Onboarding
The first few minutes of using an app, designed to get a newcomer to their first success quickly.
What it is
Onboarding is how an app greets someone new: a welcome screen, a few setup questions, a short tour, or a checklist of first steps. The goal is getting people to their first meaningful result before they lose interest.
Good onboarding is short and skippable, and it teaches by doing rather than by explaining. Asking for a name and one preference, then dropping people into a pre-filled example, often beats a ten-slide tour.
You'll sometimes hear FTUE (first-time user experience) for the same idea.
How to ask for it
“People sign up and then don't know what to do.”
“Add onboarding for new users: a 3-step welcome flow (name, team size, main goal) with a progress indicator and a Skip link, ending on a dashboard pre-filled with one example project.”
The weak prompt states a problem; "onboarding" names the solution and the prompt defines its steps, skip option, and ending.
You've seen this in
- DDuolingo's placement questions before the first lesson
- SSlack's welcome checklist
- NNotion's getting-started page