3 user onboarding pitfalls every designer should avoid | Inside Design Blog
Knowing that many users want to actively learn a product while they use it means that we can’t rely on passive content like introductory slides or tutorial videos. Instead, we need to embrace guiding users as they interact with our products, giving them what they need through practice.
How to avoid the paradox of the active user
Leverage your defaults
Having great defaults is a simple but powerful way to onboard new users.
Put education in the context of use
Another way to provide an interactive onboarding experience is to have education appear while users do a task in your product.
- Dual-task interference
“Dual-task interference” is a phenomenon in which people ignore alerts, announcements, and other messaging that pop up or get in the way of a person’s current task. The “dual” part of dual-task interference speaks to the idea of someone needing to deal with two things at once.
How to avoid dual-task interference
Put educational messages after the user completes an action
Opt for in-line messaging instead of overlays
The method you use to display information can also contribute to its perceived interruptiveness. Overlays are common in user onboarding, yet are naturally interruptive because they appear on top of an interface. Instead of using an overlay to introduce new features or information, guidance could instead be presented inline with the normal state of the product.
- Front-loading
Front-loading is when all of the instructions and steps for learning a new concept are presented at the start of a learning experience.
How to avoid front-loading
To avoid front-loading, we should break down the tasks we want new users to master and apply education for those tasks gradually, at intervals.
in a post called “Sign Up Forms Must Die,” Luke Wroblewski talks about using a similar “gradual engagement” approach to effectively break signup flows into chunks that assist users in understanding the value of filling them in.
Break critical setup activities into 3 parts
Identify the critical setup actions you need new users to master. Then, break each of those actions down into three parts: the trigger, the activity, and the follow-up. Applying education to each of those parts creates an onboarding flow that is gradual and supportive.
Understanding common pitfalls in onboarding design, like the active user paradox, dual-task interference, and front-loading, helps us make better choices to avoid them. Addressing even one of these three pitfalls can lead to an onboarding experience that is more effective for your users, and for your product.
Posted on September 9, 2019