Zero State Experience
North One | August 2025 | Product Design
Overview
Built an onboarding experience to drive account activation by guiding small business owners into actions that created sticky, profitable accounts.
Role
Product Design
Team
Jacob Lang (Design)
Jordan Anderson (Design)
Sarah Luke (Product)
Chris Morris (Dev lead)
Brandon Carlos (Team lead)
Timeline
1 week (hackathon)
Problem
North One's existing onboarding experience lacked hierarchy that guided small business owners towards activating their account.
Our data team identified reaching six transactions as the “key moment” which created an active, regularly transacting customer. We analyzed the makeup of the initial six transactions and uncovered that they consisted of three key items:
1.
Initial account funding
2.
Card transaction
3.
Deposits from third-party integrations
After signup, users landed on the dashboard with little guidance, receiving segmented in-app and email communications. Without prioritization toward the right actions, they churned at higher frequency than users who completed initial setup steps.
Our objective:
Re-envision the existing onboarding experience to ensure users reached the six transaction milestone, activating their account.
Discovery & Validation
We hypothesized that a guided experience would drive activation instead of the existing, passive state.
Our competitive analysis uncovered that most products that actually drove real setup outcomes utilized an onboarding wizard or checklist with some form of congratulatory step at the end of the flow.
We decided our best bet was to surface highest-priority actions immediately after signup and persist them in a checklist after users exited our initial flow.
Testing
AI prototyping validated our hypothesis and revealed key gaps in the details.
We used Figma Make to quickly user test a prototype of our hypothesis. Due to the solution’s straightforward nature, reactions to the main structure were great. Problems emerged in the details of what was proposed:
1.
Users needed to be able to skip or defer actions, even if they intended to complete them.
2.
Without incentives like sign-up bonuses high friction steps were less likely to be completed.
3.
Copy needed to be convincing without being over-explanatory.
Solution
Our solution extended activation across the product through a persistent completion system.
Activation rarely happens in a single session. For users who exited the initial flow, incomplete actions remained accessible through a dedicated setup page and a persistent progress banner anchored to key screens across the product. The banner displayed the percentage of completed onboarding actions and returned users directly to their checklist on tap.
FAQs were added at the bottom of the setup page to address common points of friction and reduce drop-off. Once all actions were completed or manually dismissed, the banner disappeared.
Feature 1
Setup tab with FAQ page
A dedicated space for small business owners who exited the initial flow to complete setup on their own terms, with an FAQ page to address common points of friction.
Feature 2
Setup CTAs that drive users to specific activation flows
Each checklist item linked directly into its corresponding activation flow, removing the navigation gap between the checklist and completion.
Feature 3
Persistent progress tracker
A progress banner anchored to key screens displayed the percentage of completed onboarding actions and returned small business owners directly to their checklist on tap.
Impact
Improved activation and early-session progression.
Activation and early-session progression improved meaningfully over four months. Completion of funding and first card transactions increased, and retention signals strengthened around the six-transaction milestone. The framework established by this project went on to inform future activation and growth initiatives.
15.3%
Increase in activation over 2 months
More work
North One Scheduled ACH PaymentsProduct Design
2025
© Jacob Lang 2026. Made with 🧀 & ❤️ in Pittsburgh PA.