Eliminating the
learning curve
Lead Product Designer
November 2021 - January 2023
Product Design, UX, Research
Pendo Adopt allows customers to retain institutional knowledge and better track software adoption for their organization.
For example: Amazon is able to build guides on top of Greenhouse, a product they do not own or operate. Then, they can segment guides and view usage data for their employees just like traditional Pendo is used to analyze their customers.
When Adopt originally debuted, it was possible to white label the software to be resold by software partners.
Business Goals
Sold through an OEM model, Adopt's revenue was dependent on the ability for our customers to easily sell our solution to their customers.
Success Metrics
ARR + Number of Partners. Additionally, we sought to enable Partner’s to offset their Pendo cost through Adopt’s revenue stream.
The Mighty Team
Josh Rainer
Colin Maxfield
Jennifer Shevach
Adam Lohner
Lauren Gottberg
Francisco Fantl
Michael Dellanoce
Caitlin Edberg
Josh Sandman
Josh Meder
Matt Harrison
I was responsible for figuring out how to leverage Pendo’s core features for a completely new audience.
Some of my key contributions:
Research
Working with my PM partner, I was actively involved with customers to ensure we were building the right solution for their needs.
Product & Visual Design
I was responsible for Adopt's entire user experience. I used this project to help lead an overhaul Pendo's overall design and establish a source of truth through their first design system.
Strategy
Both a B2B and B2C product with a less technical user base, I was a consistent voice for building a simple experience.
All about Partnerships
Adopt was my first undertaking at Pendo and was being built essentially from scratch. This product required extensive partnerships and team buy-in across the entire organization.
Product: My PM and I went to work defining probable use-cases, user needs and functionality that would be required to make Adopt a success.
Sales: We worked closely with our sales team to understand how they planned to position the product. An OEM model was suggested as a win-win for Pendo and our partners who could sell Adopt as an add-on to their software, essentially allowing any user the ability to customize messaging and guides for a fee.
Engineering: I was particularly grateful for learning experience and knowledge gained working closely with Pendo’s talented engineering teams. Understanding how Pendo’s ‘magic’ worked was critical to making Adopt a success.
Core Setup
To execute a successful Adopt implementation, I crafted 3 steps that would allow the platform to expand easily for every new organization under a partner. These important controls are handled in the partner’s core instance of Pendo (not in Adopt itself.)
Adopt Interface
Our goal was to use as much of the pre-existing patterns and components from core Pendo as possible. The Adopt dashboard is only seen by software administrators and guide builders and functions as a simple portal for building and managing guides and analytics.
North Star
I also explored ways Adopt could grow and expand beyond an upgraded "Pendo" reskin. Conceptually, I explored Adopt as a marketplace where guides and workflows could be shared amongst organizations or provided by the partners.
I was also interested in making analyzing software usage easier for administrators through a more robust dashboard that gave data snapshots segmented by function.
Results
We successfully built an entirely new business model within Pendo over the course of two years and scaled it to generate significant revenue.
Pays for itself
Easily one of the most compelling outcomes of Adopt was that some partners surpassed the cost of their Core subscription with Adopt revenue
The Future of Pendo?
Adopt became one of Pendo's big bets, and influenced the need to improve our Visual Design Studio.