Smart Re-entry into Adobe Express
Helping creators pick up where they left off
About Adobe Express
Adobe Express empowers millions of users to create professional content without design expertise. But our data revealed a critical gap: while most projects take several days to complete, users struggled to find and resume their work—breaking their creative flow and abandoning projects.
Executive summary
Adobe Express users were silently abandoning projects because returning to past work was harder than it should be. As the sole designer on a five-person cross-functional team, I defined the problem, led end-to-end design, and shipped Smart Re-entry in two weeks. The result: 2.7M additional project downloads, 11.1K new return monthly active users, and $461K in new revenue.
My role: Sole designer responsible for end-to-end experience design, from problem framing and UX strategy to final UI and copywriting.
PM: Michael Guthmann
Engineering: Sanjeev Singh
Analytics: Shankar Sinha
Research: Isabella Fröhlich
Timeline: 2 weeks
Geo: Worldwide
Surfaces: Mobile & Desktop
Problem framing
User Problem
Nearly half of our users (48%) require multiple days to complete projects, but struggle to resume their progress due to a cluttered, overwhelming homepage. Research confirms that the current interface creates significant friction, making it difficult for users to quickly locate "in-progress" work and leading to project abandonment.
Out-of-Scope (Constraints)
While the homepage experience is a primary pain point, a full homepage redesign was out-of-scope as parallel teams were already addressing its complexity. Consequently, we had to architect a high-impact solution that functions independently of the landing page, ensuring a seamless "resume" workflow regardless of existing homepage hurdles.
Designing the solution
Hypothesis
We believe that automatically surfacing a user's most recent work will reduce re-entry friction, increase project completion, and ultimately drive exports.
Success Metrics
Primary: Increase in project downloads/exports
Secondary: Increase in return monthly active users
Copywriting considerations
Redirecting users directly to their latest file—bypassing the homepage—risks frustration if not clearly communicated. We prioritized transparent messaging to explain the shortcut while ensuring users could easily opt back into the standard landing experience.
Results & findings
Project downloads grew substantially across all variants, with variant C leading at +10% overall increase!
2.7M incremental project exports
11.1K incremental returning monthly active users
$461K increase in annual recurring revenue
Takeaways
Small navigational decisions can unlock confidence
Automatically routing users to their most recent project reduced friction and increased completion, while transparent toast messaging built user understanding and trust.
Contingencies while we build version 2
Users who repeatedly return home may feel frustrated, so if they do so more than once, we’ll end the experience as if it were dismissed. With version 2 underway, we want to give users the ability to choose this experience in their account preferences.
Give and take
Subscription plans decreased, because our solution bypassed the paywall users normally would see on their 2nd visit to the homepage.