Susan Lin

2026-04-15T02:47:13Z

Fixing conversion to serve 2 billion requests at Cloudflare

Cloudflare secures websites and manages billions of domains.

As Product Design Lead (2018-2019), I led the design of acquisition, conversion, and onboarding experiences in collaboration with a team of senior designers. I helped secure 21% more websites, all without sacrificing revenue.

A conversion funnel which leaked at every step

Cloudflare's product suite offered the industry's best security, securing 2 billion requests a month. Unfortunately, it became intimidating for most to navigate.

65% of users would never finish onboarding. 81% of subscribers would downgrade to the Free Plan within 1 month of sign-up.

Conducting discovery across 5 product teams

As the Design Lead, I took on the first steps to revamp Onboarding.

The discovery process involved partnering with 5 cross-functional teams. This ensured all major product entry points were considered.

The results of these workshops were a vision for user onboarding. I used my favorite triage system to rank a list of Low(er) Effort yet High Impact deliverables.

Between workshops, I user tested our concepts to further vet their saliency.

Shipping conversion gains without sacrificing revenue

These Low(er) Effort yet High Impact updates shipped in the same quarter.

Changes to Add Site and Plan Selection increased completion while preserving paid sign-ups. 21% more users finished onboarding with defaults securing their websites.

I partnered with Engineering to A/B tested all changes to ensure revenue was not affected.

Scaling the design team to match the opportunity

Now that users were receiving Cloudflare's value, I focused my attention internally.

I directed critical Higher Effort, Higher Impact deliverables which required executive stakeholder buy-in and a collaboration with 3 Senior Product Designers. The company delivered 372 deliverables in the following 3 quarters.

Designs I had a part in guiding included: Navigation, Workers, and Registrar.

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Sharing the case for Integrative Thinking

Inspired by the dualities of leading and designing, I wrote Leading with Integrative Thinking. I presented at conferences including Refactr.Tech and Women TechMakers.

My thoughts were also featured on Case Study Club and My Morning Routine.

On stage at Women TechMakers Montreal, 2019.

"I had the privilege of working with Susan at Cloudflare and in the past, and I cannot speak highly enough of her. Susan's exceptional skills in product design and team management make her a valuable asset.

She excels in ideating and bringing ideas to life, and her web engineering skills allow her to create efficient design systems. Her strong ability to support her team was demonstrated through the introduction of the thematic 1:1 format, which had a positive impact on her team's professional growth.

I highly recommend Susan for any product design or management role. She is a talented individual who will bring a unique skill set and a strong work ethic to any team."

—Maggie Yue, Senior Designer

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Simplifying HealthCare.gov for 30 million Americans

2026-04-15T02:47:13Z

Cross-platform Growth Strategy at Crunchyroll

Crunchyroll is the world's largest anime streaming platform.

As Principal Product Designer (since 2023), I lead design strategy across the acquisition, membership, and partnerships teams. My biggest win: $56 million in revenue, 13% more Free Trial starts, and 33% new accounts created.

Note: My work for Crunchyroll Store & a user onboarding North Star concept are under NDA. I'd love to show you more in a private setting.

My contributions span horizontal initiatives connecting sign-up, plan selection, and onboarding across web, mobile, and TV. I shipped 1P and 3P subscription experiences, plus partner launches on Verizon, Samsung, and PlayStation.

Creating plan clarity that generated $56M in the first month

When free feels good enough, there's no reason to convert. I delivered the global gated homepage, an acquisition experience which gave users a clear reason to start a Free Trial.

This experiment directly influenced the executive decision to remove the AVOD (free ad-supported) tier entirely. A fundamental shift in Crunchyroll's pricing strategy across NA, EMEA, SEA, and LATAM.

What may seem like an obvious win required facilitating alignment across product, engineering, and executive stakeholders. I championed evidence to overcome hesitations around removing a tier that had existed since launch.

The results. $56 million in revenue, 13% more Free Trial starts, and 33% new accounts created. (It was worth repeating.)

Designing for Lifetime Value not just Acquisition

Conversion is only the beginning. I drove retention and lifecycle initiatives across Crunchyroll's membership suite: Manga, Games, and Store.

Experiments in the cancellation rescue flow recovered 4.35% of attempts, exceeding targets by 4x. New lifecycle surfaces, such as Manga, acquired 264k subscribers in the first month.

I created a new cross-organization partnership with the lifecycle marketing team. We extended the tech team's design system into their email templates and push notifications. This required aligning with their existing workflows without disrupting them.

