Redesigning dashboard to drive 27% first-session engagement
Founding
Product Designer
PM, Developers, AI Engineer, Busdev
Context
Potis.ai is an AI recruiter that helps growing teams attract top talent. But we had a problem: most trial users never invited a candidate or even finished creating a job. Without reaching that first “aha moment,” they didn’t convert. As the sole product designer, I led a complete redesign of the dashboard to fix this.
Problem
User testing revealed that new users often got stuck at the very first step. When they landed on the dashboard, we kept hearing the same thing:
- I didn’t understand what to do next.
- It looked overwhelming, so I quit.
- This isn’t what I expected.
Approach
We started by improving the experience through small adjustments, but they didn’t solve the core issue: users didn’t get what Potis.ai was or how it could help.
Instead of making fixes onto a broken structure, we focused on a user-centric redesign with a strong emphasis on providing immediate value, clarity and empower exploration of the platform.
Solutions
Here’s how we rebuilt the experience:
1. Streamlined dashboard: The "My vacancies" section was made central, the "Add new vacancy" card is prominently displayed.
2. Demo Vacancy: New users land on a pre-filled example, not an empty screen. It sets expectations and eliminates the anxiety of “what do I do next?”
3. Nonlinear onboarding: Users can explore different paths — like previewing interviews or viewing results.
4. Subtle nudging: We introduced context-aware prompts and empty states that gently encouraged users to: create their first real vacancy, experience the candidate flow and view actionable results.
5. Cleaner UI: We removed distractions and reduced noise, making the key user journey easy to spot and follow.
Results & Learnings
User testing confirmed the redesign landed well — testers called the interface cleaner and more intuitive. But the real win came from the data — 27% of users engaged with the demo vacancy in their first session, proving they finally understood the product.
We're not done optimizing, but these results validate we're solving the right problems. This experience taught me 2 important lessons:
- UI tweaks alone can’t fix structural flaws. If users don’t see value immediately, they leave.
- First impressions means a lot.
