Deep Awareness of the Current Experience

“Oh my, we DO make it difficult for our users, don’t we?” That’s what the Vice President of the team’s business division said as soon as the user research session ended.

The VP was stunned by how difficult it was for the user to on-board their product. It was the usual gamut of frustrating user experience issues.

The on-boarding process was complex. The user needed to enter information that they couldn’t easily get at that moment. There was jargon they didn’t understand. They were asked to make choices about features and options that weren’t explained.

What the VP expected to take about 5 minutes took more than 30 minutes. The user was completely frustrated and didn’t even want to try out the product once it was set up. “This is not a good experience!” the VP declared.

It was the first time the VP had ever sat and watched a user go through the on-boarding process. They had no idea it was like this for users. When the team told the VP that they’d seen many other users have similar problems, the VP sank into the chair.

The team then reported the product’s analytics showed most new users spent 30 or more minutes on-boarding. “This has to be our top priority for the next release!” the VP insisted.