Asana

App Adoption Strategy

Reframed a discoverability roadmap item into a full adoption strategy and convinced leads to pivot the focus to conversion.

Strategy Data Org Influence Systems Thinking

Problem

Asana is tool that helps teams plan, organize, and coordinate their work. Apps are integrations that improve workflows in Asana by eliminating the need to manually move data and providing visibility into other systems. Our team had launched a bunch of integrations, but overall usage was low. The roadmap item on the table was to "improve app discoverability via link unfurls", as the hypothesis at the time was that people didn't know Asana had apps.

If people weren't using apps, a discoverability tweak wasn't going to improve adoption. I proposed pausing to investigate the full adoption funnel before building anything.

My approach

01 Partnered with Data Science to instrument the funnel and map drop-off across Discover → Convert → Retain.
02 Found the real problem: 31% of users knew apps existed, only 25% of gallery visitors started an install, only 21% of installers actually used the app. The biggest drop-off was at auth — users weren't convinced of value before being asked to commit.
03 Led brainstorms and mocked up a collection of concepts spanning the full funnel, not just the top.
04 Presented to Pillar Leads and the R&D C-Suite, framing it as a strategic investment, not a single roadmap fix.

Only 21% of customers who installed an app used it. There’s a more urgent need to improve conversion before discoverability, otherwise we’re sending folks into a leaky bucket.

Designs

I proposed to leadership that we should focus on conversion, outlining the problems and rationale in the vision deck. As a part of that artifact, I mocked up what opportunies we could pursue to drive conversion but didn't neglect other opportunities. I included ideas spanning the full adoption funnel, from how apps are discovered and previewed, to what happens during and immediately after installation, to how we retain long-term usage.

Rather than a single solution, the goal was to show the breadth of the opportunity, give leadership a clear picture of where investment would have the highest leverage, and point them to where we should start.

I recommended we start with conversion and explained the rationale based on quant & qual data

Design 1 — Bulk adding apps (conversion)

Design 3 — Education and guidance (conversion/retention)

Design 4 — Apps at the top level (discover)

Design 5 — App gallery improvements (discover)

Design 6 — Behavior-driven suggestions (discover)

Design 7 — Link unfurls to add apps (discover)

Design 8 — Slash commands to add (conversion)

Impact

Pivoted from working on an initiative that wouldn't have helped the platform.
A new team was formed to execute on the App Adoption work stream.
Chief Product Officer gave me a shout-out for using both funnel metrics and design provocations to look at the problem from all sides before solutioning.