A Riddle

A developer barely sees me
A user always sees me
If I am done right
you never notice me
If I am done wrong
I am all you notice

What am I? Well, you can read the title of the article, so you’ve probably guessed it’s your onboarding system! I have to admit in our first Fasterbids application, the windows only one, I spent very little time thinking about the onboarding experience for my users. I was much more concerned with the kick ass stuff the user would see once they had gotten inside. Why would I waste my time making a bunch of forms look pretty when it is something people see once, and then never again?

What I quickly learned from that first application is that your onboarding system is your handshake, and just like somebody remembers if shaking your hand felt like squeezing a bunch of sardines wrapped in a cheese cloth, they too will quickly associate the feeling they got when meeting you with the feeling they get when they think about you.

With this in mind, we set out to make the onboarding experience in Fasterbids 2.0 a firm, confident handshake. We went back to a good old fashined wizard like format, and from our early conversations with users, I think this makes it a much easier process. These people might not ever remember how easy the onboarding process was, but at least they’ll start using the application with an unidentifiable warm and fuzzy feeling that our earlier users didn’t, and that’s certainly worth the rebuild. The video below is the tutorial I put together to walk new users through the onboarding process.