Dustid: overhauling an app’s onboarding process

A volunteer task to attract and retain new users

Project overview

As a volunteer, my task was to take the existing onboarding frames and to improve and change them to become more modern and cleaner.

Challenge

Keep the essence of the app Dustid while modernizing its appearance, in order to be marketed to a wider user base.

Project details

Duration: January 2026 to present

Tools used: Figma, GIMP photo editing software, ChatGPT

Challenges: Lack of references/icons, no existing user feedback to work with

First draft

Going into this project, I had a call with the founder of the app. He told me that he wanted to first minimize the amount of frames users had to swipe through just to get started. The second thing mentioned was how he wanted a less-cluttered onboarding process.

Before I could begin, he sent me a clipped video of what the process currently looked like. As seen below, this is what I had to work with as a reference.

With that in mind, I was able to come up with a first draft. Going in I knew I wanted to cut down the amount of frames a user would see to the bare minimum that it would take to show all features. I did want to move the progress dotes to the top, as it would alleviate the issue of having to focus on multiple things at the bottom.

Key things for this first iteration: I wasn’t given any parameters about how to proceed at this point.

Feedback received

While he thought what I came up with was good, it wasn’t what he exactly wanted. “At the moment, what you've shared feels too close to the existing screens. As I flagged during our conversation, a key priority was to make fuller use of the slide real estate to elevate the storytelling and impact.” He then shared an AI-generated image that was more in line with what he was thinking of, and moving forward I used that as a basis.

Steps for next iteration

  • Focus on engaging UX/UI

  • Design something that wasn’t too close to the app’s existing screens

  • Elevate the storytelling and impact via maximizing the frames’ space

    • Increase the size of the images

    • Get peoples’ attention so they can skim the information

Second draft

Completing this took about half a week, as I had a good basis to work with. I did have to request more reference images for this, but they were given and as such were greatly beneficial. Between the first draft and now, I additionally received an AI-generated set of images that helped point me in the right direction; this was on top of what I was able to generate, using ChatGPT.

Changes made

  • Removed two redundant screens in order to ensure onboarding was easier.

  • Removed the “Next” button to clear up space.

  • Moved the text to the top to be more clearer and easier to read.

    • Text was also fixed to be more concise.