Sample data in the empty state, not a blank workspace

A new account arrives at an empty workspace and nothing happens until the user makes the first thing. The screen shows what the product could hold, not what it does, so the user has to picture the result before doing the work that produces it. The accounts lost here signed up, finished setup, and then met a blank page.

Empty states are what a new user meets during onboarding and initial use of an application that is not configured yet, and the guidance for one is to communicate system status, provide learning cues and give a direct pathway to the key task [1]. A blank workspace with a single create button does the third and little of the second: it says what to click, not what the result looks like. An example project carries both, because it is the result. Whether it activates more accounts than a button does is the open question, and nothing on this page measures it.

New self-serve workspaces reaching their first session. Invited teammates are excluded, because they join a workspace that already holds content, and workspaces created by an import or a migration are excluded, because they were never empty.

A workspace that already holds a small example project raises activation, because the user can read and change a finished result before making one, which turns the first action from creation into an edit.

Control

The new workspace is empty: an illustration, one line of copy and a create project button.

Variant

The new workspace holds one small example project, labelled as an example, that opens on the first click and can be edited or removed in one action. The create project button stays where it is.

Name

Activation

Definition

The share of eligible new workspaces where a member creates a project of their own, the example not counted

Window

7 days from signup

Secondary: Example opened

The share of eligible new workspaces that open the example project, 7 days from signup.

Secondary: Time to first own project

Hours from signup to the first project the user created, 7 days from signup.

Retention in the fourth week

Must not drop. The share of activated workspaces with a session in the fourth week after signup, because an activation event reached through an example is only worth counting while it still predicts the same behaviour

Support volume

Must not rise. Support conversations per hundred eligible new workspaces in the window, because content the user did not create can be mistaken for their own

Workspaces holding only the example

Must not rise. The share of eligible new workspaces whose only content after 30 days is the example project

This is an example. No expected impact is stated because there is no evidence to state one from.

Allocation

50 to 50 on eligible new workspaces

Eligibility

New self-serve workspaces created while the flag is on, assigned once and kept for the workspace's lifetime

Ramp

10 percent for the first days to see the example render in real accounts, then 50 percent to the planned sample

Minimum sample

This stage counts new workspaces rather than visits, so the population is a fraction of a signup screen's and the same effect size takes proportionally longer to resolve. Size it before it starts, and do not run it if the arithmetic says it cannot finish.

Size it with

A/B test sample size calculator

Size it with

Experiment feasibility checker

The workspace's creation path seeds the example from a fixture the customer owns, behind their existing feature flag. The example is marked as such in the data model, so reporting, billing and the activation event exclude it, and one action removes it. Exposure is recorded when the workspace's first session renders, so a workspace that never returns still counts in its arm.

Ship when activation's interval clears zero at the planned sample with fourth week retention, support volume and the example-only share all holding. Revert on a guardrail breach, at any point. Otherwise continue to the planned sample without peeking, and call it inconclusive if it does not clear zero there.