I'm currently leading the Store redesign, where we will connect the viewer experience to storytelling via commerce. Our aim is to deepen the value proposition for subscribers. Details under NDA.

A winning North Star concept to engage fans

41M users who start a Free Trial never came back. To address this gap, I created a concept (patent application in progress) for personalized user onboarding and discovery. My Hackathon team placed Top 3 out of 38 teams. Details under NDA.

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Featured by Figma for scaling systems across platforms

Figma featured Crunchyroll's Design-Dev Workflow on their blog "Shortcut", where I spoke about our systems-level approach saving 146 hours per project.

I later co-produced a panel with the Crunchyroll PR team about leveraging design systems at scale.

"I wouldn’t have been able to sustain the momentum and success we were able to achieve without Susan’s contributions. Everything from providing coverage for me for the team during conflicts, to being a background performer silently delivering on our company’s OKR’s, Susan is hands down a catalyst in all aspects of team performance.

Without her, we wouldn’t have been able to ship our biggest and most impactful split test, fundamentally changing the history of how we do acquisition, and the crowning jewel of all of our experiments, which is a 30% sustained lift in conversion."

—James Hsu, Head of Design, Acquisition & Monetization

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Building a DTC brand from $0 to $1.26M

2026-04-15T02:47:13Z

Simplifying HealthCare.gov for 30 million Americans

Millions apply for care using HealthCare.gov every year.

As Product Design Lead (2017-2018), I led the design of the Re-enrollment + Citizenship sections. This role involved collaborating across 2 timezones and with government stakeholders.

Mapping decades of policy into a design framework

This isn’t your regular online form. Decades of policy constrain technical design decisions. Additionally, there are implications connected to the collection of sensitive information.

Together with the Product & Design Teams, we mapped out the policy flowchart.

Designing the shortest path for 21.9 million re-enrollees

In 2017, there were 21.9 million re-enrollee applicants.

To bypass a lengthy process, I designed a flow for re-enrollees who had no life changes. This became the basis of our Filter Question design pattern.

Filter Questions guide most users to the simplest flow and prevent critical omissions. During user testing, we observed mistakes such as deleting themselves from their application! A correlated 16% decrease in Support Center Calls measured our success.

One pattern, two experiences: serving 26.7 million citizens and 3.3 million immigrants

89% of all applicants saved hours by skipping dozens of immigration follow-up questions. This pattern meant most 26.7 million users skipped 13 out of 14 decision point questions, which caused the most fatigue.

The remaining 3.3 million immigrants are now guided with care through a tense section. Each question communicated the why and what happens next using Progressive Disclosure. The stakes are high. The application should never allow the user to attest to being an illegal immigrant.

Designing with empathy at the highest stakes

Through user testing, I saw users abandon their applications due to heightened emotions. So I took the extra step and crafted content guidelines to handle sensitive situations.

Considerations include only asking for what's needed to process the application. We made sure the copy was as empathetic as possible. For example, those who had to remove a household member met compassion. And those who needed to disclose their biological sex saw a more humane experience.

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"Susan was a critical member of our design team as we worked on the new eligibility application for HealthCare.gov. Her efforts on early design patterns and UI guidelines helped lay the key foundations of the application’s design.

Additionally, Susan’s unique blend of skills and talents enabled her to effectively lead design initiatives that moved us forward as a team. Her unique perspective helped us to develop further sensitivity and empathy across all of our work."

–Olivia Cheng, Design Manager

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Re-engaging 146,000 students on Treehouse

2026-04-15T02:47:13Z

Building a DTC brand from $0 to $1.26M

Founded in 2019, Mintlodica is my bootstrapped mechanical keyboard brand.

This entrepreneurial experience sharpened my ability to balance user needs, business constraints, and creative vision under real financial pressure:

$1.26M in lifetime revenue. 7k orders shipped. 23.41% returning customer rate. 2 A-List celebrity moments. Brand acquisition in progress.

Designing every layer of the commerce lifecycle

I built the brand identity, ecommerce storefront, and purchase experience from scratch. Every positioning and pricing decision was mine. It started with rough drafts and rapid rounds of user surveys to hone in on what became a best seller.

This keyboard is now owned by Simu Liu.

Sparking a movement with Magic Girl

My debut keycap design, Magic Girl, sparked a movement and proved the market for cute femme keyboards existed. The product-market fit was immediate and I had to pursue what was next.

What started as a single product became a full operation with namesake collections: Witch Girl, Pastel Dreams, and Sad Girl. Each rooted in a distinct creative vision that carried through from product conception to the storytelling in the online collection.

