Notification Settings

More than checking off a compliance box, this was about building trust and clarity into every touchpoint of customer communication. From single-line users to large households, everyone now has the power to decide how and where they hear from Boost Mobile.

Role

Lead Product Designer

Team

1 PM, marketing, legal, web and app developers

Timeline

2024 - 2025

Boost offered no notification controls, creating confusion, missed alerts, and customer frustration

By introducing per-device preference management and notification settings, we aimed to reduce confusion and prevent missed alerts by giving customers control over how and what communications they receive.

I led the end-to-end design of Boost’s first communication management center that is now available to customers!

Process

I facilitated cross-functional knowledge sharing sessions to understand the requirements from all our stakeholders. My process included:

  • Designing customer-facing flows that supported line-level and account-level preference control.

  • Creating scalable UI patterns for selecting communication channels (SMS, Email, Push, Phone).

  • Collaborating with Legal to simplify disclosures and ensure regulatory clarity.

  • Working with engineers to ensure preferences updated in real time across internal systems.

Working through the edge cases and design requirements

In addition to the happy path, I collaborated with product management, development, legal, and marketing, to identify gaps in the experience and mapped them in the user flow. Some of the complex scenarios included:

  • Line-level controls: Each line on the account needed its own settings for promotional, transactional, and third-party communications.

  • Person of Contact: In multi-line accounts, users could assign a primary contact line to receive critical account-level communications.

  • Fallback logic: Smart defaults and save states helped users complete setup even if they stepped away or skipped a section.

Onboarding flow for new customers
Settings for existing customers

Challenges with research

One of the biggest challenges was helping users understand the difference between line-level and account-level communications. This became even trickier for multi-line accounts, who had the additional ability to assign one line as the primary point of contact. Because of legal restrictions, we couldn’t use the familiar label “account holder,” which meant we had to find a term that felt both natural and trustworthy.

To solve this, I collaborated with our UX researcher to run A/B tests on different terminology, watching to see which option users actually understood in practice. At the same time, I experimented with different layouts that separated account-level and line-level preferences. The goal was to encourage users to explore all of their options without feeling overwhelmed and increase the likelihood they’d complete the setup process. These tests gave us the clarity we needed to choose the right language and the right design approach.

Key insight: "Primary contact" was universally understood by users, and tabs performed the best at creating the separation between account and line-level communications.
Design A
Design B

Launch and learn

After a UAT session identifying any launch blockers, the improved experiences go live. Depending on performance against launch criteria, the experience remains live or we jump back to step 1 with a fast follow experiement.

Summary of impact

Successfully met and implemented new FCC requirements

Boosted (pun intended) transparency and reduced confusion for multi-line accounts

11,779 users on the first month and 8,009 completed onboarding:

68% completion rate
20% increase in email subscriptions

You've reached the end :)

© 2025 Shirley Xieli

You've reached the end :)

© 2025 Shirley Xieli

You've reached the end :)

© 2025 Shirley Xieli

You've reached the end :)

© 2025 Shirley Xieli