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Driver.js: Product tours, highlights, contextual help and more

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Re: Driver.js: Product tours, highlights, contextual help and more

#51

Post by runako »

local_issues wrote: post #16

No no no no no. Design your product to be understandable at first pass. Apple famously doesn't do any of this with your iPhone, while Sony forces you to do it on every new device. Let the onboarding be a forcing function for usability. This isn't a crutch, it's something worse and damaging.

Casual reminder that many (most?) assignments are to improve existing products, not to build from scratch. Whether or not one agrees with the sentiment of this post, there are certainly places where quick wins are, in fact, still wins.

Re: Driver.js: Product tours, highlights, contextual help and more

#52

Post by redocneknurd »

User onboarding tutorials implemented as wizards with masks have never appealed to me. It's like navigating through a forest while only looking down, limiting the overall learning experience. I once had to implement one of these tutorials, and the data revealed that very few people even used it. From that experience, I firmly believe it's an anti-pattern to avoid.

Re: Driver.js: Product tours, highlights, contextual help and more

#53

Post by jallen_dot_dev »

StockHuman wrote: post #49
twen_ty wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Apple famously doesn't do any of this with your iPhone Maybe that's why 50% of iPhone users still don't know that they can use long press on they keyboard (or space bar) to gain cursor control - and this is just one example.

This is featured the first time you ever bring up the software keyboard and then never again. You can see the behaviour by booting up a simulator. They do have an explainer, but it’s very easy to dismiss if you expected to just start typing.

> This is featured the first time you ever bring up the software keyboard and then never again.

In other words, a behavior that something like Driver.js can help you achieve.

Re: Driver.js: Product tours, highlights, contextual help and more

#54

Post by brigadier132 »

local_issues wrote: post #16

No no no no no. Design your product to be understandable at first pass. Apple famously doesn't do any of this with your iPhone, while Sony forces you to do it on every new device. Let the onboarding be a forcing function for usability. This isn't a crutch, it's something worse and damaging.

Do you have data to back your assertion it's damaging? Because I briefly worked in growth and the stats show these things work and help people.

Apple gets a free pass because they have an army of unpaid bloggers willing to write articles on how to get around some of their terrible UX decisions (systems settings on iOS are impossible to navigate)

Re: Driver.js: Product tours, highlights, contextual help and more

#55

Post by tamimio »

Problem with these type of tours is a lot of information shoved into your face in short time and then it disappears, few minutes later the user will be asking “what was this section for again?”, I tried it in a platform I built before, it was to fly drones and some sections where to control while others for video feed etcs, so you should know what to do before clicking due to the dashboard complexity, users will be nodding their head and hitting next without even reading any. Had to remove it eventually and instead I added a little information icon for each to hover over to get some info what that section is about.

Re: Driver.js: Product tours, highlights, contextual help and more

#56

Post by debarshri »

I just saw Walnut.io [1] demo for another product today. I skipped through most of the demo, did not really understand anything about the product. I think it is not the tool but really depends on who and how these product tours are built.

I can imagine some products are complex and needs explanation or hand holding by solution engineers, account managers etc. No product ever is so amazing that you don't need help or product tours.

[1] https://walnut.io

Re: Driver.js: Product tours, highlights, contextual help and more

#58

Post by adolph »

local_issues wrote: post #16

No no no no no. Design your product to be understandable at first pass. Apple famously doesn't do any of this with your iPhone, while Sony forces you to do it on every new device. Let the onboarding be a forcing function for usability. This isn't a crutch, it's something worse and damaging.

Apple does do product tours, example are animations here: https://www.apple.com/ios/ios-17-preview/

Re: Driver.js: Product tours, highlights, contextual help and more

#59

Post by enraged_camel »

smt88 wrote: post #20
local_issues wrote: post #16

No no no no no. Design your product to be understandable at first pass. Apple famously doesn't do any of this with your iPhone, while Sony forces you to do it on every new device. Let the onboarding be a forcing function for usability. This isn't a crutch, it's something worse and damaging.

> Apple famously doesn't do any of this with your iPhone You're arguing in favor of a product tour. iOS usability is garbage. There are no affordances. Nothing is discoverable. There are a million inputs (mostly gestures) that no one ever finds out about unless someone tells them or they Google it, and they're not consistent across apps, even first-party apps. Sometimes "swipe the row left" means "remove," sometimes…

>> iOS usability is garbage

Yes, that must be why my technologically illiterate 90-year-old grandpa was able to figure out how to use an iPhone after being shown a single swipe gesture.

Re: Driver.js: Product tours, highlights, contextual help and more

#60

Post by adrianparsons »

local_issues wrote: post #16

No no no no no. Design your product to be understandable at first pass. Apple famously doesn't do any of this with your iPhone, while Sony forces you to do it on every new device. Let the onboarding be a forcing function for usability. This isn't a crutch, it's something worse and damaging.

I laugh when I see these because I've witnessed the process that leads to them. It goes something like:

  1. Relatively confusing UX is designed and built.
  2. User testing or executive review concludes the UX is relatively confusing.
  3. Product Manager says "We'll build a slideshow/interactive tutorial!" to solve the problem.
The process and end result is completely understandable. It's hard to rehash a design when you've already built it and gotten buy-in.

I want to spend as little time as possible with most tools (especially enterprise tools), and so often these interrupt my work.

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