Creating variants for user testing
We started this project by finding out how users might respond to the idea of signing in. We came up with variants of the journey to let the user know they now needed to sign in to listen.
We wanted to know if they’d prefer to sign in strait away, or if they’d prefer to browse the site before signing in. We also wanted to find out how they’d respond to upfront messaging.
Prototypes & user testing
We created prototypes for the different variants and then took them to two rounds of user testing.
Results of the user testing
Testing pointed clearly to one winning pattern: the modal triggered on play. Appearing at the moment a user committed to listening, it felt least disruptive and let them make the sign-in decision on their own terms.
The other approaches fell short in different ways — the earlier modal interrupted the journey too soon, the banner was too easy to miss, and the full-page takeover left users disoriented, unsure they'd landed on the right page.
A note on methodology: looking back at these results, I'd now present qualitative and quantitative findings separately rather than combining them into single numbers — something I've refined in my research process since.
Entry points and User journey mapping
Once we were clearer about what journey the users preferred I put together user journey maps for the developers. These were to show where and how Mandatory Sign In will need to be triggered across the site.
