Facts: 

• SaaS marketers love a good framework 
• It’s not actually all that easy to apply frameworks to our IRL jobs

Enter: Kate Syuma, Miro’s former head of product design and growth advisor. After analyzing hundreds of growth flows over the past decade, she’s fine-tuned her auditing process into a 5-step framework to identify growth opportunities. 

But she’s sharing more than just her framework template—she’s got an IRL example of how to use it by applying it to Dropbox’s onboarding experience. Plus, she spent an hour walking me through exactly how it works. (This is basically the closest thing you’ll get to product mentorship without the hefty price tag.) 

So if you’re in the “I need to do more with less” camp (read: all of SaaS right now), this is a great way for you to hone in on how to improve your existing product experience with a structured, user-centric approach to drive growth.

You can watch the full workshop recording here, but I’m going to highlight what stood out to me in each of the five steps of her framework.

Step 1: Mapping the user journey

👉Do this: 

The first step is mapping out the full user journey—from initial product discovery through to regular usage. When mapping the journey, the goal is to capture every step, not just the ones you think are problematic. 

As far as who completes this work, Kate suggests that it could be anyone working on the onboarding experience. 

🤔Keep this in mind: 

Having data from user feedback or customer interviews can further support the analysis of emotions in the user journey mapping process.

Step 2: Understanding emotion 

👉Do this: 

Analyze each touchpoint on an emotional scale from delighted to angry. Observing user emotions reveals pain points and moments of opportunity. 

‍

🤔Keep this in mind: 

There are a few ways to assess emotion, like leveraging user research or drawing on your own first-hand experience with the product. Differences of opinion are normal—and that's where behavioral design principles come in handy to rationalize subjective viewpoints.

Step 3: Applying behavioral principles

👉Do this: 

Behavioral psychology offers evidence-based explanations for why users act the way they do. Referencing principles around motivation, cognition, and ability can help teams align.

🤔Keep this in mind: 

For example, if someone doesn't think a flow is overwhelming, point to research on Hick's Law and the limits of human working memory.

‍

Step 4: Connecting to hypotheses 

👉Do this: 

With the foundation set, start uncovering problems and opportunities, forming hypotheses about the root causes, and making predictions about how solutions could impact key metrics.

‍

🤔Keep this in mind: 

Solid hypotheses connect an observed user struggle to a suspected underlying reason, without prescribing solutions. Predictions propose an idea to test and the effect it may have.

‍

Step 5: Defining success

‍

👉Do this: 

Finally, tie efforts back to business goals by listing the key metrics each initiative aims to influence. 

‍

🤔Keep this in mind: 

Leading indicators keep teams grounded when optimizing for overarching targets like ARR.

‍

Putting It All Together

While simple in concept, Kate has found bringing coherence across user and business needs takes practice. Over time, this methodology helps teams build user-centric thinking into their DNA.

The framework forms a virtuous cycle - where qualitative insights, behavioral psychology, and quantitative data intersect to drive growth.