Why most product tours get skipped

exabrial

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.

mschuster91

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.

michaelt

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.

aguacaterojo

The Product Manager needs to justify their job.

blanched

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!)

kshri24

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).

jwilliams

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).

jappgar

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!"

pants2

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.

SoftTalker

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.

bijowo1676

Why most GDPR cookie consents get randomly clicked away Why most ads on Youtube gets get skipped etc etc

Fr0styMatt88

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 :)

chihuahua

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!

amatecha

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)

AnimalMuppet

For those who think this is something new: TeachEmacsTutorial.

Razengan

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.

hatthew

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.

ookblah

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.

the_gipsy

I swear, if you haven't opened an app for a week there will be some such popup you have to close.

collabs

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.