← All articles [ Product design · · 2 min read ]

From 2 to 180 regular users in a month

The app had downloads. On a normal day, two people used it. What the audit found, what changed, and what I'd tell anyone with the same problem.

By Arisha Firdous, product designer

Bar chart comparing regular users before the redesign, 2, with regular users one month after the redesign, 180
Regular users before the redesign and one month after it.

SocialXray was an AI app from Aconomy, already live on the Play Store with real downloads. On a typical day, two or three people actually opened it. I joined as a UX design intern and ended up leading the redesign.

Within a month of the redesign going out, the app had 180 regular users. This is what we found and what changed.

What the audit found

Downloads with no usage usually means people arrive, look around, and leave before they find a reason to stay. The audit pointed to three causes.

  • The core feature was hard to find. The AI chatbot was the most useful thing in the app, and it sat a few taps deep.
  • Onboarding gave people nothing to do. New users went through screens that explained the app instead of letting them use it.
  • Nothing brought anyone back. After the first session, there was no reason to open it again.

What we changed

Alongside the audit I ran user research, and the redesign went after all three problems at once.

The biggest single change was making the AI chatbot the first thing people meet when they open the app. Someone who downloads an AI app wants to try the AI, so we stopped making them hunt for it. Onboarding, navigation and the interface were rebuilt around that first conversation.

The result

Regular users went from 2 to 180 within a month of the redesign. For an app that had been sitting nearly unused, it meant there was finally something worth building on.

What I'd tell anyone with an app nobody uses

These are the lessons I took from the project. They apply well beyond AI apps.

  1. Find the most useful moment in your app and move it to the first minute. If people have to work to reach it, most won't.
  2. Cut onboarding screens that ask for something without giving anything back. Every screen before the first useful moment costs you users.
  3. Watch where people stop, before you redesign anything. Our three problems came from looking at real behaviour, and a redesign based on opinions would have fixed the wrong things.

The full project is in the SocialXray case study. If you have an app with downloads and very few regulars, my app design work starts with exactly this kind of audit.

Want this fixed on your site?

Start a project