Anthony Zhao | InVision Whiteboard Importer Case Study

background

In 2023, economic constraints forced an increasing number of companies to do more with less. We learned from customers that tools like Miro and Mural were no longer sustainable for their budgets - they needed a way to level up their collaborative practices without breaking their budgets.

We saw an opportunity to position InVision as an affordable alternative that didn't require users to compromise on features. Unfortunately, switching tools can be expensive and burdensome. Most enterprises had 1000s of documents that they wanted to continue to access and edit. We needed a way to make migrating to InVision as seamless as possible.

Problem Statement

How might we make it easy for users to switch from their current collaboration tool to InVision Freehand?

Goals

Speed

We had prospective new users waiting on an import tool to sign a deal with InVision

Scalability

Our solution needed to minimize friction for both current and future users

Results

New contract signed by leveraging our MVP

100+

Documents imported within the first week

The Solution

A two-phase solution that prioritized speed and scalability

After speaking with our sales team, we knew that speed was key. We had multiple deals that directly hinged on users being able to move their boards from Miro.
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Together with my product and engineering partners, I designed a 2-phase solution that allowed us to quickly ship an MVP, while we built a scalable solution that would solve current and future use cases.

MVP: Importing PDFs into an existing Freehand

We knew that the ideal solution would take months, which would risk us losing users who were ready to switch. We were already working on the technology to import Miro boards as editable Freehands, but we we were weeks away from bulk importing or creating a Freehand from a PDF.

Our MVP leveraged existing technology and UI elements and would be used by the customer success team to help certain users individually import their highest priority Miro boards.

Designing for scalability

For our ideal solution, we needed our importer to be more scalable, which meant that we needed to be able to import boards in bulk. Our new solution allowed users to import their boards in bulk directly from Home, creating a new Freehand for every PDF that they upload.

The underlying technology also allowed us to import other whiteboard tools, such as Mural. We expanded the tool from just importing Miro boards, to a universal importer that could eventually import other whiteboards (such as Figjam and LucidChart) and document types (spreadsheets, presentations, etc).

Defining our MVp

For the MVP, our biggest constraint was time. With our user needs in mind, we designed a solution that would be ready to ship in 2 weeks.

Because we lacked the technology to create a new Freehand from an imported document, we had to design our MVP to be used within an existing Freehand. We knew that asking users to first create a Freehand before importing their board was not ideal, so we aimed to make our MVP a temporary solution that we would eventually remove once we launched phase 2.

One of the main considerations was where to add the feature and how much additional UI to include. After considering a few options, we decided to go with the least disruptive approach since the tool would primarily be used by users working with our customer success team and discovery was not a concern.

Scaling our solution

Designing for scalability and future use-cases

We knew from speaking to users, that importing individual documents wasn’t scalable as most users had over 15 key boards they wanted to import. Importing all of those documents into a single Freehand wasn't an ideal experience either. To address this, we changed the entry point for our importer. Our new solution allowed users to import their boards in bulk directly from Home, creating a new Freehand for every PDF that they upload.

One of the constraints was the time it would take to create each new Freehand. We didn't want users to have to wait while we converted their documents, so we designed a new notification that let users know that their document had been created.

Expanding beyond Miro

While our initial focus was on winning Miro users, we found that our technology also allowed us to import Mural boards. This caused our team to explore the possibility of adding other boards like FigJam and LucidChart, and we discovered that with a little tweaking, we could eventually add those documents as well.

Our designs were originally focused on educating users on the import process, but as our strategy changed, we wanted a more tool-agnostic design with links to how users can export their boards for different tools.

Reflection

Go to market

Creating the launch video

I worked with our marketing team on a promotional video that introduced and walked through how to use our new importer tool, which was featured on multiple social channels.

Reflection

Next Steps

Clean up the create menu

One of the next steps on our roadmap was to clean up the create menu to highlight the key use cases and reduce visual noise.

Our current create menu was cluttered with calls to action, making it easy for the import feature to get lost. Our data showed that many of the buttons weren't being used at all so we wanted to streamline the create menu to highlight the key use cases and reduce visual noise.

Reflection

Continue to expand doc type offerings

At the time of launch, we were only able to support whiteboards exported in PDF format which included Miro and Mural, but we were tweaking our importer to allow for importing FigJam and LucidChart as well.

Additionally, because we had our own suite of tools that included a rich-text editor, Kanban boards, and data tables, we planned to expand our importer to other 3rd-party documents as well.

Conclusion & Results

The Whiteboard Importer was a key pillar of our FY23 marketing strategy of targeting cost-sensitive users looking for a more cost-effective tool.

Within a week of the full-launch, the importer had already played a key role in winning a new account, and was being used in multiple negotiations by our sales team. We also saw over 100+ documents uploaded within a week of the full release.

In the end, our team created a successful solution that addressed the needs of both InVision and its users and we were able to demonstrate the importance of speed, adaptability, and scalability in product development.