To keep a product healthy, you need to trim features. When you do, off-board users to increase engagement.

My role:

Planning, scoping, and conducting UX design and research activities

Designing the profile management user flows in Web of Science (WoS)

Creating screen designs for all new UI in WoS

About this Project

The One Profile project’s main purpose is to move the Publons researcher profile and the ability to manage it into Web of Science and sunsetting the Publons researcher profile.

The major flows that are new to Web of Science are:

• Creating a profile
• Managing your own profile
• Updating your bio info
• Managing your records (publications, peer review, grant review, awards, etc)
• Free access aspects of the researcher profile
• Searching for non-indexed researchers

The Challenge

Currently, our researchers can manage their Web of Science contributions by creating a profile in the Publons product. This setup caused some confusion and frustration with users because it was hard for them to connect what they were doing in Publons with what they were seeing in WoS. By bringing the profile into WoS, we are strengthening the value of the product by being the go-to for displaying one’s research contributions.

This initiative also included work to design the first free access features for Web of Science including a free author search experience and a free signed in experience. The team also needed to iron out onboarding all of our users – those who already use WoS, those who already use WoS and Publons, and those who only use Publons.

This initiative supports the larger strategic effort to provide a more personalized researcher experience. The incentive of profile management within WoS encourages users to sign in and in turn, gives us an opportunity to learn more about them and help get them relevant content and recommendations.

Solution

Three big UX changes that are coming out of this project:

We are adding a persistent left navigation, which will house and draw attention to the personalized features, including the profile. The team is adding additional functionality to the researcher profile in WoS – users can add, delete and manage publications, peer review, grant reviews and editor records, as well as their name and bio information.

For the first time we are allowing users to sign in without having institutional entitlements (free access). While, for the time being, the user will only be able to manage their profile and search for other researchers, this is the first step in trying a free layer approach to attract customers.

The metrics dashboard will be using the new sheets pattern that we have introduced to WoS this past year. This pattern is helpful for the product because it allows us to create a hierarchy of content in a very content dense experience. The profile gives the user a nice overview of the researcher's contributions and they can drill down to see a more detailed view of all of those metrics.

Results

As a result of adding the profile into WoS, Publons will be closing its doors for the researcher. The Publisher dashboard will live on in Publons for the time being. The goals of the project include increasing the product index, increase registration rates and users, and increase monthly active users