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Why most product tours get skipped

productonboarding.com

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Re: Why most product tours get skipped

#171

Post by account42 »

wongarsu wrote: post #128
lazaroclapp wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Interestingly, there are basically two kinds of programs I am sometimes happy to see guided tours embedded in: * Creation programs (image/video editors, 3D rendering... hell, even a slides program or an IDE). Doesn't mean I won't dismiss them sometimes anyways, but these are tools that often I do want to get an initial idea how to use, that I have allotted some time to play around with, and that are sufficiently comp…

Videogame tutorials also used to mostly suck. But in the last two decades they recognized the issues, and there's a lot of knowledge sharing in the industry If you want to learn how to better teach new users about your product, GDC talks about video game tutorials are one of the best resource you can find

Hard disagree - at least tutorials used to be skippable and/or short. Now you're more likely get an extended tutorial-like section at the start of the game that is just tediously boring if you have half a brain cell. Like Half-Life mentioned in the sibling, the tutorial is a separate mini-campaign you don't have to start before the main campaign - which doesn't actually need any tutorial if you have played an FPS before.

For most games I don't actually want a tutorial at all. If there is something not entirely obvious then I'd much prefer a reference sheet I can pull up when I actually want to do that thing.

Re: Why most product tours get skipped

#172

Post by edarchis »

nickjj wrote: post #150
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…

> 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…

I think that you underestimate the portion of people just letting Youtube play videos in a continuous flow. They are doing the dishes, sewing, folding clothes, watching the entrance of the building... Stating the subject of the video makes a lot of sense for them.

I use DeArrow to remove clickbait titles and thumbnails, so indeed, I don't need that information to be repeated. I don't mind a few seconds at the beginning, what I hate is the person rambling about why they didn't post the day before and what not. That time multiplied by the number of viewers makes me wanna cry.

Re: Why most product tours get skipped

#173

Post by gtowey »

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.

The great secret of the industry is that it's mostly run by clueless incompetents. And their only strategy is to copy from every other product because they don't have original ideas or enough conviction to lead in a new direction. They just want to show up, punch thier timecard and go home, so we get the laziest suite of product implementation possible.

Re: Why most product tours get skipped

#175

Post by PaulHoule »

tardedmeme wrote: post #133
wongarsu wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Videogame tutorials also used to mostly suck. But in the last two decades they recognized the issues, and there's a lot of knowledge sharing in the industry If you want to learn how to better teach new users about your product, GDC talks about video game tutorials are one of the best resource you can find

Just watched someone play Half-Life (the original). Its tutorial is better than a lot of tutorials today.

Onboarding is such a big thing in games. A lot of times I have a few minutes to play and I play a pickup game of Beat Saber or maybe a round of Dynasty Warriors because I can just pick up the controller in play. A lot of games stay in my backlog because I don't want to spend a few hours watching cutscenes and playing through tutorials just to know if I like the game or not.

Re: Why most product tours get skipped

#176

Post by diegof79 »

An alternative take on the section: “Why teams keep building tours anyway”.

Teams keep building product tours because the other option is to invest heavily in trial-and-error user research to optimize the onboarding experience. That is not only more expensive in terms of time and resources, but also requires greater alignment of priorities.

In my experience (I work in product design), introducing product tours is usually a band-aid for deeper UX problems.

Products with an excellent onboarding experience that goes beyond the “click next” pop-up tend to have an excellent user experience too, because they take the time to think about the usage story.

Re: Why most product tours get skipped

#177

Post by freehorse »

sidewndr46 wrote: post #149
ralferoo wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. I'd go even further. If someone opens your product, they don't care about anything in your release notes as long as they are still able to join the call. Not only does nobody care about the new background…

Even more likely: if someone's opens your product your last update probably broke their workflow. They don't need to read your release notes to know this

I think notifications after updates make more sense. You already know the software, and you are informed of some new feature that you may or may not care about. How else can a user be informed about a new feature else? Even if I do not care about the majority of features added, there is still occasionally one that I may want to use.

I often read such notes/product tours in software I already use/know, and in contrast I find it a bit stupid when they add some feature and they do not tell the users. It should not be obstructing, though. I would say the updating itself breaks the workflow more than a pop-up window or sth.

Re: Why most product tours get skipped

#178

Post by kwanbix »

diegof79 wrote: post #176

An alternative take on the section: “Why teams keep building tours anyway”. Teams keep building product tours because the other option is to invest heavily in trial-and-error user research to optimize the onboarding experience. That is not only more expensive in terms of time and resources, but also requires greater alignment of priorities. In my experience (I work in product design), introducing product tours is usu…

Yeah, as a former dev turned into PdM, if you need to do a tour, your are doing the UX wrong.

Re: Why most product tours get skipped

#180

Post by wongarsu »

account42 wrote: post #171
wongarsu wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Videogame tutorials also used to mostly suck. But in the last two decades they recognized the issues, and there's a lot of knowledge sharing in the industry If you want to learn how to better teach new users about your product, GDC talks about video game tutorials are one of the best resource you can find

Hard disagree - at least tutorials used to be skippable and/or short. Now you're more likely get an extended tutorial-like section at the start of the game that is just tediously boring if you have half a brain cell. Like Half-Life mentioned in the sibling, the tutorial is a separate mini-campaign you don't have to start before the main campaign - which doesn't actually need any tutorial if you have played an FPS bef…

That's a bit like saying all CGI is bad: the bad instances are the ones you remember most vividly, the best instances are the ones you never noticed.

In my opinion, the best tutorial in any game I've ever played was Portal (yes, also 19 years old, not a good case for "tutorials were terrible back then"). Portal has 19 levels of tutorial (the test chambers) which gradually introduce mechanics with Glados as your sarcastic guide, and five levels outside the tutorial (escape and destroying Glados) where you use what you learned

Meanwhile the colony sim genre has mostly arrived at the checklist style: you get a checklist of things that would be useful to do, and when you complete them you get a new checklist. But you are free to just ignore it and do something else. Captain of Industry or Timberborn come to mind

In the FPS genre Titanfall 2 had a pretty nice tutorial in the campaign that ended in a timed obstacle course

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