[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!)

[wffurr]

You nailed the primary difference. If I want to just use the tool I can do that; if I need to learn how to use a complex feature, I can consult the help or do a web search for a how to.

[esafak]

That works if you know the feature exists.

[mook]

I actually went through the Word 97 menus at some point to see what features it had. Unfortunately these days things no longer come with comprehensive menu bars.

[wpm]

That's why UIs that don't bury everything behind inscrutable squiggles and modals are great.

First thing I do in a new app or new web service is click all the stuff, try and get a lay of the land and understand the UI metaphors. It's much harder to do if there is a twee, condescending guided tour "hyuck hey there champ didja know the gear icon that says Settings next to it is where you can change some settings?" stopping me from doing that, and names hidden behind hover popovers and crappy monochrome SVGs of....shapes to serve as icons.

I am very unlikely to need every part of every tool, app, or service I use. I need to do one thing with it right away, and I need to find my way there and experiment to see how it works. I don't give a shit if I can have it waft my farts if I'm trying to compress a gif or something, the fart-wafter button just needs to be clear so at a time when I go "huh what does this do" I can figure it out non-destructively to see if I'm interested. If you need a big popup saying "We just added the Fart-Wafter! Want to know how to find it?", you've failed, utterly.

[layer8]

The best software help used to have a complete list of all features, with comprehensive explanations of all of them.

[bluGill]

There are actually two different sites to the best help. There's that list of features and a comprehensive explanation of how to use them, of course.

The other side though is sometimes even more important it's what this thing does as a high-level introduction so you can understand all the things you're supposed to be able to do depending on the software this is some sometimes not obvious and that explanation can be really helpful to understand all the things you're supposed to be able to do and thus plan to use all those features.

[wffurr]

Having some basic curiosity about the capabilities of your tools helps.

[christophilus]

The difference is TFM doesn’t pop up in my face without me asking for it while I’m trying to do something basic.

[dnnddidiej]

Yeah product tour is like a popup or cookie banner you just wanna close that shit down. It is something that seems like a good idea and maybe even required for polish, like a 3 column pricing page and an oauth login, but think we are better off without it.

Instead add the killer feature: a feature search box ala Google Docs.

[ranger207]

Yeah, I can read about the parts that I want right now. If I open a video editor to splice two clips together, I don't need to know about input devices. If I want to do that, I can go read the manual for that at that time.

Plus, there's no way I'm going to remember whatever the tour tells me by that time anyway. To actually learn the product you need experience to lock in what the manual says

[collinmcnulty]

It’s the difference between taking a shower and getting caught out in the rain.

[ninkendo]

> 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?

Correct, yes.

[snackbroken]

The dislike stems from two (and a half) reasons:

1) Push vs pull. As you identified, ls doesn't stop you from doing the thing you wanted to push the man page on you when you don't need/want it. ls just does the thing you ask. man also just does the thing you ask. The product tour is a sign that the developer doesn't understand consent and is trying to get the user to do what the developer wants, not what the user wants.

2) It's infantilizing. The product tour assumes the user doesn't know what they want, and doesn't know how to RTFM to learn how to do the thing they want to do. It treats the user as having no agency.

2.5) It's a tacit admission that TFM sucks and R-ing it isn't a productive use of your time.

[nitwit005]

Half the people here have probably read AWS documentation, and also immediately closed the guided tour on the AWS console.

[tomwheeler]

If only there was AFM to read these days.