Creating New Onboarding Flow in Adobe Fresco: UX Writing Case Study

Collaborated with designers and content designers to create a new user-onboarding flow for Adobe Fresco

During my time as a UX Content Design Intern at Adobe, I wrote product copy to redesign Adobe Fresco’s onboarding experience.

Adobe Fresco prompted users to sign in or create an account before they could explore the product. This created friction at a critical moment, especially for new users who wanted to try drawing before committing to creating an account.

Context

Adobe Fresco is a drawing app for the iPad transitioning towards a freemium model, similar to Adobe Express. This shift allowed users to access the app and start drawing without being prompted to sign in until key actions, like trying to save or export their work.

The Adobe Fresco team submitted a ticket to our team for content support, and another content designer and I joined this project. We partnered closely with the Fresco product team to design a new flow that:

• Let users explore the app without signing in
• Clearly explained what users can do without signing in and what risks they take by not signing in or creating an account

Methodologies

Desk research: Reviewed onboarding patterns from similar Adobe products and industry examples where users could start an experience without signing in.

Plain language: Prioritized clarity, simplicity, and human tone, especially in moments involving uncertainty.

Style guide: Applied Adobe’s voice and tone principles to ensure content felt consistent, trustworthy, and brand-aligned.

Adobe’s voice

Adobe’s design system is called Spectrum, and it has a section with content guidelines. Adobe’s products must sound:

• rational
• human
• focused

Improving the landing screen

The original landing content had several issues:

• Overly technical language
• Long, wordy sentences
• Inconsistent punctuation

I worked with the other full-time content designer on my team to generate different copy variations through pair writing, and we presented them to the Fresco team to gain consensus on which best balanced clarity, accuracy, and brand voice.

Below is the process I used on this project. In the middle is the original copy, and on the right are iterations of the copy we wrote. We wrote different ideas to show the Adobe Fresco team and discuss which versions were the strongest. The designer would then mock up the screens in Figma, and we would review them together to make sure things are visually working with any changes in content.

We eventually did this for each screen we were working on. We focused on technical vocabulary and examined whether our audience knows the specific, often technical terms in some of the strings.

Value prop 1: simplifying technical language

I was skeptical of using “vector and raster” brushes and wanted to find a more user-friendly yet still technical term that could be used. We found that pixel is another word similar to raster. I also found the word new redundant, since revolutionary conveys a similar meaning. After reviewing this with the designer, we were able to come up with the alternative of:

This reflects a majority of the process we did on this project and also the careful balance that must be made when writing & designing screens for complex applications.

We also used Adobe Fresco’s user forums to discover what terms users use.

Understanding your users and what specific terms they may or may not know can better your writing toolkit on how to move forward when using product-specific terminology.

Value prop 3: Technical terminology

Initially, I was unsure whether users would understand what “frame-by-frame or paths” meant because it is a technical term. While the terms are in Fresco’s user guide page, they are not commonly used, which raised concerns to whether our users would understand these terms. After consulting with the designer, we opted to include these technical words - because they are commonly used in advanced designers’ work and are a value of this product not found in other similar products on the market.

However, looking back, I would have loved to be able to do user testing to inform my content decisions, but with the timeline, it wasn’t feasible.

We eventually landed on the following:

Value props screen related to sharing your work

This pop-up screen communicates to the user the benefits of signing in/signing up, specifically related to the user being able to publish, export, and share their artwork.

Headline

I wanted to keep the essence of this message, but flip it so the verb is closer to the front. This makes the message easier to scan and brings the action closer to the beginning of the sentence. I also removed the period, as per our style guidelines, headlines do not have periods unless they are more than 1 sentence.

Body #2

I was worried about this line, especially for someone who might be using a screen reader who might not be able to understand what the arrow means. We went with an alternative I proposed.

Body #3

I felt this message was confusing and wanted to shorten it. The mention of a free Adobe Creative Cloud Account didn’t make too much sense, because the main goal of this pop-up is to have users sign in or sign up for an Adobe Fresco account - not an Adobe Creative Cloud Account. We spoke with the designer, who mentioned the main value of this line was letting users access artwork across their different devices or Adobe applications. We came up with:

Impact

This project launched on Adobe Fresco shortly after my internship ended, impacting the millions who use the app. My fellow content designer, Noelle, and I received positive recognition from our Fresco stakeholders, who wanted us to work on additional projects together.

Below are a few final screens:

1. landing screen

2. pop-up screen giving value props by signing up

3. when a user who isn’t signed in goes into shared with you

4. when a user who is not signed in navigates to their settings

Reflection

• Collaboration in content design work is so so important. Get comfortable with giving and receiving feedback and recognize who makes the final decisions.
• Balancing the business & user needs requires open conversations between the team.
• Showing different content variations can help steer the team in the right direction.
• Good content design isn’t straightforward. There are often many ways things can be said and many different opinions in the room, pulling things in different directions. Collaborating with your fellow content designers can help.