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Experimenting with intakes

A GROWTH & ACQUISITION CASE STUDY

Context

New users exploring Candid’s educational offerings often struggled to understand which courses were most relevant to their goals. The existing experience relied on self-directed browsing, which created friction and drop-off during early exploration.

I initiated discovery that showed a guided quiz would increase interaction and engagement.

Problem

"Isla is interested in starting a nonprofit. She needs to know how to get funding and file documentation to get started but isn't sure where to start. She knows about Candid but the volume of resources is overwhelming"

Users needed guidance to identify the right courses without overwhelming them with choices. The challenge was to reduce cognitive load while maintaining clarity and trust within an existing ecosystem.

Hypothesis

If we guided users through a short, goal-oriented quiz during exploration, they would:

  • Feel more confident in their selections

  • Reach relevant content faster

  • Be more likely to register for a course

and we would:

  • have their email for retargeting

  • know more about the users seeking our product (role, time constraints, individual vs. foundation)

Role and approach

I led the end-to-end experience of a lightweight, quiz-based onboarding flow, partnering with marketing and our learning team to ensure feasibility and accurate measurement.

My focus areas included:

  • Prioritizing content based on historical data

  • Designing clear, progressive question flows

  • Creating multi-selection logic that adapted to user input

  • Writing UX copy that felt supportive (rather than promotional)

  • Ensuring the experience aligned with brand trust and accessibility standards

Solution

A guided quiz experience that asked users a small number of targeted questions and surfaced personalized course recommendations based on responses.

The design emphasized:

  • Progressive disclosure to reduce cognitive load

  • Clear visual hierarchy for scannability

  • Flexible logic to support multiple user goals

  • Direct transition from quiz to registration

Results

The experiment demonstrated a 25% increase in course registrations compared to the previous discovery flow.

Additional outcomes included:

  • User-contributed data for persona clarity

  • Clear validation of guided onboarding as an effective activation pattern

Key Takeaways

Guided experiences can significantly improve early-stage activation when users face complex choices.

  • Small, focused experiments can deliver meaningful impact without large platform changes.

  • Clear UX copy and adaptive logic are critical for maintaining trust in personalized flows.

Next Steps

Applying similar guided patterns to other high-friction entry points across the platform

A/B testing question order and depth to optimize completion rates

Personalizing recommendations further based on user role or organization type