The experience designed to help new users understand a product's value and learn how to use it effectively. Good onboarding is contextual and progressive, revealing features as users need them rather than overwhelming them upfront.
Common contexts
- Designing the first-run experience for a project management tool where teams need to set up a workspace before seeing value
- Creating contextual tooltips that surface in a SaaS dashboard only when a user visits a section for the first time
- Mapping the empty-state screens for a mobile app to double as guided setup prompts
Use when
Prioritize a dedicated onboarding experience when your product has a non-obvious value proposition, requires configuration before the core experience is useful, or has a retention cliff at day one visible in your analytics.
Avoid when
Skip elaborate onboarding for simple utilities where a user can understand the interface in under ten seconds — a forced walkthrough for a basic calculator or unit converter creates friction where none needs to exist.
The best onboarding is the one users don't notice — it's embedded in the first real task, not layered on top of it as a prerequisite gatekeeping the actual product.
Real-world examples
- Duolingo's onboarding asks users to complete a real language lesson before creating an account, removing the friction of sign-up from the path to value and increasing activation by 40% in their own A/B tests.
- Slack's onboarding creates a demonstration workspace populated with fake Slackbot messages so new users experience the product's core value loop — organised conversations — before inviting a single teammate.
- Canva's blank-canvas tooltip sequence surfaces the exact right tool at the exact right moment (drag to resize when a shape is selected, colour picker when text is active), creating a contextual onboarding that scales to millions of skill levels.