by michaelt
21 subcomments
- 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 opened. Very rare someone opens the PDF reader because they're just having a look around to see if there are any interesting new features.
If someone opens my virtual whiteboard product, 95% chance they're in some sort of sprint review meeting and they want to write some virtual post-it notes right now. A tour isn't what they need.
If someone opens the ticket management product, or the expense report filing product, or the music playing product... you get the picture.
- This 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 decide the content wasn't important anyways and close the page in <1 second.
by Fr0styMatt88
2 subcomments
- I feel the exact same way about tutorials in games that try and be comprehensive and show you everything.
Incremental games do an amazing job at this (things like Universal Paperclips, A Dark Room, etc); parts of the game are revealed to you as you need them and it's often a fun surprise. I don't think the same thing is directly applicable to productivity apps, but I wonder if something could be taken from the pattern.
This is timely -- I'm coding an app at the moment and had the fleeting thought that "hey I should do a new user onboarding tour thingy" and then remembered that in general I skip them, so I havne't made one :)
- Personally, I generally dislike product tours.
On the other hand, I think it's interesting to compare the dislike in these comments (and elsewhere) to "RTFM" culture. What's the primary difference? That you can read the manual or use the product at your discretion? e.g. `ls` doesn't forcefully open the man page when you run it for the first time?
(I'm aware of the goomba fallacy and that these are likely two different groups of people - I still think it's interesting!)
- Any 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 unskippable tutorial.
Just a couple examples offhand..
Discord (constant tooltips covering the screen to harass me to try "Nitro", or some new AI BS I am never going to even remotely consider trying)
Miro ("Sign in with Google" modal in the top right, "CANVAS 26" conference signup site stripe covering the top of the screen, frequent "What's new" modal covering the entire app, "How likely are you to recommend this product or service to a friend or co-worker?" net promoter score survey covering the bottom of the screen, which makes zero sense whatsoever as an enterprise user)
JIRA ("Try dark theme" tooltip covering the top right of the page)
Figma ("Reconnect with Community" tooltip covering some content on the left)
- If 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!"
by SoftTalker
0 subcomment
- My instinctive and immediate response to any popup is to hit "Esc" and if that doesn't make it go away I look for the "X" in the corner and failing that I'll nuke it with browser tools.
Popups are a great way to get your content ignored.
- 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.
- I very much prefer a well-written product guide compared to a product tour. A guide does not interrupt me when I am trying to get work done. I can read it at a time that is convenient to me. I can bookmark it, revisit it and share it with others as well.
- 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 the time, you just know what you are dealing with (or can guess what that particular topic might mean and you will probably be right).
- The other huge problem is you never tell the user what they'll get out of the tour. People will invest in a tour if they understand the reward (and "learning" can't be the reward).
by chihuahua
1 subcomments
- Every time some software tool displays one of those "helpful" messages - "We've reshuffled these features, so now they're hidden over here!" I get angry and dismiss the popups as quickly as possible.
I've got a task to accomplish, I wasn't just sitting around with nothing to do.
Imagine you get in your car to drive to work, and the dashboard displays a pop-up that tries to show you the latest feature. No!
- I had the great fortune for a major steel company. They had regular "training day"s where basically there is an hour long session where the team showed what new capabilities and fixes the software got and perhaps more importantly collect real user feedback on what they thought.
Too bad I didn't get to work there for long but I loved their stance that everybody should personally make safety the first priority, not just because the company requires you to do so but because your safety really is your priority.
So yes, this was before 2014 but I still think these kind of "training" and feedback should be a two way street, not a series of next I have to press to get the software to shut up.
by josefrichter
0 subcomment
- This has been in Apple's Human Interface Guidelines for *decades*. I believe only recently it became more open towards "onboarding", but not much further beyond "if you really must...".
Yet onboarding is the holy grail of corporate products (maybe coz it feels like powerpoint presentation of the whole product?) and the holy grail of marketing brainwashing - carefully composed sequences of known psychological tricks and manipulations to "convert" people.
P.S. I'm not sure these floating tasks lists are much better. They always feel like unnatural pressure into something you don't need to do, aka. hardsell again. I came to the product to solve my tasks, not yours.
- Every moment (token?) spent interrupting a user to introduce a feature should instead be spent making the feature more intuitive instead.
- 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.
- I don't know if it's an Android thing or only a Samsung thing, but my phone displays colored dots over the buttons that led to some new functionality. The dots go away when I eventually push those buttons. If I follow the trail of dots I can discover what's new. It's quite unobtrusive but pushes me to look at those functionality and get rid of the dots. Sometimes I do it in 5 seconds, sometimes in 5 months, but it happens.
- This isn't that hard. Most of the time, the "changes" are useless UI Slop: "we've moved notifications to this TOTALLY BETTER OTHER SPOT IN THE SCREEN that one of our designers snuck a commit in with and nobody wanted to argue about it, because the last time it just came down to differing opinions. Its not really better but it's different!"
And the other reason is because most users probably have day jobs and need to get something done.
