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

Why most product tours get skipped

productonboarding.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

21–30 of 185 posts

Re: Why most product tours get skipped

#21

Post by c0balt »

pants2 wrote: post #19

I've never in my life seen a useful product tour. They're always blatantly obvious like "THIS IS THE SEARCH BAR. USE IT TO FIND CONTENT ACROSS OUR PRODUCTS AND SERVICES." The best UX is using obvious and standard design, plus a searchable menu / command palette.

Ime, the only useful product tours where in games, I. E., tutorials. This usually extends up to in-game hints at certain features like a characters ability. A lot of software can probably pull inspiration from there in regards to including hints with minimal interruption during usage (tooltips that are shown longer the first time you use something etc).

Re: Why most product tours get skipped

#22

Post by esafak »

wffurr wrote: post #20
blanched wrote: post #10

Personally, I generally dislike product tours. On the other hand, I think it's interesting to compare the dislike in these comments (and elsewhere) to "RTFM" culture. What's the primary difference? That you can read the manual or use the product at your discretion? e.g. `ls` doesn't forcefully open the man page when you run it for the first time? (I'm aware of the goomba fallacy and that these are likely two differen…

You nailed the primary difference. If I want to just use the tool I can do that; if I need to learn how to use a complex feature, I can consult the help or do a web search for a how to.

That works if you know the feature exists.

Re: Why most product tours get skipped

#23

Post by the_snooze »

michaelt wrote: post #6

It's pretty simple to understand - when a user opens a tool, it's because they want to do the thing that tool does, now. If someone opens my videoconferencing product 98% of the time it's they've got a scheduled call to join within the next 20 seconds . They're not going to be late for their meeting so they can read my release notes. If someone opens my PDF viewer, 99.9% chance they want to view the PDF they just ope…

Too much of modern consumer-facing software think they're the ends, not the means.

Re: Why most product tours get skipped

#24

Post by SoftTalker »

My instinctive and immediate response to any popup is to hit "Esc" and if that doesn't make it go away I look for the "X" in the corner and failing that I'll nuke it with browser tools.

Popups are a great way to get your content ignored.

Re: Why most product tours get skipped

#25

Post by pedalpete »

jappgar wrote: post #17

If your product needs a tour your product is badly designed. Imagine you walked into a convenience store and the owner was like "Hey you need to take the tour first!"

The best UI is no UI at all.

I can't think of a single time I've looked at a product tour and thought "well, I'm really glad they told me that, I never would have figured that out.

What the product tour I think often misses is that people don't want to learn your entire tool at one time.

They came to do one thing, that one thing needs to be brain dead simple.

Over time, you can show people what else they can do. But a product tour isn't the way to do that.

I think progressive UIs where you expose more and more to the user over time is the way to go.

If you're thinking "but I have so many features and capabilities this person needs" you probably haven't identified what the one thing people are paying you for is.

Re: Why most product tours get skipped

#26

Post by [deleted] »

wffurr wrote: post #18
debarshri wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thats true for point solutions. You often dont find a guided product tour there. Guided tour does have its place where the product is a workflow, a platform offering, has bunch of features and you want to introduce the feature to them. If you are paying 10-25k USD per year, you expect some onboarding specialist who gives instructions on integrating ACH and payroll systems etc. It is very common for non-technical folk…

Actually I get interrupted by a tour or popup when using a "point solution" all the time.

[deleted]

Re: Why most product tours get skipped

#28

Post by monkpit »

michaelt wrote: post #6

It's pretty simple to understand - when a user opens a tool, it's because they want to do the thing that tool does, now. If someone opens my videoconferencing product 98% of the time it's they've got a scheduled call to join within the next 20 seconds . They're not going to be late for their meeting so they can read my release notes. If someone opens my PDF viewer, 99.9% chance they want to view the PDF they just ope…

My kids’ school uses a web portal to add money to their lunch accounts. My only task when I open this website is to pick an amount and click submit and give them my money.

Whose idea was it to show me a “what’s new” popup of all the jira tickets they closed in the last sprint?

What’s new? Nothing is new. It works just like it used to. Just take my money and leave me alone, please.

Re: Why most product tours get skipped

#29

Post by Fr0styMatt88 »

I feel the exact same way about tutorials in games that try and be comprehensive and show you everything.

Incremental games do an amazing job at this (things like Universal Paperclips, A Dark Room, etc); parts of the game are revealed to you as you need them and it's often a fun surprise. I don't think the same thing is directly applicable to productivity apps, but I wonder if something could be taken from the pattern.

This is timely -- I'm coding an app at the moment and had the fleeting thought that "hey I should do a new user onboarding tour thingy" and then remembered that in general I skip them, so I havne't made one :)

Re: Why most product tours get skipped

#30

Post by anitil »

michaelt wrote: post #6

It's pretty simple to understand - when a user opens a tool, it's because they want to do the thing that tool does, now. If someone opens my videoconferencing product 98% of the time it's they've got a scheduled call to join within the next 20 seconds . They're not going to be late for their meeting so they can read my release notes. If someone opens my PDF viewer, 99.9% chance they want to view the PDF they just ope…

Often I see that there's a new feature, and I'm interested in it, but my options are do the demo now, or hide it. But I want to do it later! I'm admittedly terrible at operating GUIs, so maybe it's just a me issue
Post reply on HN