Building products with my background in gaming, the topic of “Gamification” comes up regularly. Usually with the idea of making a mundane user task more entertaining and therefore increasing the likelyhood of completion.

First, a bit of theory:

There are three so called brain loads:

1. Cognitive/Mental: Memory, Thinking etc.
2. Motor: Moving hands or arms
3. Visual: Stimulation through visuals

Games raise (= increase) one or more of these brain loads to create an entertaining and engaging experience.

• Visual & Motor: Fruit Ninja, Point and click shooters
• Motor only: Press buttons as soon as you can
• Motor + Mental: Candy Crush, Starcraft
• Mental: Puzzle games

Back in the 80’s, the goal was to lower brain loads to make everything as easy as possible. Now, there are software/web structures that are very established so they can be made more complex again to make things more engaging.

Some fail, and some succeed. I will write about that in a future post.

Today, I attended a short webinar on “Conversational Interfaces” hosted by Applause in collaboration with lautmaler. Conversational Interfaces offer great possibilites to onboard and guide users.

It wasn’t a sales event which I was afraid of but actually had some interesting content on the topic. Even though it was rather high level.

My most valuable takeaway is a better understanding of the anatomy of conversational systems.

I also appreciated their separation of the user intent versus the trigger of a message. My intent could be to eat a burger. What triggers a conversation could be me opening the DeliveryHero app. Identify your user intents first, then think about the triggers.

Here are my notes.

1) Conversational UI offers the opportnuity to interact with machines on human terms.

2) There are two formats: Voice interfaces that allow to talk. Chatbots that allow to type.

3) Six factors should inform our strategy to “unmute our brand” to give it a voice: Use Case, Context, Channel, Language, Knowing the User, Brand impersonation

4) Use Cases: Voice for when hands are busy. Chat for others.

5) Consider how your users talk. What could be their intents to communicate.

6) Develop a brand persona e.g. tone of voice, jargon, what kind of connection should be established (long-term or short-term; professionally distanced or amicably familiar…)

The anatomy of a voice Interface looks like this.

(ASR Automatic Speech Recognition) –> (NLU Natural Language Understanding) –> Context User Management and Situational Routing) –> (Logic Implementation of Business Logic) –> (Output Text and Visual CMS Integration) –> (TTS Text-to-Speech)

Remove ASR, NLU, TTS which leaves you with the anatomy of a chatbot interface.

7) Voice is more difficult to get right as it needs a wake up phrase (a la “ok Google”) and a “No Input” timout. A chhat is simple and save as the user just writes a message. The chat can theoretically wait indefinitely.

8) When designing system responses, we need to - identify the users intent - trigger backend calls - keep track and update dialogue context - execute business logic

9) Managing the dialogue could be handled via simple if/then statements and/or machine learning

10) The System should be tested, especially when several use cases exist to ensure proper conversation flow. Pretty sure that’s the Applause pitch here but it’s also true

When optimizing user onboarding flows, the completion rate number of users who started the flow / number of users who finished the flow isn‘t the right KPI.

If that wouldn‘t be true, you could reduce the number of screens to a single one with a big fat „click here“ button and your completion rate will be 98%. 2% always drop-off, no matter how easy it is to click through 🤷‍♂️.

That‘s not why there is user onboarding. It exists to achieve a specific goal of getting your new users to their Aha!Moment - the moment when they realize the value of your product for them.

That‘s not at the end of a series of explainer screens, walkthrough tours, setup screens or other-things-to-get-out-of-my-way-to-finally-see-and-use-what-I-came-for. It‘s when I understand and use your product so it delivers meaningful value. Try to measure that instead.

—— We recently re-designed the onboarding flow of XING and ended up with twice the amount of screens in the flow. Our onboarding completion rate dropped 😎 Here is how it looks like.

A UX Designer actually suggested we should reduce the screens to get more people through the flow. I suppose he didn‘t understand the aim of the flow. It‘s not about maximizing the number of users at the end but to maximize the number of new users who turn into happy, engaged members of our network.

Not sure if we‘ll achieve that it‘s currently running as an AB test but if we don‘t, I‘m sure it won‘t be because of the number of screens but because their content isn‘t the right fit for purpose.

I‘ll let you know when the results are in 👨‍💻

App Xing

About Xing is is the largest online business network in the DACH region. Sign-up is free but there are premium features available for a fee (subscription based).

Category Social Network

Platform Mobile iOS

Broadly speaking there are 2 different approaches to User Onboarding:

1. Either you allow users into your garden straight away to taste and explore the product before buying
2. Or you fence the garden and run them through a setup before accessing the product.

Example 1: Netflix’s Closed Garden

The Onboarding of Netflix is quick and easy with the most basic information being asked to get started. A conversational tone and constant reassurance keeps users on the right path and builds trust. New users know what Netflix is about (on-demand TV series and Movies) when they get to start the app, so there is no need to trial the app before creating and account. This way Netflix knows the user a bit better and can target the more relevant content and offerings.

Example 2: Duolingo’s Open Garden

Duolingo is a language learning app that does exactly that with no fuss. As soon as users open the app they get started learning the language they want with clear descriptions and positive language. Duolingo puts all the importance on learning before having new users create their accounts.

Learning languages isn’t easy and there are many different approaches to it. That’s new users need a chance to see if the unique approach of Duolingo is something the buy into. Therefore an Open Garden works brilliantly.

After scanning the Onboarding of hundreds of web and mobile apps, I’ve noticed a couple of patterns which might help you to identify the right approach for your product.