4 ms·

Dropbox's Onboarding Brilliance

50 points by jarederondu 14y ago

eps 14y ago
Rather than classifying this as Dropbox's brilliance, it might be more prudent to point out the lack of diligence and thoroughness in user experience modeling on part of other software vendors. It is bloody obvious than a guided tour of a program or a service is a really good idea. Anyone who ever tried using their own software while pretending to be an uninitiated user can attest to that.
- solutionyogi 14y ago
  Everything seems obvious in hindsight. Trust me, if what Dropbox has done is as obvious as you seem to claim, a lot more software vendors would have done it.
patio11 14y ago
After publishing a video on improving the first run experience for software applications, I now have a small flock of little birds telling me that you should really, really consider doing this. Dropbox has one of the best I've ever seen -- seriously, sit regular users down and watch them interact with it, it will be worth your time. There is still significant value to doing this even if you're not going to nail the execution nearly as well as they did. It should be embarrassing how easy it is to wring huge increases out of the standard drop-folks-in-the-app-and-pray-they-think-like-your-tech-lead experience.
- guynamedloren 14y ago
  > After publishing a video on improving the first run experience for software applications, I now have a small flock of little birds telling me that you should really, really consider doing this. Not sure if it's sentence structure or my stupidity, but I'm not sure what you're saying here :) Are you saying that all software applications should have a 'how it works' video, or that you made a video about the 'first run experience' and everyone should have a better 'first run experience'? Thanks in advance!
  - patio11 14y ago
    Sorry for the oblique phrasing -- I was trying to avoid being self-promotional. I'll rephrase to make it more comprehensible but it's going to require an ad: I made https://training.kalzumeus.com https://training.kalzumeus.com <-- a video on this subject. (The site trades access to the video for your email address and permission to contact you.) Subsequently to publishing that, people who I am declining to name (+) got in touch with me and presented several independent confirmations that, yep, their first-run experiences that they wrote using the video's advice did meaningful things to their business. + There is an idiom in English "A little bird told me that...", which reports a comment made by someone whose identity you want to keep secret. A "flock of little birds" is an amusing image for reporting the same comment made by many people, or at least I thought it was.
    - brlewis 14y ago
      When the way to make your post sound less self-promotional is to make it less comprehensible and useful, please go ahead and be self-promotional, i.e. put the link in there and be specific about what success people have told you they had using the technique. If you've become shy about self-promotion due to downvoting, please ignore it. Downvoting on HN seems random in the last year or two. Please think only about how helpful you think your comment is, as if you were oblivious to how self-promotional it might sound. Helpful pointers to something you made will always sound self-promotional; there's no way around it.
    - comex 14y ago
      It made me wonder if you were referring to Twitter somehow. :)
jmitcheson 14y ago
A good article. Dropbox's onboarding is very good, but one thing I wonder is: has it always been that good? For example, what was the onboarding process like when Dropbox very first launched - was it terrible, average, or pretty much like this the whole time? I guess the reason I'm interested is that we all have these really early stage discussions in our startups about how perfect to get the onboarding process before launch, and it would be cool to know the story about Dropbox for a reference.
- nicholassmith 14y ago
  I signed up for Dropbox maybe 2+ years ago, the onboarding was pretty good then so it seems like they've been doing it well and improving from there at the very least.
eungyu 14y ago
It didn't feel the same when Kicksend did it.

50 points by jarederondu 14y ago

eps 14y ago

Rather than classifying this as Dropbox's brilliance, it might be more prudent to point out the lack of diligence and thoroughness in user experience modeling on part of other software vendors. It is bloody obvious than a guided tour of a program or a service is a really good idea. Anyone who ever tried using their own software while pretending to be an uninitiated user can attest to that.

solutionyogi 14y ago
Everything seems obvious in hindsight. Trust me, if what Dropbox has done is as obvious as you seem to claim, a lot more software vendors would have done it.

patio11 14y ago

After publishing a video on improving the first run experience for software applications, I now have a small flock of little birds telling me that you should really, really consider doing this. Dropbox has one of the best I've ever seen -- seriously, sit regular users down and watch them interact with it, it will be worth your time. There is still significant value to doing this even if you're not going to nail the execution nearly as well as they did. It should be embarrassing how easy it is to wring huge increases out of the standard drop-folks-in-the-app-and-pray-they-think-like-your-tech-lead experience.

guynamedloren 14y ago
> After publishing a video on improving the first run experience for software applications, I now have a small flock of little birds telling me that you should really, really consider doing this. Not sure if it's sentence structure or my stupidity, but I'm not sure what you're saying here :) Are you saying that all software applications should have a 'how it works' video, or that you made a video about the 'first run experience' and everyone should have a better 'first run experience'? Thanks in advance!
- patio11 14y ago
  Sorry for the oblique phrasing -- I was trying to avoid being self-promotional. I'll rephrase to make it more comprehensible but it's going to require an ad: I made https://training.kalzumeus.com https://training.kalzumeus.com <-- a video on this subject. (The site trades access to the video for your email address and permission to contact you.) Subsequently to publishing that, people who I am declining to name (+) got in touch with me and presented several independent confirmations that, yep, their first-run experiences that they wrote using the video's advice did meaningful things to their business. + There is an idiom in English "A little bird told me that...", which reports a comment made by someone whose identity you want to keep secret. A "flock of little birds" is an amusing image for reporting the same comment made by many people, or at least I thought it was.
  - brlewis 14y ago
    When the way to make your post sound less self-promotional is to make it less comprehensible and useful, please go ahead and be self-promotional, i.e. put the link in there and be specific about what success people have told you they had using the technique. If you've become shy about self-promotion due to downvoting, please ignore it. Downvoting on HN seems random in the last year or two. Please think only about how helpful you think your comment is, as if you were oblivious to how self-promotional it might sound. Helpful pointers to something you made will always sound self-promotional; there's no way around it.
  - comex 14y ago
    It made me wonder if you were referring to Twitter somehow. :)

jmitcheson 14y ago

A good article. Dropbox's onboarding is very good, but one thing I wonder is: has it always been that good? For example, what was the onboarding process like when Dropbox very first launched - was it terrible, average, or pretty much like this the whole time? I guess the reason I'm interested is that we all have these really early stage discussions in our startups about how perfect to get the onboarding process before launch, and it would be cool to know the story about Dropbox for a reference.

nicholassmith 14y ago
I signed up for Dropbox maybe 2+ years ago, the onboarding was pretty good then so it seems like they've been doing it well and improving from there at the very least.

eungyu 14y ago

It didn't feel the same when Kicksend did it.