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Why most product tours get skipped

productonboarding.com

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Re: Why most product tours get skipped

#61

Post by cholmdomsky »

foobar1726 wrote: post #14
kshri24 wrote: post #12

Instead of product tours I like how AWS has little info/help buttons that are placed right next to every informational/actionable element on their dashboard. Totally unobtrusive. If you want to understand something on the dashboard that is not obvious at first, you can click on the info/help button that opens a side panel with a lot more information about that particular element (and any associated topics). Most of t…

Incredible that tooltips were killed because braindead """designers""" couldn't figure out how to make them work on mobile. They'll be reintroduced under a new name in a decade or two with endless self-congratulation. Same as physical car controls. Here's a solution off the top of my head: have a dedicate "info" button at the OS level. Holding the button disables normal interaction, highlights all inspectable element…

I'm fairly certain that exact thing existed on Windows XP and earlier. It was a question mark in the top right of the window, added a "?" next to your cursor. You could then click elements to see if there happened to be an explanation embedded in the program for that particular button/box/whatever. Didn't always work, but was useful when it was needed.

Re: Why most product tours get skipped

#62

Post by zerkten »

faangguyindia wrote: post #44
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…

I've never liked those "focus hijacking guided tours" and never really followed through any such onboarding process. But they are so common, i don't know who designs them and makes me feel like 5yo. You gotta understand, people will use the product you made, in a way that makes sense to them, not according to your devised "one way". And that's fine because it allows user to own his workflow using your product. I like…

>> But they are so common, i don't know who designs them and makes me feel like 5yo.

Often these are the product managers building follow-on features that don't get the usage they want. Users aren't using them, but monthly usage is the currency of so much PM work that they have to try to draw attention to it.

Re: Why most product tours get skipped

#63

Post by zacharybk »

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…

I 100% agree that no one uses your product to watch a walk-through, they’re there to do a job. The author primarily talks about new user onboarding.

While they do make the point about introducing new features, they don’t address how to make an interrupt-driven announcement successful with existing users.

Has anyone seen a good way to make ongoing update announcements

Re: Why most product tours get skipped

#64

Post by gfat »

zacharybk wrote: post #63
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…

I 100% agree that no one uses your product to watch a walk-through, they’re there to do a job. The author primarily talks about new user onboarding. While they do make the point about introducing new features, they don’t address how to make an interrupt-driven announcement successful with existing users. Has anyone seen a good way to make ongoing update announcements

Linear has an in-app changelog in the bottom right that doesn’t get in the way of work. It’s synced with their changelog on the website and can be revisited anytime clicking the help menu icon. Pretty elegant.

Re: Why most product tours get skipped

#65

Post by badestrand »

zacharybk wrote: post #63
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…

I 100% agree that no one uses your product to watch a walk-through, they’re there to do a job. The author primarily talks about new user onboarding. While they do make the point about introducing new features, they don’t address how to make an interrupt-driven announcement successful with existing users. Has anyone seen a good way to make ongoing update announcements

You can just have a bell icon that displays a little red (1) so the users know that they have a message/notification that they can, but don't have to, read.

Re: Why most product tours get skipped

#66

Post by aeternum »

In some countries engineers wear a ring on their pinky to remind them of their obligation to ethics, safety and humility in engineering practice.

In the US engineers don't get that ring and they implement product tours.

Re: Why most product tours get skipped

#68

Post by bluGill »

rcxdude wrote: post #40
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…

Also because generally in those cases you don't really want a guided tour of the whole product, you have a problem you want solving and you would like to see how to solve that problem with the product. Which either talking to a person who knows the product or reading through some documentation/guides does, but a guided tour generally does not (or at least does not do efficiently).

Or at the very least, at the price we're talking here, companies should be hiring a trainer who knows the product well, who can actually teach people and answer questions. not go through this, go through that, clicking that: half the things are not useful to their particular problems and shouldn't be taught at all to this group.

Re: Why most product tours get skipped

#69

Post by bluGill »

kccqzy wrote: post #59
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…

Exactly. These guided tours should be triggered by users, and never automatically. For example old school Windows apps have a question mark button on their title bar that the user can click to activate help for any UI element.

Unfortunately, even by the time old school, Windows was doing help, documentation was afterthought and usually worthless.

Re: Why most product tours get skipped

#70

Post by bluGill »

AnimalMuppet wrote: post #37
monkpit wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

But if you have (through whatever process) sent them a complaint that, say, "it doesn't work right using Firefox X.Y running on Windows 7", then those release notes might in fact be interesting to you. So there actually is a reason for you to be able to see them. Not for them to get in your way, though. 99% of the people won't care.

No it won't because you're either going to already be using some other browser and you won't care or you'll be once again trying Firefox X.Y and you'll discover it does work.
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