Atlas: Rebuilding onboarding for a fintech app

Atlas lets people open and fund an investment account in minutes. But the original signup asked for everything up front, in one long, intimidating sequence — and a third of people who started never finished. I led a redesign that turned signup from a wall into a path.

The problem

Research surfaced three recurring frustrations: people didn’t know how long signup would take, they hit identity-verification errors with no way to recover, and the legal disclosures landed all at once near the end. The flow optimized for the company’s checklist, not the person’s confidence.

Approach

I mapped every screen, error state, and decision, then regrouped them into three milestones — who you are, what you want, and fund it — each with a clear payoff. Verification moved earlier and gained real recovery paths, and disclosures were placed in context, right where the relevant decision happened.

It stopped feeling like a form and started feeling like someone walking you through it.

Director of Product, Atlas

Outcome

• 38% drop in onboarding abandonment within two release cycles.
• Verification-related support tickets fell by roughly half.
• The milestone pattern became a reusable part of the Atlas design system.