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.
There’s an Instagram killer in town and it’s called https://t.co/RDaAjjzKcC
I’m 10 minutes into it and it’s so refreshing. No ability to edit media, just pick photos from this week and post.
More importantly, it has an interactive page curl. Instant $10B valuation in my book.... See more
The users of your product don’t want to make choices, especially when they are in the first mile. The default options you provide, like which tab they land on and pre-populating fields with suggested selections, make all the difference in pulling new users through the first mile. I like how Dave Morin describes it, “the devil’s in the default.”