[kamobit]

Completely agree here. I think the main theme of that section being "Don't over-educate users" if you can reach for high engagement and conversion rate without overlays, arrows, etc. then that's the way to go.

It's great to design the experience at the outset to not need the tutorial screens. And then test into the possibility of including them anyways.

One "in-between" possibility would be to have something similar to Slack's old onboarding experience where you'd see some elements that gently pulsed prompting the more curious users to click on them and learn more. And everyone else to safely ignore them and move on.

Interestingly Slack has moved on to more explicit explanations during their most recent onboarding iteration. But I am sure that they'll also try something without any tool-tips at all.

The larger point is that many apps have sliding screens that force users to read in order to learn about their app. And that users did not install and open the app to read about it. They're there to use it.

We've seen massive increases in conversion rate and engagement by replacing these screens with "learning by doing" interactions.

If that "learning by doing" step can be accomplished without tutorials then even better!

[potatolicious]

> "If that "learning by doing" step can be accomplished without tutorials then even better!"

Sure, but I'd still argue that 95% of the time you're still negotiating the degree of failure.

Honestly, the times I've been able to exert enough force on a project, we have always come out with a better, more refined, and clearer design that required no tutorials whatsoever.

5% of the time, user confusion comes from the fact that you're doing something truly new and groundbreaking and that the user will simply have to learn it somehow.

95% of the time, your design simply isn't good enough and you haven't iterated enough on it, or you have a tolerance for convention-breaking that is poorly-justified in the context of your app.

Mobile devs (me sometimes, too) have an annoying tendency to think they are in the 5% category all the time. My challenge to people is to accept that almost all of the time when users can't figure out your app, the solution isn't user education, it's to un-fuck your design.

[edit] I just read your post more carefully...

> "It's great to design the experience at the outset to not need the tutorial screens. And then test into the possibility of including them anyways."

Wait what. That seems entirely unreasonable. If you've designed an experience that is intuitive and requires no tutorial screens, you want to include them anyways?

Am I reading your post wrong?

Tutorial screens and mechanisms are never a good thing. They can (rarely) be justified as a necessary evil, but at no point are they actually good, and at no point do they make your UX better. A well-designed tutorial is simply less awful than a poorly-designed tutorial. Both scenarios are categorically worse than simply not needing a tutorial.

Note that I'm drawing a distinction between onboarding and tutorials - one introduces the user to the product, the other introduces the user to the UI. Onboarding (like, say, an online dating app helping you import your first photo so your account is even marginally useful) is entirely legit, tutorials aren't. The screenshots provided in the original article are tutorials, not onboarding.

[kamobit]

> "Tutorial screens and mechanisms are never a good thing."

What's your definition of a "good thing" or "actually good"? If it's quantifiable as higher engagement and retention then these mechanisms are far from "never a good thing". They're a good thing quite often - when done correctly. This is why you see them in many products that have growth teams dedicated to the task.

Agreed that the screenshots do not do a great implementation justice.

Note that when I'm talking about onboarding, I am talking about combining introducing users to the UI with introducing them to the product.

Sure introducing the user to UI by itself is not great.

> "If you've designed an experience that is intuitive and requires no tutorial screens, you want to include them anyways? Am I reading your post wrong?"

Slightly yeah. It should be read as: "If you've designed an experience that is intuitive and requires no tutorial screens, you want to test them anyways."

Because we've seen their inclusion improve engagement and conversion even in experiences that are intuitive. Sometimes that's not the case, but the possibility is strong enough to justify testing them out.