Hi all! I'm the person behind this site -- if any of you have any questions or withering critiques, send 'em here! I will be watching it all day.
Probably my favorite site ever made (after Hacker News) haha.<p>The only thing I hate is that they are too slow to make new onboarding teardowns!<p>My favorite - how they criticize Apple Music's onboarding process: <a href="https://www.useronboard.com/how-applemusic-onboards-new-users/" rel="nofollow">https://www.useronboard.com/how-applemusic-onboards-new-user...</a>
Netflix is an example of a trend that I hate, where it is hard to find the sign in button. One other offender that comes to mind is Crashplan, I actually had to google "Crashplan login" to find the page. Lastpass does this too where you actually have to cancel toward the end of the installation to proceed because the installer assumes you are a new user.<p>Maybe not directly related but when you go to download Chrome from chrome.com it forces you to watch an animation first, very unnecessary and frustrating.<p>Onboarding should take existing users into consideration and let them easily log right in.
Love this site. It's amazing how many steps users have to go through to start using even simple apps. (It actually made me feel better about my app-- not that the on boarding is perfect, just nice to realize that I'm not alone.)<p>Sam-- any thoughts on how many screens someone should have to go through, or tips for reducing that number?<p>Or, if perhaps sometimes it's better to do something in multiple screens that many of us developer types would group onto one screen (Slack comes to mind here)?<p>Thanks for your contributions to making software easier to use.
I notice how most of those "onboardings" don't even suggest you read the EULA. That's scary. There are a lot of EULAs out there to which you really don't want to agree.
I had no idea what "onboarding" was until I clicked the link. I feel incredibly enlightened now. GUIs are so important, but it seems like properly designing a clean and straight-forward GUI is almost a cult movement rather than a mainstream movement.
I'm assuming the big name products here have carefully measured, A/B tested, etc. every screen and they are at their best (other than Apple Music, which is a whole other creature). That said, product teams should still periodically audit onboarding content, ideally with a set of fresh eyes. Does everything still make sense? Is there a logical flow from A to B?<p>It would have been interesting to be "a fly on the wall" and see how some of these evolved over time. I suspect some of the oddities initially started with a good set of screens, but then a new piece was later tacked on without a full audit or without the resources to change everything else.
I thought Quora's onboarding was: (1) question mark share equals one; (2) close tab; (3) hover over the link and don't click. I didn't even know these screens existed.