#onboarding
17 pieces filed under “onboarding”.
AI form copilots: suggestion, not substitution
AI form copilots work when they suggest, not substitute: per-field confidence, bulk-fill undo, and one rule — the model never commits silently.
Continue on your phone: handoff UX that doesn't lose people
Session and device handoff done properly: continue-on-another-device flows, magic links vs QR codes, delayed-resume UX and the honest security boundaries.
Onboarding for AI features: sell the p50, not the demo
AI onboarding fails when it promises the demo's best-case output. Design first-run flows around median performance — calibrated examples, honest scope, progressive trust.
Teaching what the AI can do: feature discovery as curriculum
AI features fail when users don't know what to ask. Designing discovery surfaces — prompt starters, worked examples, capability demos — that teach, not decorate.
The prompt box is your whole interface — design it like one
An empty prompt box teaches nothing. Placeholder pedagogy, suggestion chips, command discovery and attachment UX that make AI assistants learnable.
The first two weeks with an agency: a client's field guide
What actually happens in the first fortnight of an agency engagement: access checklists, stakeholder mapping, decision calendars, and how week-one demos become possible.
Feature discovery: design for the day after launch
Shipping a feature is half the job. Announcement surfaces that respect focus, contextual education, suppression discipline, targeting and how to measure discovery lift.
Onboarding users to an AI assistant
First-run design for copilots: capability discovery without homework, starter prompts that teach, mental-model calibration, and measuring adoption honestly.
Empty states are onboarding: designing the blank dashboard
The blank dashboard is the highest-leverage screen in a SaaS product: three empty-state archetypes, sample-data patterns that teach, and measuring the lift.
Sandboxes that convert: demo data done right
A sandbox full of believable data outsells a drip-feed of tooltips. How to design demo data, sandbox vs trial taxonomy, resets, and the swap-to-real moment.
Template galleries: the shortcut to the aha moment
Starter templates are onboarding's best shortcut — if they're categorised by job not industry, previewed live, pruned ruthlessly and measured to activation, not clicks.
The spreadsheet migration is the real onboarding
Most B2B onboarding is a spreadsheet migration wearing a wizard's hat. Column mapping, dry-run imports, inline validation, and the week-one trust dividend.
Onboarding checklists without the nag
Checklists can activate users or train them to ignore your UI. Sequencing by value, dismissible design and honest progress — lessons from shipped onboarding work.
Onboarding that activates: patterns we keep, patterns we've banned
Activation-focused onboarding: value-first flows, honest commitment devices, the checklist patterns that still work, and the seven anti-patterns we refuse to ship.
Empty states are product marketing
First-run, cleared, error and no-results states teach or lose people. Copy frameworks, illustration restraint, and measuring empty states as funnel steps.
Kite & Anchor: insurance onboarding people actually finish
A boutique insurtech's quote flow was losing four in five visitors. Progressive disclosure, honest defaults and plain-English policy summaries fixed the finish line.
Case studyBrightmarsh: onboarding course-takers without the confetti
Onboarding for a short-course platform that trades confetti for momentum: activation up 41% with honest progress mechanics and lifecycle email that pairs.