Mintlodica × Shopify keyboard meet-up.

Paving the way for lasting loyalty and fandom

I grew CuteKeyboard.Club, my Discord Partner server, to 7.5k members. This community became a core driver of the brand's equity, with value that extends beyond the physical products.

Thousands have credited Mintlodica as the reason they felt welcomed to the mechanical keyboard hobby. The brand is now in due diligence for acquisition.

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Next Case Study →

Fixing conversion to serve 2 billion requests at Cloudflare

2026-04-15T02:47:13Z

Re-engaging 146,000 students on Treehouse

Treehouse is an online code school serving hundred of thousands of students.

As Senior Product Designer (2015-2016), I led the lifecycle design of consumer products and enterprise tools. Designers at Treehouse also shipped production ready HTML/CSS.

Replacing a manual sales bottleneck with self-serve onboarding

Treehouse had an ambitious enterprise growth target. Their biggest blocker was the manual onboarding process. I conducted user studies with the sales team to better understand their blockers.

The result was a system which automatically onboarded the majority of B2B users. I helped 24 enterprise users join using the self-serve experience in the same quarter.

Using existing surfaces to solve a retention crisis

Through user studies and later backed up by data, I noticed 81% of new sign-ups never returned.

I created an onboarding flow using existing features. These Gamification for Good changes motivated students using psychological principles. The proposal asked them to capture their goals and free time slots. I worked with Engineers to conduct A/B tests to measure the impact of these steps.

My designs were built on existing email, dashboard, and notification components. These simple, yet high impact, changes brought 146,000 returning user logins. All without added engineering scope.

This reinforced a principle I've carried forward. The most impactful retention design often isn't a new feature, it's a better use of surfaces that already exist.

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Those familiar with Treehouse may recognize the iconic badge collection. I illustrated a few!

"Susan is a thoughtful designer, curious problem solver and kind teammate. One of my favorite things about Susan’s design philosophy is she does not settle for the obvious. Susan is committed to understanding the problems she is solving, exploring new ideas and delivering quality work. Any team would benefit from her design talent and winsome spirit."

—Matthew Strickland, Engineering Manager

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Founding the Design System that scaled Trulia search

2026-04-15T02:47:13Z

Founding the Design System that scaled Trulia search

Trulia searches homes for millions every month.

As Senior Product Designer (2012-2014), I led the design of consumer products. This included Search and algorithmic Home Recommendations (Patent, No. 9361583) for the web and native mobile apps.

Home property views increased by 33.3 million a month. Site searches increased by 111 million. Global CSS reduced by 40% from 251kb to 101kb.

Diagnosing a search experience breaking under its own weight

We needed to improve Trulia's browsing experience without sacrificing business revenue.

This became less possible with incremental changes. An increasing number of users dropped-off immediately due to slow load times. To better understand these issues, I created an audit of every Search Result Card.

Creating the Design System to go beyond the screens

This effort led to the creation of Trulia's Design System. The team used the Search Result Cards as the building blocks for the first version. Instead of Lorem Ipsum, I imported MLS Data into my prototypes written with production ready CSS.

The Search Result Cards were the first components to go into production. We removed 733 !important floats and reduced the global CSS file by 40% from 251kb to 101kb which improved site speed.

Letting data reveal what 83% of users actually needed

While reviewing data, I observed that 83% of users only used 4 of the dozens of search filters. Reports from our user research also qualified this observation.

With the new design system, I was able to prototype, user test, and release an update in 2 months. This simplified experience increased searches by 111 million. Additionally, home property views increased by 33.3 million a month from updates to the search experience alone.

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From Design System to Design Talk

Inspired by our success, I wrote the talk Speaking the Code and presented at events such as IXDA Interaction. The presentation walks through my process and concludes with a live demo.

Speaking at IXDA Interaction SF, 2013.

"Susan was an extremely strong and creative colleague during my time working with her at Trulia. She led several key initiatives at Trulia, including the creation of Trulia’s first web-based component library. That initiative involved collaborating with an external team over many months, and championing the work internally to encourage adoption across the organization. That work resulted in greater product consistency and a stronger voice for design at Trulia."

—Sean Thompson, Lead Designer

Online since 2001. In my early Web 1.0 days, I ran a Neopets guild and built a Geocities site using an <iframe> layout. This was the beginning of my love for design & code.

I built this portfolio site using 11ty, hosted it on GitHub, and deployed it via Netlify. I also asked Claude to help optimize and refine my code.

P.S. Please enjoy photos of my eyebrow dog.