Onboarding first time users
In the GameHouse Original Stories app
About the project
The GameHouse Original Stories app is a catalog app where you can find all games created by GameHouse Original Stories. The card collecting game is part of the app and Customer Support got a lot of questions about it; What do you have to do? How does it work? What do you earn? What can you do with the cards? etc.
The problem
It wasn't clear to users what they can do with the card collecting game.
Mission
Create a user experience for first time players where the entire card collecting game is explained.
But wait, if we’re going to update the first time experience of the card collecting game, why not also improve the overall first time experience? The task gets a little bit bigger, but was still doable in a couple of sprints. The biggest development was setting up an onboarding system, so the developers in the team rather did it all in one go.
Updated mission
Create an excellent experience for first time users throughout the entire app.
My role
- Wireframes
- Flow
- Visual design
Research
I've never created an onboarding experience for app users, so I decided to first research how other apps are implementing this and what best practices are. I soon found out that showing multiple screens (carousel slider) was an option that was used a lot, however, after reading/watching a video of Luke Wroblewski I was convinced that it wasn't the way to go.
Flow
For first time users I wanted to create a smooth experience where they can discover the app bit by bit.
One of the biggest reasons for users to download the app was to see what the upcoming games were and to get a notification when a new game is out. So I decided that would be a good first introduction in the app. The first screen you see is with the upcoming games and a question if you would like to receive notifications. After that you go to a simplified stories page.
Visual design
When the user navigates to the Cards section where they can play the card collecting game, they will first get an explanation of what it is before we show them all the card sets. After that they get introduced to the game, explaining every step.
The entire onboarding is inline with the design, so the onboarding is never blocking content or interrupting the experience of the user.
Result
Customer Support got less questions about the app and specifically about the card collecting game.
What I've learned
- Creating a good complete user experience also includes taking care of first time users.
- Customer Support is a great source of possible improvements for all the products we make.
- Don't use a solution because big companies do it that way, always research and check what best practices are.