OVERVIEW
This case study covers how we diagnosed our top-of-funnel drop-offs, mapped user friction through affinity clustering, and rebuilt the homepage into a dynamic, zero-scroll command center & workspace.
Collaborators
Purti Hardikar - Product Designer & PM
Annika Harmsen - Developer
Timeline
October 2026 : Shipped
Scope
Product Scoping
Product Management
Pro
PROBLEM
Acelab's Home page was confusing..
If you landed on Acelab before this redesign, you hit a wall of static UI.
Every visitor landed on the exact same generic page. Whether an enterprise user came in through an email workflow or a solo designer signed up organically, they hit a dead-end wall of static UI with no contextual orientation.
SOLUTION
A dynamic smart-homepage that adapts to your progress in real time.
The redesign transformed Acelab’s legacy homepage into a single, adaptive, action-outcome-oriented experience that dynamically responds to user intent, activities and action.
Find a material
Start exploring with a suggested query or your own search.
From setup to workspace
Create your first project, then return to the work that matters.
Catch up with your team
Open recent work, review comments, and see project activity from home.
OUTCOMES
How did we measure the success of the redesign?
A 30 / 60 / 90-day plan to track whether the homepage helps users explore, start a project, and return with their team.
Measurement plan · Results pending. Compare each cohort with the pre-launch baseline, separating self-serve sign-ups from invited users.
30
days · Activation
Find the first value
First-session activation rate
Share of new users who search, browse, or save a product in their first session.
Also track: early drop-off and search engagement.
60
days · Project adoption
Start meaningful work
Time to first project
Median time from sign-up to project creation; for invited users, time to opening the shared project.
Also track: project creation rate and import adoption.
90
days · Retention
Return with the team
30-day project retention
Share of activated users who return to a project within 30 days.
Also track: repeat project use and team collaboration.
MY ROLE
Led this project as a product manager & designer
I led the end-to-end product lifecycle: framing the core problem, scoping the project, authoring the PRD, and writing engineering tickets. Beyond defining success metrics, I designed every state that engineering built against.
Discovery & research
Pulled PostHog funnels, CX tickets, stakeholder meetings and competitor benchmarks into one affinity map.
Strategy & scope
Scored 30 widgets for value and effort to define the MVP scope, documented deferred items, and authored Linear tickets to kick off execution.
Interaction & motion
Designed the Launchpad, its celebration, inline replies and every empty, error and viewer state and tested iterations and prototypes in Claude Code.
PROBLEM WITH THE CURRENT PAGE
Every user landed on the exact same homepage..
Whether an enterprise user came in through an email workflow or a solo architect signed up organically, they hit a dead-end wall of static UI with no contextual orientation.
We identified UX and user pain points during the audit.
1
“Welcome back” greets brand-new users too.
2
Key tools hide in a nested sidebar under General Research.
3
“Pick up where you left off” shows one project, with no comments or team updates.
4
Project creation is a small card, named differently from the modal.
5
Marketing gets the same weight as work, so it “feels like ads”.
6
Search sits in the top bar, and almost nobody used it (PostHog).
BUSINESS GOALS
After Series A, Acelab as a product had to sell itself.
After the Series A, Acelab bet on product-led growth: users sign up, find value and bring their team without a sales call. That made the top of the funnel, from sign-up to first project, the most important part of the product.
SCOPING THE DESIGN BRIEF
From 33 ideas to 3 impact solutions areas
The feedback funnels were very detailed, I identified the core friction points and narrowed the project down to three high-impact areas to solve by analyzing heat-map click paths and key drop-off triggers.
01:
Search was barely used
Low engagement plagued the top-nav bar, and the search feature went largely unused.
02:
Over 90% never scrolled
Product spotlights below the fold went completely unseen, making a zero-scroll homepage mandatory.
03:
Generic
Expereience
Invited users hit a brand-new sign-up flow that hid their shared team project data.
UNDERSTANDING THE USER TYPES
From this we established the home page served two types of users
Through affinity mapping of our research data, we identified two core user segments with distinct onboarding needs based on how they entered the platform:
The Self-Serve Explorer
Organic sign-ups arriving without orientation.
