
Blim’s Recruitment Assessment
Context
Cultural Insights:
Mexicans are cautious when using their debit/credit cards.
Objective:
Design a solution that converts users and avoids free trial abuse.
Ideal scenario for the user-
Have Free Trial -> Register card -> Pay -> Enjoy Blim
Problem with business: This leads to users abusing the free trials, since there’s no way to verify duplicity other than a credit card. (and a phone)
Ideal scenario for business:
Register card -> Have Free Trial -> Pays for subscription.
Problem with users : There’s a high dropout in the card register process which means less subscribers.

Chosen methodology:
Somewhat obvious, but our approach is based on IDEO’s design thinking.

Step 1: Empathize
Every user’s fears and motivations have a root cause (or several).
Identifying such causes allows us to analyse which pains we can alleviate, and which motivations to reinforce. In order to do this a user research plan needs to be put to action selecting the necessary tools according to the current case.
Task 1: Explorative Interviews:
- Input: an interview plan using open questions focusing on behaviours and context.
- Objective: Identify the user’s main context, specifically focusing on discovering what does he fear about not registering for a free trial. Also, his motivations and expectations on the platform.
- Output: Persona’s information, real and more detailed fears and motivations as well as their root causes, insights on alternatives to increase its motivation.
Task 2: “Friendly messages” Brainstorming :
- Input: A set of people, Brainstorming material (markers, post-its)
- Objective: Let the real users help us to define the tone in which they feel safe, so all the messages and dialogues within the register process doesn’t feel hostile and encourages conversions
- Output: A specific tone and a set of messages that when used during the registration process increase their motivation.
Task 3: Competition Analysis
- Input: Competitor’s sites, articles, research papers.
- Objective: Know how the competition is already doing this. Free trials and credit card registration is nothing new.

- Output: Inspiration or solutions about how other companies have overcome this obstacle. Gives us a better glance at something that, not only, has been proven to work before, but also to the things the users are already used to. There’s no need to reinvent the wheel.
After executing all of the before mentioned tasks, the output should be as follows:
- Users Personas completely defined . (context, drives, behaviours)
- What truly motivates them to use blim.
- What they really fear when registering a card.
- Insights on how to create user value without the need of giving free access.

Step 2: Define
In this step, since the scope was already defined by the pals at Blim, we’d only have to compliment with the info gathered on the previous step. Lets say that in our user research we found out that
- Mexicans are cautious about inputting their credit card, BUT the real reason is because they fear to forget about cancelling the subscription.
Thus , the defined problem would be: How can we reduce the user’s fear of forgetting to cancel his subscription, while increasing the user’s desire to register for a free trial?
Off the record: if the problem wasn’t defined on the assessment instructions, this step will be all about gathering the insights data. Then use empathy maps or prioritise jobs-stories in order. This in order to synthesise the problem in order to fit the scope, but also leaves some space for creativity and user value creation.
Step 3: Ideate
Now that we have a problem to focus on , and the information necessary to solve it, we can IDEATE ✨.
- For this step my first task will be to analyse the current platform’s sign up process in order to compare it to what our users like and dislike (gathered on the first step) so that we know what to keep and what needs to be improved.

After we’ve decided what works and doesn’t, the team can start a brainstorming session. For this at least one person from each branch of the departments involved on this project’s scope has to be present. This means, a developer, a UI Designer, a UX designer, product owner, probably a stakeholder and , an actual user.
Once we’ve gathered all of the peeps on a room with plenty of post-its and markers, it’s time to get creative. On my experience, I’ve found that Google’s Design Sprint brainstorming technique works pretty well , makes everyone feel involved in the design process and gets the most out of everyone’s ideas.
- It’s basically individual sketching for solutions, going from the most abstract point (an idea to solve the problem) to an actual UI mockup of how it will look. Next some voting rounds, focusing on grouping ideas and also giving everyone in the room fresh perspectives.
- One to three ideas should be t.
- Afterwards, each will be evaluated during the second sketch round.
Step 4: Prototype
Now that we have our ground breaking ideas on how to increase the user’s motivation, it’s time to transform something complex into an easy, nice looking, functional and usable solution.

It could be on a napkin sketch, a handmade draw, balsamiq wireframes, high fidelity mockups on Sketch and/or some interactive stuff on Invision, the idea of this step is to come out with a prototype that represents the solution while using real representative data/images/text so it can be tested as fast as possible.
Step 5: VALIDATE
Thinking about how to test the solution was a tough one. At first I was gonna go with some sort of usability testing mixed with interview. It is expected for the user to tell me wether he’d subscribe or not, how he felt and if the product was usable
But after thinking about it I found a problem: I can’t ask the users to think about future scenarios, they’ll never know if my interface WILL make them subscribe to a service until they actually have the desire to subscribe and are comfortably sitting on their couch with their credit card on hand.
This had to be tested on a real context. In order for the user to make real decisions.
This, in my opinion, leads to a particular case on the testing phase: Instead of testing low fidelity wireframes with a couple of users (this would get us qualitative data) a more quantitative approach is needed: A/B Testing on production servers to identify if people actually subscribe more with our new solution.
Step 4,5,∞ : Iterate
After having a winner on which experiment generates more subscription, it’s time to refine it. Go back to step 3, think about even better ways of improving it, maybe do some interviews on what frustrates the user about this solution, then test and keep iterating.
Rejoice. You’ve completed a user-centered design process.

Proposed Solution
Did I mention that this plan was brainstormed with some colleagues? Even though we didn’t do any user research, or validated the proposed solution..
We did brainstormed and iterated. And the result is as follows:
