Redesigning Microsoft Power Automate Getting Started Experience
Part of the Microsoft Developer Division is the Microsoft Power Platform, a suite of low-code development tools and services that allows customers to create applications, automate workflows, analyze data, and build websites.
Although the apps are designed to require relatively little coding experience, learning to build your own process automation 'flows' is still quite complicated and usually requires weeks to achieve proficiency.
The Power Automate module provides critical components to power the rest of the platform. Developer Division Research team had feedback, user data and telemetry that revealed new Power Automate customers were often struggling in the initial onboarding process. To address this, Microsoft initiated a project to redesign the getting started experience for Power Automate, focusing on applying UX best practices and customer research-driven decision making to significantly improve customer adoption numbers. If this experience was successful, it would likely set the standard for other complex Developer Division products.
-- The Process --
Research Phase
The UX and research team members conducted extensive customer research to understand pain points and opportunities.
Customer Surveys Sent to newer Power Automate customers
In-depth Interviews Conducted with 50+ customers
Telemetry Analytics Looking for drop-off points
Competitor Analysis Identify best technical onboarding patterns
3 day design thinking excercise find inovative soltions
Research Findings
We clearly had our work cut out for us...
The good news:
CSAT numbers were actually pretty good for those who did adopt the product
NPS also good (above 60%) when customers finished onboarding
The bad news:
Churn early in our aquisition funnel was killing our customer adoption
Time to first meaningful action (building their first flow) was the most ceritical milestone and needed to improve
12% would prefer an online class (these were avail in many places already)
56% new customers said they felt overwhelmed by the interface
23% struggled to understand where to begin
32% wanted clear explanations of real-world use cases
68% wanted more templates and examples
54% of people who logged in to the product for the first time never logged in again :-(
Define Phase
Target Personas:
Non-technical professionals
Technical college students
Microsoft Office Customer
Efficient, High achiever
All busy people, juggling too much, time is precious
Project Goals
Improve customer onboarding and reduce drop-off rates
Increase customer confidence and competence in creating their first app
Enhance overall customer satisfaction with the Power Automate product
Based on the research findings, the team developed several design concepts, incorporating UX best practices from our experience and competitive analysis. The main challenge was to find a solution that worked for the majority of persona types and required the least effort and time.
We landed on 5 patterns:
Progressively Disclose Complexity: Introducing features gradually to avoid overwhelming new customers
Guided Lesson: Sequential step-by-step tutorials for creating a basic 'flows'
Helper Mode: User-guided inline tooltips and help content allows you to hover to learn
Personalized Experience: Tailoring the getting started process based on customer roles and goals as a way to reduce features and complexity
Visual Classroom: Extensive tutorials, videos, and interactive lessons
Features we needed to mock up:
Welcome Dashboard A personalized homepage with clear starting points for different customer types and a library of use case examples and templates to start from. Intro Videos Short videos of various length intended to teach and increased people's willingness to proceed. Guided Tutorial "On rails" step-by-step walkthrough guide demonstrating the basic features Template Gallery An expanded collection of pre-built templates with clear use cases AI Help Panel An ever-present AI-drivien sidebar provides contextual tips and recommendations Progress Tracking Service:Enable onboarding progress system that notifys customer success team to intervine when all else fails
Testing Prototypes
I created multiple realistic interactive prototypes of each new getting started experience. Then, we conducted usability testing with 30 participants and multiple iterations. This allowed for refinement along the way and very clear and direct customer feedback.
Fortunately, we already had a huge collection of marketing copy, illustrations and videos. And the design team utilized an extensive design system and color library for the Power Platform. This made it possible to do nearly full fidelity click-through mockups very quickly.
-- Outcomes --
The final design recommendation incorporated these elements:
New Welcome Page Improved personalized landing page with clear starting points for different customer types
1 min Intro Video Broad overview that increased in the number of customers successfully engaging more and getting to creating their first flow
Multiple In-product Guided Tutorials increase new customer success by demonstrating product features in place and in a hurry
Start with and Example A section on the welcome page that intrduces working samples and templates
Standard Help Content increase in overall customer aquisition
Additional getting stared content in external marketing focused external pages
Design System Additions:
Business Impact
Many months later, this design was available to real customers. Telemetery and post launch research numbers were fantastic.
33% increase in the number of customers successfully creating their first flow during their first visit
16% increase in new customer satisfaction scores for the post onboarding survey
18% reduction in support tickets related to getting started issues
12% increase in overall customer aquisition
Results this good weren't common at Microsoft—especially for design-led initiatives.
Lessons Learned
By leveraging UX best practices and winning interaction patterns we were able to build an intuitive getting started experience for Power automate.
One of the more important insights we gained—the product was very powerful and capable, but also extremely flexible and customizable. This created a fairly difficult system to learn. Overall, it took a lot of motivation and time to become expert.
Some benefits of our approach:
Customer research is crucial to frame the problem and identify real pain points and customer needs
Quickly creating 5 high-fidelity click-through prototypes really fueled our testing sessions without any engineering investment
Truly understanding the customer journey and context allowed us to provide a simple, quick and intuitive workflow
Progressive disclosure helps prevent overwhelming new customers
Personalization based on customer roles and goals significantly improved engagement and reduced the scope of onboarding
Understanding the customer context and showing them (not telling) worked well to explain complex tools and workflows
Our final ecommendations were base on comprehnsive customer research
Establishing a baseline experience and gathering continuous feedback are essential for optimizing the customer experience
This project increased overall customer satisfaction, contributed to increased adoption and reduced the cost of aquisition for the Power Automate platform. Overall the project was a huge win for the design team, product team and company.