- i don't think it's an either/or or "best". highly dependent on industry and application. if you're application is complex no amount of "good ux" can replace a good overview/tour (watch people, they will go in click around to get the lay of the land then be confused usually).
after that its determining how people to digest info, some like docs (me), others want to sit thru a video, others NEED a person to guide them in person, some like tooltips, checklists, etc.
i'm not saying you need to litter your app with this stuff, but i don't think there is some magical UX pattern that always works.
by aguacaterojo
1 subcomments
- The Product Manager needs to justify their job.
- I would expand this to "why most software notifications get skipped". Because they are in the interest of the vendor and get in my way! The amount of interruptions on a given day, be it in desktop software or saas products, is absolutely ridiculous.
"What did you think about this feature ?".
"Did you know you can use our AI agent ?".
- I've never in my life seen a useful product tour. They're always blatantly obvious like "THIS IS THE SEARCH BAR. USE IT TO FIND CONTENT ACROSS OUR PRODUCTS AND SERVICES."
The best UX is using obvious and standard design, plus a searchable menu / command palette.
- Because most often their real purpose is to stand out in a powerpoint presentation.
- 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.
- I think it can be summarized: Don’t push a map on an explorer, they wanted to explorer, a map is not what they are looking for.
It’s a great article, thanks!
by voidUpdate
0 subcomment
- Something similar that annoys me for the same reason is the "there is an update! update now?" popups you get on launch. I want to use the product right now, not wait for it to update before I use it. I wonder if it would be better to get those popups when you try to close the product, it'll say "there's an update available. Do you want to update, or just close right now?". Then it's not getting in your way when you're trying to use it. Or the steam method of just updating things when you're not using them, though that does require a separate launcher program
- I swear, if you haven't opened an app for a week there will be some such popup you have to close.
- Don't build a product tour. It is useless friction. Instead, build your UI to be good,simple, obvious. That's it. That's the tweet.
by radial_symmetry
0 subcomment
- Honestly makes sense. For our app there are different actions a user might want to take first so having a checklist instead of forcing an order is better.
- Good UIs are self explaining.
- I just created (yesterday) a product tour I'm pretty proud of:
https://www.writelucid.cc
It's a writing reviewer app, and the landing page is the product. It's literally a document with a critique. You can write in it, use the editor, even delete the whole page.
I always skip tours, but I think this kind of thing (if your product can support it) is much better. Then again, this isn't so much a "you've logged in, now let us teach you how to use this product" as a "welcome, here's what this product does".
by YetAnotherNick
0 subcomment
- Instead of spending time making product tour, add a info to each button or show the detail when user hover for 2 seconds. Most product miss that and I don't know what exactly the button does until I click on it. I don't know what "hide" and "past" does in HN even after being here for years.
- > If they cannot find it in about thirty seconds, they leave.
Sorry but in many startup cases it's by design. See: got a KPI increase (email is collected), but as the user left there's no AWS resource usage! Profit!
by bijowo1676
0 subcomment
- Why most GDPR cookie consents get randomly clicked away
Why most ads on Youtube gets get skipped
etc etc
- The kind of product tour that the article says it works seems very similar to most video game tutorials.
... which incidentally always have a skip button.
by mschuster91
1 subcomments
- GTFO of my face with product tours.
Atlassian is particularly enraging, especially if you're dealing with setting up "new" accounts. I've worked with your shitware for a decade now, I know how it works, DO NOT FORCE ME TO MAKE TEN CLICKS TO GET RID OF A FUCKING INTRO.
Rather, invest your time into a good, logical UI and, most importantly, good AND CURRENT documentation.
- All of the comments & discussions about this kind of stuff makes me wonder if computer keyboards should bring back the "F1: Help" button, for absolute newbies or obtuse software.
but this time, make apps actually respect it :)
Or better: tie it to an OS-level screen-reader AI that explains what's what's on the spot.
by AnimalMuppet
0 subcomment
- For those who think this is something new: TeachEmacsTutorial.
- > Why most product tours get skipped
Because I want you to leave me the fuck alone.
by dnnddidiej
0 subcomment
- Hell yeah, fuck does anyone do those tours? Feels like an emperors new clothes.
- Yes, I always skip those lol
- These tours are like the tutorial bit in a video game where the game wants to show you a new mechanic so it comes to a dead stop, and then your character is whisked off to an alternate dimension consisting of a bare room covered in Holodeck grid lines, completely empty except for a few tomato-can enemies. A dialog pops up explaining the mechanic, optionally with a video demonstrating it, which you must then dismiss; and the game will not continue until you take out the enemies using the technique shown in the dialog.
I HATE that. Let me play with the toolset you give me "in the field". Don't interrupt my fucking game/workflow to show me the feature of the moment YOU want me to use right now. (For applications software in 2026, this is likely to be some stupid AI integration.)
- [dead]
by hnisforrtards
0 subcomment
- [flagged]
by Tommaso23Sacco
0 subcomment
- [flagged]
by rhodri_cheung
0 subcomment
- [flagged]
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