Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Driver.js: Product tours, highlights, contextual help and more

driverjs.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

41–50 of 108 posts

Re: Driver.js: Product tours, highlights, contextual help and more

#41

Post by mindcrime »

local_issues wrote: post #16

No no no no no. Design your product to be understandable at first pass. Apple famously doesn't do any of this with your iPhone, while Sony forces you to do it on every new device. Let the onboarding be a forcing function for usability. This isn't a crutch, it's something worse and damaging.

Let the onboarding be a forcing function for usability.

Sure, you always want usability and discoverability. But to suggest that everything can always just be discovered seems a lot like discussion of the elusive "sufficiently smart compiler." Eg, an unattainable ideal that doesn't exist in the real world.

I am not convinced that the current state of UX is such that it's possible to make a UI where there is zero need for product tours, documentation, video tutorials, etc. At least not for moderately complex products and beyond.

Re: Driver.js: Product tours, highlights, contextual help and more

#44

Post by ericmcer »

twen_ty wrote: post #22
local_issues wrote: post #16

No no no no no. Design your product to be understandable at first pass. Apple famously doesn't do any of this with your iPhone, while Sony forces you to do it on every new device. Let the onboarding be a forcing function for usability. This isn't a crutch, it's something worse and damaging.

> Apple famously doesn't do any of this with your iPhone Maybe that's why 50% of iPhone users still don't know that they can use long press on they keyboard (or space bar) to gain cursor control - and this is just one example.

You just changed my text messaging efficiency

Re: Driver.js: Product tours, highlights, contextual help and more

#45

Post by ibdf »

twen_ty wrote: post #22
local_issues wrote: post #16

No no no no no. Design your product to be understandable at first pass. Apple famously doesn't do any of this with your iPhone, while Sony forces you to do it on every new device. Let the onboarding be a forcing function for usability. This isn't a crutch, it's something worse and damaging.

> Apple famously doesn't do any of this with your iPhone Maybe that's why 50% of iPhone users still don't know that they can use long press on they keyboard (or space bar) to gain cursor control - and this is just one example.

What’s this black magic! Never knew it either.

Re: Driver.js: Product tours, highlights, contextual help and more

#46

Post by thyrox »

local_issues wrote: post #16

No no no no no. Design your product to be understandable at first pass. Apple famously doesn't do any of this with your iPhone, while Sony forces you to do it on every new device. Let the onboarding be a forcing function for usability. This isn't a crutch, it's something worse and damaging.

Yes I agree 100%. These type of demos teach me nothing and are annoying as hell.

The only button I'm looking for is the skip button. For the rare cases when the UI doesn't make sense, reading the docs or watching a demo video is far easier to follow as you can skip to the relevant part much easily.

Re: Driver.js: Product tours, highlights, contextual help and more

#47

Post by worldsayshi »

marcopicentini wrote: post #42

I always feel annoyed when I see this. Users don't read and skip everything.

As a user I only want to know about a feature when I need it. I don't want a tour or of the blue! I want to do the thing I came here to do. It's very unlikely that your new baby feature is the thing I want to use right now.

This is why I love command palettes. It allows me to discover features by searching for them. When I've searched for it - then allow me to take the tour of where to find it faster/more conveniently and/or show me the shortcut key.

Re: Driver.js: Product tours, highlights, contextual help and more

#48

Post by ericmcer »

local_issues wrote: post #16

No no no no no. Design your product to be understandable at first pass. Apple famously doesn't do any of this with your iPhone, while Sony forces you to do it on every new device. Let the onboarding be a forcing function for usability. This isn't a crutch, it's something worse and damaging.

The one of these I don't hate was at Carrd. More of a toggleable full screen overlay with arrows and notes pointing to all relevant info. https://carrd.co/build/6881ccd20d634611

Re: Driver.js: Product tours, highlights, contextual help and more

#49

Post by StockHuman »

twen_ty wrote: post #22
local_issues wrote: post #16

No no no no no. Design your product to be understandable at first pass. Apple famously doesn't do any of this with your iPhone, while Sony forces you to do it on every new device. Let the onboarding be a forcing function for usability. This isn't a crutch, it's something worse and damaging.

> Apple famously doesn't do any of this with your iPhone Maybe that's why 50% of iPhone users still don't know that they can use long press on they keyboard (or space bar) to gain cursor control - and this is just one example.

This is featured the first time you ever bring up the software keyboard and then never again. You can see the behaviour by booting up a simulator. They do have an explainer, but it’s very easy to dismiss if you expected to just start typing.

Re: Driver.js: Product tours, highlights, contextual help and more

#50

Post by jabart »

local_issues wrote: post #16

No no no no no. Design your product to be understandable at first pass. Apple famously doesn't do any of this with your iPhone, while Sony forces you to do it on every new device. Let the onboarding be a forcing function for usability. This isn't a crutch, it's something worse and damaging.

Have you setup an iPhone ever? Literally the first time you setup an iPhone it walks you through onboarding and a guided flow.
Post reply on HN