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A novel approach to onboarding

blog.hiri.com

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Re: A novel approach to onboarding

#11

Post by C4stor »

huhtenberg wrote: post #2

Not sure I understand what exactly is novel about your approach. It sounds like your opening pitch was for solving problems that your visitors didn't have. That's an age old problem. You fixed that. Then, once you got a bit more of their attention, you started to elaborate on the product. This too is not much of a novelty. That's good old gradual on-boarding, "gentle introductions" and what have you.

You can innovate on a known concept by using it in a novel way. I believe that's what's happening here, and I find the idea intruiging, smart and novel indeed.

I think an added benefit is that it makes it trivial to see what are indeed the benefits of the tool : it's what you expect from an email client plus those things, nicely presented together. Just by reading the article and seeing the screenshot, I could evaluate if I was interested in this tool, which is a very rare thing.

Re: A novel approach to onboarding

#12

Post by ThomPete »

Thanks for the writeup.

I like this approach as it's a slightly different way of something that's always been a dream for most designers to have UI's that evolve as you evolve over time.

I have myself an app which is very unique and have had to find ways to make people understand what is unique and why they should download it. My primary method is video and that works out fine but maybe I should try this method out.

Thanks.

Re: A novel approach to onboarding

#13

Post by huhtenberg »

dpower wrote: post #5
huhtenberg wrote: post #2

Not sure I understand what exactly is novel about your approach. It sounds like your opening pitch was for solving problems that your visitors didn't have. That's an age old problem. You fixed that. Then, once you got a bit more of their attention, you started to elaborate on the product. This too is not much of a novelty. That's good old gradual on-boarding, "gentle introductions" and what have you.

We stripped every feature that made our product different and put them in an 'app store'. This was a huge change (a lot of work and a big risk), and not something I've seen others do as an on-boarding strategy. Thus, novel. I believe this approach could be repeated by others. It's a far cry from the usual walkthroughs, carousels and prompts.

So basically putting advanced features into a separate section, making them togglable and calling this section an App Store?

They are still mentioned on the homepage and in a form of a carousel at that.

I appreciate that this must've been a significant rework, with all edge cases considered, but sectioning off parts of a software and making them discoverable in a course of normal use is not exactly novel... I mean that's just too bold of claim to be thrown around lightly. The story is still interesting, but something a bit more exact like "Here's what worked for us remarkably well" would've been more suitable.

Re: A novel approach to onboarding

#14

Post by wccrawford »

rekshaw wrote: post #7

The article is interesting, but what intrigued me the most was the carefully coordinated marketing: - Medium article to capture inbound and not make it look like an ad, but a "We want to share this discovery with you" - Hacker News submission to get audience - (probably) team upvote boost to trigger front page - 50% off promotion ending in ~4 hours with the tagline "you'll never see this offer again". Cost of adverti…

I've come to associate those things with snake oil. They're right up there with "Free trial, but you need to put in a credit card." Sure, some legit services use those techniques, but they're a red flag that they might be a pain to deal with if you choose to back out.

Re: A novel approach to onboarding

#16

Post by vezycash »

My take from this is:

Know your users.

Know what features they use the most and make those prominent. Every other feature is noise.

Don't hide stuff for UI / design / style sake. Use #2 point to make that decision.

Make it extremely easy for power users to decide what features they want to show.

Last point not mentioned in the article.

Customizability comes with a price - it makes it easy to screw things up.

So include a UI reset button - either globally or for categories.

Re: A novel approach to onboarding

#17

Post by pjc50 »

dpower wrote: post #6
john-foley wrote: post #4

Not related to the article but the show stopper for me trying to install/test this email reader is that it won't work with just a generic IMAP server. I've got to be using Outlook or Office365 or whatever.

IMAP is on the way (I'm using it now) but not quite ready for showtime. If you'd like access to the upcoming beta email dave (at)hiri(dot)com.

That's very unusual, normally IMAP is the easy one and Outlook is horrendous. What does it use under the hood?

Re: A novel approach to onboarding

#18

Post by pjc50 »

So this seems to be getting slated as a submarine, but the underlying insight is good: users don't like change. They want an app "exactly like X, but ..." So you start with a familiar interface and let people choose when they're ready to make it less familiar.

Rather like how game tutorials work with locked-down interfaces and gradual introduction of more mechanics.

Re: A novel approach to onboarding

#19

Post by objcts »

Great article about mental models! I commend the OP on sharing their experience to really understand what people are thinking, feeling, and expecting. This is exactly how you make tools that people love to use.

> The line in the background depicts how a user is feeling at a particular gate. Might cover this in a future post.

I understand the sentiment here, but trying to map real human feelings and emotions is tricky - it's rife with personal assumptions that once visualized, always fail to capture what people really feel.

Having taught Service Design at a big design school, this was something my students would try to convince me on when crafting service blueprints and journey maps... that they could create a 'happiness' or 'sadness' curve to depict what humans feel when interacting with a product or service. It never really works very well and can end up creating a false sense of emotional superiority within the designer's mind. Approach with caution!

Re: A novel approach to onboarding

#20

Post by kevkav »

pjc50 wrote: post #17
dpower wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IMAP is on the way (I'm using it now) but not quite ready for showtime. If you'd like access to the upcoming beta email dave (at)hiri(dot)com.

That's very unusual, normally IMAP is the easy one and Outlook is horrendous. What does it use under the hood?

You're right. It is unusual. We went with Exchange Web Services first instead of IMAP. Our initial target market were larger companies and we wanted to have deep integration with their Exchange servers (Calendars, Contacts, etc).
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