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This article is great, and full of really helpful advice! I think the best advice for me was "Add sample data to avoid an empty nest." I just realized that my

This article is great, and full of really helpful advice! I think the best advice for me was "Add sample data to avoid an empty nest." I just realized that my product has this problem, so I'm going to be adding some sample data for new users. I think I'll also have a toggle switch so you can easily hide all the samples. (It would be annoying if you had manually delete everything.) Concierge setup is also a great idea, and I've recently been offering that to new customers.

capkutay 7y ago
> I think the best advice for me was "Add sample data to avoid an empty nest." I respectfully disagree with that view and I say that as someone who has implemented a product with sample data during the onboarding process. Users don't care about your data. They care about their data. The easier you make it for the user to input their own data and get some value out of it...even if its something trivial...the faster they'll be able to relate their problem to your products ability to solve it.
- pbhjpbhj 7y ago
  I've been thankful of sample data before - eg auditioning online image editors, I didn't want to hunt around and upload something but just wanted to get right in to editing to get a feel for the apps and whether they're so what I needed. In general though: most onboarding I've disliked, too slow, but some with "click here to do this, or elsewhere to end the tutorial" have been good.
- DanHulton 7y ago
  I don't know that we have much to disagree about. Absolutely users will get more value from seeing their data, but there are situations where it can take a while to get "their data" visible, like if you're waiting for people to answer a form that they created with your software. Instead of having them wait a day, it can help prove the value of your service to show them what data will look like, once it starts coming in.
jstanley 7y ago
Instead of adding sample data when the initial view would be empty, I prefer to replace the empty view with a message about what the user should be doing first. So instead of "0 photos" and a blank page, it could say "Get started by [uploading some photos]".
- lioeters 7y ago
  This is great UX advice! Turn an otherwise empty view into an invitation.
- arkitaip 7y ago
  It annoys me when onboarding basically means having to delete the demo data that was automatically added because I like my apps clean and tidy, and because random data makes it difficult to discover the app's functionality my myself. Maybe there's a compromise where you can suggest to the user that they can import demo data to see the potential of the app?
  - narrowtux 7y ago
    When I tried Asana, they had lots of example projects you could choose to add. These showed what's possible with the more advanced features. I really like this approach because the use case for products like these varies from one client to another. Just throwing in some demo data that's always the same wouldn't really help everyone.
the_duke 7y ago
Sample data can be helpful, but in my experience, usually isn't. What users actually want is a quick way to work with their own data. A specialized "first launch wizard" that makes entering inital data really quick and painless is often a better choice. It can also make sense to allow trying the product out with existing data, but for this I would offer a "demo" mode where you get bootstrap data, can play around with it, and have a big banner on top that allows launching the real thing. This depends on the product of course, but I prefer those two options above.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]

capkutay 7y ago

> I think the best advice for me was "Add sample data to avoid an empty nest." I respectfully disagree with that view and I say that as someone who has implemented a product with sample data during the onboarding process. Users don't care about your data. They care about their data. The easier you make it for the user to input their own data and get some value out of it...even if its something trivial...the faster they'll be able to relate their problem to your products ability to solve it.

pbhjpbhj 7y ago
I've been thankful of sample data before - eg auditioning online image editors, I didn't want to hunt around and upload something but just wanted to get right in to editing to get a feel for the apps and whether they're so what I needed. In general though: most onboarding I've disliked, too slow, but some with "click here to do this, or elsewhere to end the tutorial" have been good.
DanHulton 7y ago
I don't know that we have much to disagree about. Absolutely users will get more value from seeing their data, but there are situations where it can take a while to get "their data" visible, like if you're waiting for people to answer a form that they created with your software. Instead of having them wait a day, it can help prove the value of your service to show them what data will look like, once it starts coming in.

jstanley 7y ago

Instead of adding sample data when the initial view would be empty, I prefer to replace the empty view with a message about what the user should be doing first. So instead of "0 photos" and a blank page, it could say "Get started by [uploading some photos]".

lioeters 7y ago
This is great UX advice! Turn an otherwise empty view into an invitation.
arkitaip 7y ago
It annoys me when onboarding basically means having to delete the demo data that was automatically added because I like my apps clean and tidy, and because random data makes it difficult to discover the app's functionality my myself. Maybe there's a compromise where you can suggest to the user that they can import demo data to see the potential of the app?
- narrowtux 7y ago
  When I tried Asana, they had lots of example projects you could choose to add. These showed what's possible with the more advanced features. I really like this approach because the use case for products like these varies from one client to another. Just throwing in some demo data that's always the same wouldn't really help everyone.

the_duke 7y ago

Sample data can be helpful, but in my experience, usually isn't. What users actually want is a quick way to work with their own data. A specialized "first launch wizard" that makes entering inital data really quick and painless is often a better choice. It can also make sense to allow trying the product out with existing data, but for this I would offer a "demo" mode where you get bootstrap data, can play around with it, and have a big banner on top that allows launching the real thing. This depends on the product of course, but I prefer those two options above.

deleted 7y ago
[deleted]