Ancestry

I was the lead designer of a feature launch on Ancestry's new web product, StoryScout.
The goal was to engage new subscribers with easy to access records. This feature focused on allowing users to save records from StoryScout to their family trees on Ancestry's main app, Family History.
Outcomes increased user engagement amongst younger users, upsell, and overall site usage.

Info

Duration: 1 month, 2021

Software: Figma, Qualtrics, Rally, Usertesting, Ethinio

Key Roles: User flow, cross collaborate, visual design, user research, present to stakeholders

Team: Product managers, designers, engineers across 3 teams

Main Responsibilites

Advocate user needs, lead workshops, identify opportunity areas, support collaborators.

Partner with product managers, front end developers, researchers, legal counsel

Build context, maintain flexibility, thorough documentation, understand metrics

Design long (new features) and short (usability issues) term initiatives

Conduct user research, visual design, prototype, task analysis, map workflows

StoryScout

This is the entry point to access StoryScout's free family history record tool.

The user inputs their grandparents' info and Ancestry finds records of their lineage.

User Problem

Users did not have a way to save StoryScout records to their family tree.
It was a highly requested feature so users can remember all their family details.

Save to Tree Feature

After the user inputs their grandparent's info, Ancestry delivers their first record.
This is where we implemented a "save to tree" CTA button.

Verify Record Details

This extra step serves to help verify if the record info correctly matches the user's ancestor. This maintains accuracy and builds research skills for the user.

Save Record to Family Tree

Once verified, we connected their family tree API to prompt them to select which tree they'd like to save the record to.

Successfully Saved

After the tree is selected, the record successfully gets saved to the ancestor's family tree.

Full Experience

This feature made its greatest impact by bridging the gap between users who were interested in finding records but needed the extra help to start. StoryScout's low barrier entry point connected thousands of new users to Family History.

Data Results