Apple’s Advice for a Great Onboarding Experience.

The real real-ity of the SaaS world is that you can spend $20 million solving problems that don’t exist. So how useful is your software? And how do you know?

Well, let’s take a look at what Usability really is? According to Nielsen Norman Group it’s made up of these 5 qualities:

• Learability
• Efficiency
• Memorability
• Errors
• Satisfaction

First, What is Learnability?

This is how easy it is for users to complete tasks. An example to illustrate how learnability is accomplished through UX Design would be creating a great Onboarding experience in your app.

What makes for a great Onboarding Experience?

Apple’s Human Interface Guidelines have a few keys to create a successful onboarding experience for people.

First, it must be fast, fun, and educational.

Provide a launch screen.

A launch screen appears the moment your app starts, giving the impression that your app is fast and responsive, while allowing initial content to load. This screen is quickly replaced by the first screen of your app, so it should closely resemble this screen with the exception of text.

Get to the action quickly.

Avoid showing a splash screen, menus, and instructions that make it take longer to reach content and start using your app. Instead, let people dive right in. If your app needs tutorials or intro sequences, provide a way to skip them and don’t show them to returning users.

Anticipate the need for help. Proactively look for times when people might be stuck. Getting stuck somewhere in an application can be one of the most frustrating experiences that will make users simply give up.

Stick to the essentials in tutorials.

It’s fine to provide guidance for beginners, but education isn’t a substitute for great app design. First and foremost, make your app intuitive. If too much guidance is needed, revisit the design of your app.

Make learning fun and discoverable.

Learning by doing is a lot more fun and effective than reading a list of instructions. Use animation and interactivity to teach gradually and in context. Avoid displaying screenshots that appear interactive.

Avoid asking for setup information up front.

People expect apps to just work. Design your app for the majority and let the few that want a different configuration adjust settings to meet their needs. To the extent possible, derive setup information from device settings and defaults, or through a synchronization service, such as iCloud. If you must ask for setup information, prompt for it in-app the first time, and let users modify it later in your app’s settings.

Don’t ask people to rate your app too quickly or too often.

Asking for a rating too soon or too frequently is annoying and decreases the amount of useful feedback you receive. To encourage well-considered feedback, give people time to form an opinion about your app before asking for a rating. Always provide a way to opt out of rating prompts and never force users to rate your app.

Next, we will cover Efficiency. Thanks for reading.

“Design — Usable Doesn’t Mean Useful | Psychology of Web ….” 14 Jun. 2017, https://3.7designs.co/blog/2017/06/design-usable-doesnt-mean-useful/. Accessed 12 Jan. 2020.

“Usability 101: Introduction to Usability — Nielsen Norman Group.” https://www.nngroup.com/articles/usability-101-introduction-to-usability/. Accessed 12 Jan. 2020.

“Onboarding — App Architecture — iOS — Human Interface ….” https://developer.apple.com/design/human-interface-guidelines/ios/app-architecture/onboarding/. Accessed 12 Jan. 2020.