Pain Point: Stalled by a blank-slate dashboard.
Solution: Guided prompts, actions to take without projects.
The problem was both user segments encountered a static, one-size-fits-all homepage experience.
Defining the First Meaningful Action
We mapped out how each user persona accesses the homepage and defined their primary First Meaningful Action (FMA) to ensure the entry point immediately delivers value:
What would be the first meaningful action for a first time and a recurring user?
We defined a different starting point for each journey: create a first project for self-serve users, and open shared work for invited teammates.
The homepage brings the relevant next step into view, using onboarding progress and team activity to guide users into meaningful project work.
THINKING LIKE A PM BUILDING LIKE A DESGINER
EXPLORED
Personalized homepages
A distinct experience for each user type
EXPLORED
Activity-first homepage
A feed centered on recent team work
CONCEPT OPTION
Task-first homepage
A focused checklist of next actions for the user to track their experience
✓ Selected for MVP
Dynamic widgets
One framework, changing with user progress
OUR APPROACH TO THE REDESIGN
Why we chose dynamic widgets?
To avoid an engineering bottleneck and maximize ROI, I scoped a unified dynamic widget architecture : A single framework that swaps states based on acquisition path rather than building separate pages.
What earned a spot in v1
Launchpad
How to create a project
Project updates widget
Saved products
Explore shortcuts
Trending + webinars
Product spotlight
Everything else, from admin dashboards to a customizable home, waits for MVP data. Search and Ask Ace sit above it all, on every state.
Ask Ace moved from a chat bubble into the workflow for conversational discovery
Ace evolved from an overlay chat bubble into a docked side panel, letting users query materials and compare specs without obstructing their workspace or losing context.
Fixed the loooooonggg scroll
We fixed the long scrolling homepage into a single workspace, focused homepage.
The solution was simple: breaking things down into small widgets and keeping important functions above the fold. Plus, the Launchpad was fully dismissible so users could hide it whenever they wanted.
DESIGN GOAL 02 / 03
Guide the first meaningful action
Help each user find a useful next step.
Self-serve
→
Create a project
Invited
→
Open the team project
~2m 50s median first session — make the next step obvious.
Launchpad and a one-time celebration
We added an interactive Launchpad to give users clear direction and help them navigate Material Hub with ease.
Explore shortcuts that invite a click
Features that used to hide in the sidebar now sit one click from home. On hover the circle lifts, a dashed ring turns and a dot orbits; badges that need attention pulse on their own. With reduce motion on, only the shade changes.
A short tour, only if they want one
Four steps, under a minute, skippable from the first screen and reopenable from Help. It points at the same four things the Launchpad does, so nothing is taught twice.
DESIGN GOAL 03 / 03
Turn exploration into project work
Make it easier to create a project or join shared work.
Acelab's value was in projects ; but the homepage didn't show it.
The legacy homepage treated projects as gated containers rather than the front door to the platform, hiding Acelab's core utility—live material sourcing, comparison, and specification behind unnecessary setup friction.
THE CORE TENSION
Where do new users land?
The homepage
Same cards for everyone, no first step
2–3 days
before a first project
Where the value is?
Inside a project
Schedules, Smart Docs, comments, RFIs
DESIGN SOLUTION
Every path leads to a project
Having a project is the first meaningful action in Materials Hub: schedules, Smart Docs, comments and activity all live inside one.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
Some important lessons from this project!
Having worked on the onboarding workflow for acelab.
Design for the starting point.
Self-serve users need a way to begin; invited teammates need a way into existing work. One generic welcome cannot do both.
Build rules that can adapt
A shared widget framework lets setup guidance give way to projects and team activity without separate homepages.
Scope the path to value
The MVP prioritizes discovery and project work. Personal layout controls and a larger widget library come next.
Measure meaningful progress
Track activation, project adoption, and retention—not just clicks. The 30/60/90-day plan will test whether the redesign helps.
WHATS NEXT?
The homepage was build to grow:
Next step and v2 scoping was already a part of the project.
the zones that already shipped, no redesign.
