3 ms·

If you need to create on-boarding your product is to complicated. Add features over time, measure there impact and remove them if they don’t work.

atoav 7y ago
I disagree. there are products that are complicated, because the underlying problem your product helps to solve is complicated. And if there are existing solutions that tackle this problems differently to you, you might have to give users a pointer. If you e.g. design a software for electronic circuit design, good user on-boarding will allow you to highlight specifically why your product shines in comparison to other products. Another objection: some “products” are specifically meant to work for power users and a increased software complexity can increase the working speed and power you give to the user at the cost of making it harder for new users (e.g. vim for text editing). Of course if your product is the equivalent of a egg timer, it should be 100% self explainatory. And even if you do a electronic circuit design software it is always good to keep things self explainatory where you can. But sometimes you have to explain things in order to equip your users with a new, innovative and powerful concept they might never heard about before. Removing that concept to avoid complexity could them be akin to changing your target group. You can fl this, but it needs to fit the concept. Oh and sometimes you can just do both. Give your app an expert mode.
- overcast 7y ago
  Do you honestly believe you can onboard someone to electronic circuit design software, by having a bunch of annoying modal boxes popping up showing you where some key features are? I agree there is complicated software, but that isn't made less complicated by silly onboarding. And if your software is not complicated, you're just pissing people off having to click away from all that junk. If it's not complicated, but confusing, that's a UI design issue that will not be solved by a 3 minute intro.
  - atoav 7y ago
    So you take the idea of on-boarding in it’s most horrible manifestation and use it as a argument against the fundamental idea of introducing users to new concepts within the software they are using?
    - overcast 7y ago
      Yes, because the vast majority are as I described. Onboarding prompts are like those EU browser notifications multiplied by a hundred. No one cares, no one has ever read them. We are autotuned to just click away.
    - ben509 7y ago
      Is that really the most horrible manifestation or a typical onboarding experience in practice? Most of the onboarding I've seen clearly has some real thought put into it, but it still feels modal. They usually involve widgets that pop up and must be dismissed. Often they pretend to not be modal by not covering the screen, but I assume I have to chase them down and make them go away.
mobjack 7y ago
The perception of complexity matters more than actual complexity. At my job we made the product more complex and in rushing to release it, we didn't include an onboarding process like the old one. The new product ended up winning the AB test in conversion. As a follow up, I did a 3 way AB test that included the original product without the onboarding process. What I found out was that the original product without the onboarding process performed just as well as the new one. It was the onboarding hurting our conversion. We originally thought those extra steps helped the user make a decision but it just made the product seem more complicated and lead to analysis paralysis.
- duxup 7y ago
  Yeah it's the user's perception that is the key. I work with a product where the end user is ... shockingly luddite. I suppose everyone feels that way but these end users are very very easily intimidated even with little changes. Accordingly it doesn't matter how much I think something is simple, it matters what they do and what they're intimidated by. I could make the best super cool web app ever, but if they don't use it / effectively it doesn't matter and becomes a headache for everyone.

atoav 7y ago

I disagree. there are products that are complicated, because the underlying problem your product helps to solve is complicated. And if there are existing solutions that tackle this problems differently to you, you might have to give users a pointer. If you e.g. design a software for electronic circuit design, good user on-boarding will allow you to highlight specifically why your product shines in comparison to other products. Another objection: some “products” are specifically meant to work for power users and a increased software complexity can increase the working speed and power you give to the user at the cost of making it harder for new users (e.g. vim for text editing). Of course if your product is the equivalent of a egg timer, it should be 100% self explainatory. And even if you do a electronic circuit design software it is always good to keep things self explainatory where you can. But sometimes you have to explain things in order to equip your users with a new, innovative and powerful concept they might never heard about before. Removing that concept to avoid complexity could them be akin to changing your target group. You can fl this, but it needs to fit the concept. Oh and sometimes you can just do both. Give your app an expert mode.

overcast 7y ago
Do you honestly believe you can onboard someone to electronic circuit design software, by having a bunch of annoying modal boxes popping up showing you where some key features are? I agree there is complicated software, but that isn't made less complicated by silly onboarding. And if your software is not complicated, you're just pissing people off having to click away from all that junk. If it's not complicated, but confusing, that's a UI design issue that will not be solved by a 3 minute intro.
- atoav 7y ago
  So you take the idea of on-boarding in it’s most horrible manifestation and use it as a argument against the fundamental idea of introducing users to new concepts within the software they are using?
  - overcast 7y ago
    Yes, because the vast majority are as I described. Onboarding prompts are like those EU browser notifications multiplied by a hundred. No one cares, no one has ever read them. We are autotuned to just click away.
  - ben509 7y ago
    Is that really the most horrible manifestation or a typical onboarding experience in practice? Most of the onboarding I've seen clearly has some real thought put into it, but it still feels modal. They usually involve widgets that pop up and must be dismissed. Often they pretend to not be modal by not covering the screen, but I assume I have to chase them down and make them go away.

mobjack 7y ago

The perception of complexity matters more than actual complexity. At my job we made the product more complex and in rushing to release it, we didn't include an onboarding process like the old one. The new product ended up winning the AB test in conversion. As a follow up, I did a 3 way AB test that included the original product without the onboarding process. What I found out was that the original product without the onboarding process performed just as well as the new one. It was the onboarding hurting our conversion. We originally thought those extra steps helped the user make a decision but it just made the product seem more complicated and lead to analysis paralysis.

duxup 7y ago
Yeah it's the user's perception that is the key. I work with a product where the end user is ... shockingly luddite. I suppose everyone feels that way but these end users are very very easily intimidated even with little changes. Accordingly it doesn't matter how much I think something is simple, it matters what they do and what they're intimidated by. I could make the best super cool web app ever, but if they don't use it / effectively it doesn't matter and becomes a headache for everyone.