40

6 months ago:

Boss: We have this idea to improve our onboarding to avoid drop off in the new app. See this section here? Were going to take that out of the onboarding and just let them pass straight through to the app. Then when they get into the app, there will be a banner telling them they should go to settings and set this up. That way they can ignore it for a while and get into the app sooner

Me: Get into the app sooner to do what?

Boss: Explore it

Me: Explore an empty app with no content, as they are a brand new user with nothing setup? While theres a big banner on the screen saying "You have insecure settings" ... basically forcing them to do it straight away anyway?

Boss: Yeah, we can give them some recommendations or something while they click around. It will be good. This is months away anyway, we'll talk again

Yesterday:

Boss: So this weird unexpected thing happened. We showed some beta users our plans to remove this section from onboarding and they felt weird about it. They said they didn't like the idea of the banner telling them they haven't set it up correctly

Me: Thats not weird, I said the same thing 6 months ago

Boss: ......... oh, really?

Me: Yep. Its not an improvement to get them through onboarding quicker, just to tell them they have to now go do it somewhere else

Boss: ... right. Ok maybe we'll build it anyway and see how they feel with it in there hands?

Me: nope

Boss: ... what do you mean?

Me: We are behind, you've asked me 3 times in the last week if we are going to be able to get everything in on time ... and now you want me to build something that everyone, apart from you, says they don't like. So realistically, i'm going to build it, and then remove it next week ... and we'll have a discussion about what has to be dropped because of this

Boss: ........ right .... ok .... hhhmmm

Me: *sits with resting bitch face*

Boss: ... maybe we can hide the banner until later. Not show it to them until they've done something in the app?

Me: ... maybe we can not do any of this?

Boss: right but then the onboarding will ...

Me: *talks louder* ... yes will be the way our users want it to be

Boss: ... hhmm i'm not sure

Me: Ok heres what we'll do, so long as it doesn't delay me getting the designs I need, feel free to have the designer mock up what it would look like using that figma on device preview thing. If users say they like it, i'll build it

Boss: ... right but it won't be real on device app so ...

Me: Its that or we cut feature X

Boss: ... well we need that

Me: ok glad we agree, let me know what feedback the designer gets

Boss: ... ok

Comments
  • 8
    Lol we did literally the same thing in our app 😆
  • 1
    @Lensflare as in had the same discussion or actually built it? interested to know if you built it and got any useful feedback on it
  • 2
    @practiseSafeHex First we had a mandatory step in the onboarding flow and then we moved it away from onboarding and made it a prominent banner instead. It’s still mandatory but the user can use the app a bit earlier.

    I don’t have any info about user feedback on this change, though.
  • 1
    It's a good thing that your boss isn't an egotistical asshole who erupts and blasts the team any time they disagree with him.
  • 1
    Onboarding is just sign up procedure or what?
  • 2
    @retoor No. Its sign up and then a bunch of security related things that a user pretty much "must" do. But they want to make it semi optional now to avoid scaring first time users, by never showing it. But then plaster it everywhere that you didn't complete this action the second you get in
  • 1
    Good for you for standing your ground!
  • 1
    Had to do pretty much same thing with our appas well, except it in our case, it was the customers who asked for it. We served reommendations based on user training while signup.
    Removing the step, definetly reduced the friction for getting started and we did see a bump in the no. of users, but just a month later, the customers started complaining about reduced quality of recommendations, so had to add it back anyways. 🤦‍♂️🤦‍♂️🤦‍♂️
  • 0
    @practiseSafeHex so what did boss man say after getting the design finished with the designer and in front of users?
  • 1
    @iSwimInTheC we haven’t come back to it yet, not fully anyway, as something unrelated came up. There is a task to have a designer come up with other ideas and then we’ll pick which one we like
Add Comment