I have at least two different saas packages that I use regularly that fall into product tour mode frequently even though I have completed the tour and have been using the product for some time, logged in as the same user. The tour was usually not helpful in the beginning, especially when I was onboarded by a trainer. It's more frustrating that I can't make them go away for good.
Why most product tours get skipped
151–160 of 185 posts
Re: Why most product tours get skipped
#152Any kind of tour/nag tooltip on any app/site I use stays up forever, until they hopefully finally realize I am never going to interact with their cognitive-energy-wasting noise that should never have been shown to begin with. I've had the "try out dark mode" tooltip showing on JIRA for months. Just don't show these. Don't waste people's time. There are sites I close and never come back to because they start with an u…
The thing is, nobody is ever going to feel bad that you've ignored their little feature. It'll just keep nagging you into the future until you dump the product. In spite of many saas products collecting data on every mouse movement and keystroke, perpetually, they seem to do nothing with that data.
Re: Why most product tours get skipped
#153It'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…
Another reason why I often skip them is that for "tech" products, the tours almost never cover how I want to use the product. Instead, they tell me how the vendor wants me to use the product. Browsers are especially notorious for this. When I get a tour for a new feature, it's almost always just some new, tacked-on junk to disable. "Check out our bundled VPN", "Use Copilot to shop for socks", "You now have more priva…
Microsoft is terrible for this in general. Every windows setup involves microsoft accounts and asking you to setup multiple rubbish SaaS like onedrive.
Re: Why most product tours get skipped
#154Instead 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…
In the future they'll track your eyes and when you've been staring blankly for a second at something, it'll pop up a tooltip that you'll have to dismiss.
Re: Why most product tours get skipped
#155It'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…
> 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. Yes and this also applies to other things like videos. I'd be curious what others think about this: If you see a video on YouTube and choose to click it, you as the viewer already know the title of the video and have seen the thumbnail. Those things together gave you enough detail to be intereste…
There's a workaround for this problem on PC, just in case you're not aware of it. Just press "2" or "3" to skip forward to 20 or 30 percent, which just usually long enough for the filler. And if not, you use "j" or "l" to skip forward or backwards in 10-second increments.
Re: Why most product tours get skipped
#156Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yep. And ironically, the most complex software I use - IntelliJ and davinci resolve - don’t have any onboarding at all. They’re great! The makers of resolve have some excellent video tutorials on their website and a manual that is many hundreds of pages long. But it’s up to you to search that stuff out.
agree with your points, but damn, resolve has some strange UI patterns / key combos etc compared to other software i've used. maybe if you're a video editor coming from years within the field, the metaphors make sense? for me, having mostly done audio stuff, it was a bit of a journey. i dont think an onboarding thing would be the solution, though
If you haven't done it, I really recommend the official resolve training:
https://www.blackmagicdesign.com/products/davinciresolve/tra...
The UI patterns make a lot more sense after watching the people who designed it explain how it works, how to use it and why it was designed that way.
Re: Why most product tours get skipped
#157It'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 get irritated by Zoom saying I need to update right when I open the app and want to join a call. Or even worse, sometimes I'll have had the app open (checking video and sound) and it won't notify about a required update until I actually go to join a call. Never understood why they don't propose the update when the call has ended.
Bitwarden also does this, with a big modal popup - and I only use my password manager in the middle of a flow. I'm either in the middle of signing up for some thing to accomplish a goal (like checking out on a website), or logging in to something to do the same.
I'd much rather it prompt on app close (when I don't care how long the update will take), or just have a button in the UI that I can click at my leisure.
Re: Why most product tours get skipped
#158If 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!"
UI is like a joke. If it needs explaining, it's bad.
I don't know how you make even the simplest UI, unless it's a carbon copy of an existing one, then.
Re: Why most product tours get skipped
#159This is a bit of a tangent, but cookie consent dialogs have exhausted my will to navigate anything blocking the content I care about. If I go to a new website and encounter any sort of popup, modal, or large banner, I will reflexively feel an urge to close the page unless there is an obvious dismiss button. I often need to see the content on the page and resign myself to navigating the dialog, but just as often I dec…
Are you in Europe? It's so prevalent here that would usually mean not using the web at all...? I've also noticed blocking consent/informational banners of sorts when connected to a US VPN becoming more popular
It's worth noting that the "obvious dismiss button" that OP allows for is a legal requirement. By law rejecting cookies has to be just as easy as accepting them
Of course in reality enforcement of this is non-existent. Just yesterday I had an especially egregious popup where dismissing it required about 7 button presses (selecting "other options", then manually toggling on 5 categories of use before I was allowed to click "save settings")
Re: Why most product tours get skipped
#160It'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 was looking for something to use for documentation recently.
Every dang tour wanted to show me their endless litany of features, often leaning into enterprise stuff. So much so that it didn't involve a chance to actually use the tool for what I wanted.
I just wanted to try documenting something and seeing how fast and easy it was but every form of a tour wanted to side track me.