads on the map.
A video + testimonial page to build credibility.
FAQs after the video for quick clarity.
A guided onboarding experience to grasp the app quickly.
Clear explanation of pricing.
To guide the design process, I developed a user story that outlines key requirements from the user’s perspective, which is critical in Agile for aligning features with real user needs:
As an agent using the app,
I want to have a clear and guided onboarding experience that shows me the app’s value and how to use key features,
So that I can quickly understand how it supports my realestate prospecting daily tasks and feel confident using it regularly.
2. Ideation to the Brainstorm Solution
Turning user insights into structure with affinity mapping
By applying affinity mapping to synthesize user insights across the app, I was able to surface key usability patterns and pain points. This holistic analysis informed a more focused onboarding strategy—one that clearly communicates the app’s value and aligns with user expectations from the outset.
Shaping User Experiences Through Flow Mapping
After gathering insights from affinity mapping, I brainstormed solutions and developed user flows to create clear, intuitive designs that effectively meet user needs.
3 . From Sketching to lo-fi prototype
Using Sketching to Conceptualize an Agent-Centered Onboarding Process
I used Sketch throughout the Doorknock redesign to rapidly transform research insights into practical designs. Beginning with low-fidelity wireframes, I tested new layouts for key features, including the onboarding video landing page, the terms and conditions page required by business owners, and the demo pages.
To validate and improve the design, I created an interactive prototype and conducted usability testing with six participants, gathering valuable feedback to refine the experience.
Before running user tests, I gave the app a redesign—cleaning up visuals, streamlining navigation, and resolving obvious usability issues.
This way, when testers came onboard, their attention was on exploring the core features and sharing meaningful feedback, rather than being distracted by avoidable design flaws.
4 . User Testing
Once the redesign was complete, I tested the app remotely with users to see how well it met their needs.
Their feedback highlighted pain points and opportunities, which I quickly refined into updates that made the experience smoother, more engaging, and more satisfying.
The prototype shown here represents the MVP version tested with users.User Testing Task: Onboarding Flow Validation
🔍 What to Test:
The newly designed onboarding experience for the Doorknock app, including:
Value proposition messaging
Feature walkthrough screens
Workflow relevance for different agent types
🎯 Objective:
To evaluate whether the onboarding flow effectively communicates the app’s value, clearly introduces key features, and aligns with the real-world workflows of independent agents, team-based agents, and real estate business owners.
The key finding from the user testing are below:
User prefers to use the map over the location bar to look for leads.
One free credit is not attracted enough to the user.
The user prefers locating leads directly on the map rather than using the search bar to enter a location.
They often overlook the message bar, as their primary focus is on interacting with leads on the map.
Users are confused with the terms under the property status.
For this case study, a customized Severity Rating Scale was developed to evaluate the onboarding flow, ensuring alignment with the hypothesis and testing objectives.
With confidence in our problem and hypothesis, I increased the fidelity of the prototype into several features , we tested these prototypes with users. Here is key learning from testing with users:
Effective Onboarding: 80% of users successfully completed key tasks during the user testing, indicating that the onboarding process guides them efficiently through initial setup and feature discovery.
Trial Speed is Everything: Users favored fast starts with minimal effort, confirming that low friction increases adoption.
Soft Perks Drive Engagement: When users saw something tangible (credits, previews, or interactive maps), they felt immediate value and were more likely to continue.
Recommendations
Integrate hands-on interaction to explore the features o the map.
User needs more free Doorknock credit to be encourage join the app.
Include more relevant property details under the property status section.
