Problem
Handshake's login, signup, and recovery were disconnected flows built around required university affiliation. The result: a ~60% drop-off across authentication, with ~15% of affiliated accounts likely duplicates and ~60% of seniors abandoning the platform after they graduated.
Solution
I led the redesign end-to-end, decoupling identity from school affiliation into an account-first system — create an account now, connect a school later. Partnering with Product, Engineering, and Data Science, we built a multi-signal decision system that routes each user through the right path and handles the edge cases.
