I intentionally didn’t design for the onboarding experience. It’s something Growth squad has to do.
I was in a design jam session when another designer mentioned this while walking us through their designs. I was surprised and started shaking my head. First time user experience is not another squad’s work, it is every designer’s job.
Product design has evolved from designing pixels to designing holistically. We learned to think outside of the artboards and inside of the business. We asked ourselves questions of“what metric will this inititaive move and how can design be used strategically to help achieve that?”. We finally took the time to use research and understand our users more. But despite the acknowledgement of designing holistically, we still fail to design for the extremes.
When you design for the extremes, designing for the norm will just be a piece of cake 🍰
So what is “extreme”?
When I say extreme, it is about extreme users and their needs. Extreme users are types of users who are both at the end of the spectrum of service or product, and anything in its center is what we call the norm or mainstream users. But the it doesn’t stop there. All extreme users has one specific common need or shared experience, and that’s what I call the love at user’s first sight or first time user experience (FTUX). All types of users at some point has to start at the beginning. They have to be in their lifecycle, a first time user who is in need of a first time experience.
Love at user’s first sight
So how do you put love at user’s first sight of a product, a new feature or even a new page? Two key points:
First impression
Remember the quote, first impression lasts? It is the same with product! First impression is all about how you present your designs to your first time users. You don’t want them to squint their eyes and see their eyebrows meet due to confusion. Thus, this is where visuals and information architectuure can play a big role.
Imagine, you designed a new homepage and you welcome your users with a page like the one below (Reddit’s old design), where readability is greatly compromised and visual hierarchy and density were forgotten. Will your first time users turn into activated users or move to becoming a churned one?
The value
Even though you nailed the first impression with your suit and tie, but if you fail to bring out the value of a product, a feature or a page, then it will still result to a lost at first sight.
So the question is how do you bring out the value? then the question I have for you is,
How easy do you want your users to discover the value?
The easier for them to find such gem, the faster they’ll be hooked to your service. But it doesn’t mean that you have to overwhelm and pour out all the value in one page to capture a user, because some values take time, just like relationships.
An analogy I always use is the first time experience of a user in a product is like the first few months of dating, you allow the other person to get to know you more and see who you are — which is the same in product. You have to design that first time experience where in every step crafted brings them closer to their AHA moment! — the love at first sight.
So to wrap it up, let’s stop passing the work to other squads when it comes to first time experience. It should be every designer’s job which is to bring love in a user’s first sight of everything.
Cheers!
