Blinkist · Product sense · Entry · 45 to 60 minutes

How should Blinkist onboard new users?

Blinkist is a mobile app that helps people learn from short summaries of nonfiction books and related audio content. Answer this product management case and get it graded line by line against a weighted rubric.

product sense
onboarding design
prioritization
metrics
user empathy

The situation

You are the PM for Blinkist's first run experience on mobile. The growth lead and content team agree that new users need to understand what Blinkist is, when it fits into their day, and why the catalog is worth exploring. At the same time, the recommendations team wants a few early signals so the home screen feels relevant fast. Customer feedback shows some new users are confused about the product before signing up, while others dislike answering questions before they can browse. Assume early funnel data suggests about 30 percent of first time users drop during onboarding, but users who reach a relevant home screen are much more likely to start a first summary. Your design team asks for a clear product direction before they mock up the new flow. The hard part is balancing three goals that pull against each other: explain the product well enough to earn interest, collect just enough input to personalize, and keep the path short enough that users do not bounce. Recommend what the first run flow should include and why.

What to produce

Write a 1 to 2 page product brief.

Your answer must

State the main user problem and the business goal for the first run experience.
Propose a step by step onboarding flow, including which steps are mandatory, optional, or skippable.
Explain how your flow teaches users what Blinkist is and how it will use any information it asks for.
Define 1 north star metric and 3 supporting metrics for success, plus the key tradeoff each metric helps monitor.
Recommend one experiment or test plan that would help validate your proposed flow before a full rollout.

Constraints

You can change onboarding screens, copy, step order, and optionality, but you cannot change the core Blinkist catalog or recommendation system in this release.
The solution must work inside the mobile app first run flow and should not depend on email campaigns, paid acquisition changes, or a web experience.
Engineering capacity is limited to lightweight UI and logic changes in the next sprint, so avoid solutions that require new back end systems.
Privacy and trust matter, so any data collection step should be easy to understand and defensible to users.

Format

Use headings: goal, proposed flow, rationale, metrics, experiment, risks.

How Blinkist actually played it

Walks through Blinkist first run experience, including the carousel, interest survey and optional steps. It praises the value explanation and progress bar, and criticises the length and the lack of detail on data use.

Explain why you collect data at the moment you ask
Progress bars make long onboarding feel shorter
Cut onboarding steps that do not change the experience

Built from Product Lessons on how Blinkist app learns about the user by Tear Them Down.