Company
Date Published
Author
Gustavs Cirulis
Word count
2642
Language
English
Hacker News points
None

Summary

We set out to design a product tour, which is essentially a guided experience for new signups to get started with our product. We started by writing an Intermission, a project brief, and defining the Jobs-to-be-Done for this problem. These jobs included guiding users through the core elements of the product and making them aware of new features. We also established guiding principles that would help us make decisions during the design process. One key principle was to learn by doing, which meant we wanted our solution to be interactive rather than just a passive experience. We looked at real products in our target audience and considered how a great onboarding experience might look like for them. After creating multiple prototypes, we validated our design with customers through interviews and feedback loops. However, we also realized that our initial approach needed adjustments as some customers found it too complex. We ultimately decided to proceed with view-only tours, which appealed to the broadest market and represented a big opportunity for growth. This decision allowed us to ship and learn early while still iterating on our solution based on customer feedback. The process taught us valuable lessons about including multiple feedback loops in our design process, considering market and business needs, and gaining confidence in our initial idea through experimentation and iteration.