Keynote · Fieldnotes 202619 Nov 2026
The second-best onboarding is no onboarding
Sol Navarro · LisbonTickets on the event site01 / 04
Speaker notesOpen with the 41%. Rooms forgive a slow start if the first number is real.
About
I take three clients a year and sit inside their team for a quarter or two. Sign-ups, bookings, bills, alerts. Small surfaces where a product earns trust or loses it, measured before and after.
- Practice
- Independent since 2019
- Before that
- Design director at two health startups, one acquired
- Clients a year
- Three, one at a time
- Engagement
- 3 to 4 days a week, 3 to 6 months
- Studio
- RiNo, Denver
Twelve years in, I still read every support ticket first.
Teams I have sat inside
- Fernway
- Atrium
- Plover
- Mendwell
- Quarry
- Kestrel Pay
- Bramble Clinics
- Orchard Ledger
- Tessellate
- Cobble Mutual
01 / 05
Work
Each one started with a number someone was embarrassed by. Open a row to see the problem, the move and the result.
Fig. 01 / Fernway, 2026 Fractional design lead, 5 months, with 2 designers and 6 engineers
Problem
41% of new sign-ups quit during identity checks, before they had seen a single feature. Freelancers were being asked for things the bank only needed at first payout.
Move
Moved verification to the first payout, prefilled business details from the user's first invoice, and cut every question the bank could answer later on its own.
Result
Sign-up now fits on four screens. People send an invoice before they are asked for a passport, and most of them finish verifying the same day.
- Onboarding screens
- 11→4
- Activation in 30 days
- +23%
- To first invoice, from 14
- 4 min
“Sol made us defend every question. Most of them lost.”
Fig. 02 / Atrium, 2025 Fractional design lead, 6 months, with a clinical advisor and 5 engineers
Problem
Night-shift nurses got more than 300 device alerts a shift and nine in ten were noise. Real arrhythmias waited in the same queue as loose electrodes.
Move
Rebuilt the queue around patient risk instead of arrival time, grouped repeat alerts into one card, and added a one-tap "seen" that teaches the threshold.
Result
Nurses now open the riskiest patient first, every time. The pilot ward asked to keep it before the 90 days were up.
- False-alarm pages
- −38%
- Median triage, from 6m 10s
- 1m 50s
- Missed critical alerts in the pilot
- 0
“It is the first screen at 3 a.m. that does not shout at me.”
Fig. 03 / Plover, 2025 Fractional design lead, 4 months, with 1 designer and 4 engineers
Problem
Owners ran payroll at 1 a.m. after close, across three tabs and a spreadsheet. One run in six needed a correction the following week.
Move
A single run sheet that imports tips from the point-of-sale export, flags anything unusual inline, and pauses one employee without stopping the whole run.
Result
Most owners now finish payroll before they lock up. Corrections dropped enough that support moved two people onto onboarding.
- Payroll run, from 42
- 9 min
- Runs needing a fix, from 17%
- 4%
- Support tickets
- −29%
“I run payroll standing at the bar now. That was not possible in March.”
Fig. 04 / Mendwell, 2024 Fractional design lead, 5 months, with 2 designers and 7 engineers
Problem
Patients started three bookings for every one they finished. Insurance questions came before anyone saw an open appointment.
Move
Show real appointment times first, hold a slot for ten minutes while insurance is checked, and give a plain-language cost estimate before the final tap.
Result
Booking stopped feeling like a test. Same-week visits rose and the front desk spends its mornings on patients instead of callbacks.
- Booking completion, from 58%
- 81%
- No-shows
- −31%
- Same-week visits
- 2.4×
“We stopped asking for a membership card before we had shown a single doctor.”
Fig. 05 / Quarry, 2024 Fractional design lead, 3 months, with 1 designer, 3 engineers and a compliance lead
Problem
The monthly statement was the top reason members contacted support. Nobody could tell what they owed from what was building their credit.
Move
Rewrote the statement as one screen with a story. What you spent, what you owe, what it did for your score, and one next action.
Result
Members pay from the statement itself now. Compliance signed off on plain language in two rounds instead of six.
- Statement tickets
- −47%
- On-time payments
- +12 pts
- NPS among new members
- +18
“Our statement used to be a legal document. Now it reads like a receipt with a coach attached.”
02 / 05
Talks
I talk about the first five minutes of a product and what it costs to get them wrong. Rooms get numbers, not slogans.
Keynotes, workshops and internal offsites. Fees from $9,500 plus travel from Denver. Workshops run half or full day for up to 40 people.
Book a talk01 / 04
03 / 05
Writing
04 / 05
Now
StudioYour 9 to 50003060912151821Now
- Reading
- The Quiet Interface, by Mara Ellison
- Halfway. Underlined most of chapter four.
- Building
- A risk-ranked inbox for Atrium's day shift
- Same idea as nights, different rhythm. Day nurses get interrupted more.
- Booking
- Q2 2027. One of three seats left for next year.
- The other two are spoken for, which my accountant enjoys.
- Away
- Lisbon, 17 to 21 November
- Fieldnotes keynote. Replies slow down that week.
Updated by hand, 12 Oct 2026
05 / 05
Contact
Booking Q2 2027.
One of three seats left for next year.
Bring the number you are embarrassed by. That is where we start.
- Phone
- 303-555-0142
- Studio
- Sol Navarro StudioStudio 4B, 3127 Pallet StreetDenver, CO 80205Fictional address
- Hours
- Studio hours Mon to Thu, 9 to 5 Mountain
Received.