036Pattern
Reactive Onboarding
Reactive onboarding is a method of educating users about your product, by explaining what, and why something happened.
Why it matters
This is particularly useful when your app has lots of functionality that may not be necessary to learn, and it'd be impractical to force the user to acknowledge it immediately.
Feature usage
Productivity & efficiency:
• Highlighting what just happened , and how you can change your behaviour in the future, can be a great way of teaching users to be more productive and efficient.
What to inspect
- Check whether the experience reflects this: Highlighting what just happened , and how you can change your behaviour in the future, can be a great way of teaching users to be more productive and efficient.
- Map each visible element to how it supports or undermines: Reactive onboarding is a method of educating users about your product, by explaining what, and why something happened.
- Walk the primary task once with time pressure; note where attention drops.
- Ask a colleague unfamiliar with the product to paraphrase the screen in one sentence.
Common anti-patterns
- Assuming users consciously notice every place where "Reactive onboarding is a method of educating users about your product, by explaining what, and why something happened" could apply.
- Dense copy and parallel actions that increase mental effort unrelated to the user’s goal.
- Ignoring downstream effects on feature usage when shipping this pattern.
Critique prompts
- