interaction design - Best practices for UI that introduces new users

Tuesday, July 2, 2019

interaction design - Best practices for UI that introduces new users

I'm working on an onboarding UI to help new users get familiar with our platform and I was thinking about some good ways to implement it.

From what I have come across so far, it seems that many interfaces accomplish this in two ways:

Having an interactive guided tour that overlays over the platform and helps users understand basic functionality. Users can leave the tour at any point but they are also able to access the tour again in the future.

An example of this is the tour that the new Google maps gives to new users. googlemaps

Have an organized documentation system that has walkthroughs with step by step instructions (and even perhaps video tutorials). This documentation system is introduced to new users immediately on the landing page through a widget/notice which can be hidden forever.

An example of this is the Github bootcamp shown to new users. github

Are there any other good ways to introduce new users?

Answer

There are a number of other ways you can look at as well

The walk-through approach : The walk-through approach walks your users through the app like how Google does it. Its also called the joyriding approach. To quote this article

The “joyriding” approach walks the user through the features of an app or highlights the key features. It’s great because it clears up a lot of confusion right from the get-go. I think of this as the go-to approach since it’s what first comes to mind when you really think “onboarding.” While joyriding tends to be the most common process, it can be executed in many beautiful ways.

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The do something approach : To quote the above mentioned article :

By asking users to make their first move on the application, an application can get users engaged right off the bat. This is common in applications that depend on curation by the user to get the app working (like Ness).

The simplified approach: In the simplified approach,once the user creates an account instead of overwhelming him with options, tell how to do the most basic tasks and allow him to go from there. To quote this article

After clicking on “Start posting” the user is taken into the created blog’s dashboard and given only two suggestions to explore and use the interface: “Make your first post” and “Pick your theme.” There are plenty of other items to dive into, but Tumblr doesn’t overwhelm the user with too many suggestions.

The interactive tutorial approach : The interactive tutorial is kind of similar to the first option but allows the user to experiment with the different options in a guided way.To quote this article