Guest List Redesign

Rework Guests feature with emphasis on free external collaboration as value proposition.

Guest List UI — User Management page with separate Guests tab, table of external collaborators, shared assets per row, self-serve removal.
26 Support cases mined
GA4 Funnel data pulled
90% Tickets self-served
4 wk Timeline

Overview

Role
Product Designer (sole designer)
Timeline
Jan 20 — Feb 13, 2026
Team
Head of Product, UX Writer, Dev team, CS team
Status
Shipped to development

Problems

  1. Current Guest feature focuses on converting to paid licenses — the GA4 funnel showed the conversion approach was failing.
  2. 90% of support requests = remove guests (no self-serve removal available).
  3. 40% of users can't see which assets external users have access to.
  4. Users cannot easily remove guests (CS removes one by one for 600+ projects).
  5. Guest list useful for transparency, but not for management.

Goals

  1. Show which specific assets are shared with each guest.
  2. Add ability to remove guests from User Management in minimum clicks.
  3. Emphasize collaboration value first, then monetization.

Solutions

  1. Redesign Guest Management page: separate tab "External Collaborators" (implemented).
  2. Show all external users + which specific assets they have access to.
  3. Add ability to remove guests directly from User Management in minimum clicks (self-serve).
  4. Stop pushing guest → paid license conversion as first priority.
  5. Make it about transparency and full picture of access.
  6. Only as secondary priority — suggest to add the user to the account.

Metrics

  1. Support tickets for guest removal drop by 80%+ (baseline: 26 cases per 90 days).
  2. Users stop asking "which assets does this Guest have access to?" (transparent in UI).
  3. Users interact with Guest list at same frequency or more (GA4 tracking).
  4. Users understand guests are free and don't consume seats (messaging clarity).

Questions raised & resolved

  • Resolved Ship everything at once in V1 (table + search + removal + messaging).
  • Resolved Both matter: assets visible in the table + self-serve deletion available.
  • Resolved Two main triggers: cleanup after employee departures, and security audits.
  • Resolved No concern about losing upsell — guest-to-paid conversion wasn't happening anyway, per the GA4 funnel.

Discovery — Data First

I started by mining 26 support cases before doing any design work. Real user language, real pain points — not assumptions. Then I pulled the GA4 conversion funnel with the Analytics Lead.

What the funnel showed The conversion-focused UI was a long pipeline with significant drop-off at every step — almost no one made it from "open the dropdown" to "complete the invite." Improving the upsell copy wasn't going to fix that. The answer was to stop pushing conversion and focus on free, frictionless guest management.

Process

  1. 01

    Mine support cases

    26 cases from the CS team. Extracted recurring pain patterns and real user language — quoted directly in my context.md.

  2. 02

    Pull GA4 funnel data

    Worked with the Analytics Lead. The funnel made it visible just how badly the conversion approach was performing — and that was the insight that shifted the entire direction.

  3. 03

    Build the CJM

    Mapped the guest lifecycle: entry points, states, deletion scenarios, edge cases (600+ guests in a single account).

  4. 04

    Design in iterations with video walkthroughs

    5+ iterations. Each delivered with a video demo — stakeholders see the flow without a meeting. Dedicated copy sessions with PM and UX Writer.

  5. 05

    Cross-team alignment

    Shared findings with the Enterprise team to validate edge cases (bulk deletion, accounts with hundreds of guests).

  6. 06

    Dev-ready handoff

    All states, a11y, edge cases, copy — complete spec. Stayed available during dev for clarifications.

Key Takeaways

Giving Guest management its own dedicated space — a separate tab, not a buried dropdown — changed how users relate to the feature. Transparency about which assets are shared turned an anxiety-inducing gap into something the account owner could actually act on.

Self-serve removal was the highest-leverage change: CS was handling one-by-one deletions for accounts with 600+ guests. Shifting that to the user reduced support load and gave owners real control over their account's access perimeter.

Repositioning guests as free external collaborators — not conversion targets — aligned the feature with how users actually use it. The free framing is the value proposition; the upsell, if any, follows naturally from a good experience rather than from a blocked one.