Redesign feature release modal component
The content was fine. The format was losing them.
What's new
Feature 01
Body text — 14px. Sociis natoque penatibus et magnis dis parturient montes nascetur ridiculus mus mauris vitae ultricies leo integer malesuada nunc vel risus commodo viverra maecenas accumsan lacus vel facilisis volutpat est velit egestas dui.
Role
Product Designer
Team
Product Manager
Duration
4 weeks
Tools
Figma, WalkMe, HTML, CSS
TL;DR
I noticed a 75–80% drop-off from the first carousel card to the second while reviewing release analytics — before anyone had flagged it as a problem. The PM read the pattern as weak content; my read was that the format was failing, not the message.
A carousel structurally buries anything past position one, forcing a sequence most users won't finish. I replaced it with a tab-based system that gives every feature equal visibility at launch — and it became the new standard for release announcements.
Impact
Measured against a 20% CTR baseline.
The Signal
The drop-off was sitting in the release analytics; no one had connected it to the modal yet.
What the data showed
Only about one in five users reached the second card; another quarter dropped before the third. In a feature-release context, that means most announcements were never seen — the reach problem was hiding in plain sight in the analytics.
Reading the signal
A carousel makes a silent editorial call: position one matters, everything after it is optional. With most users never advancing past it, the bulk of each release was effectively unpublished — not because the features were minor or the copy weak, but because the format decided what got seen.
Design
The fix wasn't copy or content — it was changing the mental model from “guided tour” to “at-a-glance overview.”
Changing the mental model
A carousel asks users to commit to a sequence. A tab-based system asks nothing — every feature is visible at launch, and users choose what to explore. The interaction model shifted from “slideshow” to “menu,” and that shift alone resolved the visibility problem without changing a word of copy.
User in control
All feature tabs visible at a glance. Users choose what's relevant to them — no sequence required.
What's new
Feature 01
Body text — 14px. Sociis natoque penatibus et magnis dis parturient montes nascetur ridiculus mus mauris vitae ultricies leo integer malesuada nunc vel risus commodo viverra maecenas accumsan lacus vel facilisis volutpat est velit egestas dui.
Added real estate
Each tab keeps the same content real estate as the carousel card — plus room for a contextual CTA.
Front-end engineering
WalkMe's out-of-the-box modal didn't support tab navigation. I led the front-end development — writing the HTML and CSS to restructure the component and implement the tab interaction from scratch inside WalkMe.
Shipped to the system
The tab-based modal wasn't a one-off fix — it was introduced to the design system and fully replaced the carousel as the standard for all future feature release announcements. Every product announcement now lands with equal visibility for every feature, regardless of position.
What's new
Feature 01
One feature visible at a time. Users had to commit to the sequence to see everything — and most didn't make it past card one.