My keynote from Bizplay 2017: What’s true for people also holds for websites, apps, and services: you never get a second chance to make a first impression. The first few clicks determine what impression users form of you. And no matter how easy to use, your nifty new thingTM has to teach your users how to use it – it has to onboard them. The slightest friction or frustration, and they leave for the next competitor. Bring games to the rescue. For nowhere is this pressure bigger than in freemium online and social games, where the only reason to stay is that users have fun from the first click. In the best games, users don’t even notice they learn. So how do games do that? This keynote will tease out design principles and patterns from games for creating engaging, intuitive onboarding.

1. fun on first click
Convert Users into Passionate
Customers with Onboarding
Sebastian Deterding (@dingstweets)

2. chapter 1
Storytime

3. briefing
“Design a smartphone
for seniors”

4. Your ideas?

5. “silver phones”

6. Turns out …

7. people hate them.

8. people want features.

9. this is not the problem.

10. this is.

11. “What’s that got
to do with me?”

12. Punkt 1 ist
Punkt 2 ist
PAYING CUSTOMER
(product)
AD IMPRESSION
(marketing)
...
...
THEN A
MIRACLE
OCCURS

13. First impression
Orientation
Engagement
Paying customer
Invitation
Re-engagement
Purchase
onboarding
Marketing
Product
???
Registration

14. First impression
Orientation
Registration
Paying customer
Invitation
Re-engagementPurchase
a.k.a.
conversion
funnel
Engagement

15. “No matter how great your product is, it is
very likely that 40-60% of your free trial
users never see the product a second time.
Which makes that first use of the software
really really freaking important.”
patrick mckenzie

17. Games?
Games!

18. freemium business model …

19. + thousands of free competitors …

20. = Fun on First Click*
*Or third. We’re not that literal.

21. “We believe in those first three clicks, you
decide whether or not you want to check out
more of it. In the uber-casual place that we all
exist in now, it’s a three click deal. We either
sold you or we didn’t.”
mark pincus, ceo, zynga

22. “Good video games ... are learning machines. If a
game cannot be learned and even mastered at a
certain level, it won’t get played by enough people,
and the company that makes it will go broke.
Good learning in games is a capitalist-driven
Darwinian process of selection of the fittest.”
james paul gee

23. chapter 2
Journeytime

24. First impression
onboarding
our journey today
Engagement
First use

25. Tell me why

26. The product
is awesome!
The company is
awesome!
The experience
is awesome!
A B C

27. I am awesome!
D

28. “People don’t go round looking for products to
buy. Instead, they take life as it comes and when
they encounter a problem, they look for a
solution – and at that point, they’ll hire a
product or service. It it is the job, and not the
customer or the product, that should be the
fundamental unit of analysis.”
clayton christensen

32. This is not your offer. this is.

36. users have a few top tasks expressed in specific care words

37. “does it come with a toner?”

39. First impression
Engagement
our journey today
First use

40. Make me wow

41. minimize time to wow

56. First impression
Engagement
our journey today
First use

57. Teach me how

58. the onboarding anti-pattern

59. … in contemporary form.

60. So how to do
it differently?

62. do: guided first run through the core loop

63. So what did
we see here?

64. context of learning = context of use

66. “I hear and I forget;
I see and I remember;
I do and I understand.”
xunzi
do>show>tell

67. tell: walls of text

68. show: decontextualised screens

69. do: a guided first run through the ‘core loop’

70. one step at a time

75. scaffolded tasks/loops

76. When mechanics are
introduced
How many (new)
mechanics are used

79. guiding progress feedback

81. guiding progress feedback

84. chapter 3
Summary

85. Paying customer
Invitation
onboarding
onboarding bridges the gap from marketing to product

86. Tell me why
on that way, you need to …

87. This is not your offer. this is.
by showing how your product empowers me …

88. … doing my top tasks, phrased in the words i care about.

89. Make me wow
next, …

90. by showing me how you transform me as fast as possible.

91. Teach me how
finally, …

92. letting me learn by doing, …

93. one step at a time, …

94. slowly scaffolding tasks, …

95. … with progress feedback guiding my way.

96. sebastian@codingconduct.cc
@dingstweets
codingconduct.cc
thank you.