Onboarding

The most challenging products must EXPLAIN how something should be done (think Adobe Photoshop, where users must be find training on YouTube or elsewhere to engage — even initially—with the product). Having to explain your product is the least effective way to engage new users (and explains why products like Photoshop struggle to attract non-Pros).... See more

Optimize For The First 15 Seconds Of Laziness, Vanity, & Selfishness

We used the "Ikea effect" to increase conversion by 82%. Here's why and how. The Ikea effect is a "cognitive bias in which consumers place a disproportionately high value on products they partially created". We wanted to do 2 things in our... See more

Your objective should always be to eliminate instructions entirely by making everything self-explanatory, or as close to it as possible. When instructions are absolutely necessary, cut them back to a bare minimum.

The next area where I think games have a lot to teach product designers is in onboarding . Many games follow the path of slowly revealing the complexity of a system over time, giving the player just enough to do that they're engaged but not overwhelmed. Often this is a continual process that happens across the entire span of the game. Multiple... See more