The problem
Owaves is a daily planning app built around personal rhythms and wellbeing. It needed a clearer path from first open to a useful first experience, with fewer avoidable steps, transparent permission choices and a good path for anyone not ready to connect Health data.
What I did
I proposed the value-first direction and guided the work from strategy and redesign through delivery and measurement, and the Owaves team built and shipped the release. The flow I proposed shows a useful day plan before asking for anything, lets one goal reshape it, asks for Apple Health and calendar access only when they improve the plan (with a clear Not now), and makes the upgrade offer after the day is mapped. The plan also included an instrumented activation funnel so the team could judge the result.
What changed
Estimated first-open-to-account conversion was nearly 3x after the redesign, comparing matched windows of July 27–August 12 and August 14–30, and the improvement was still visible in follow-up through September 8. Recorded Apple Health setup participation also rose more than 10x, though instrumentation changed between the two flows and it measures reaching the setup step rather than confirmed connections.
How it was measured. Estimated signup conversion divides aggregate Cognito account counts by GA4 first opens, so it doesn’t follow the same individuals through both steps. The two 17-day windows exclude the rollout day. These are before-and-after observations of a broader release, so they don’t isolate onboarding from other changes or show gains in retention, subscriptions or revenue.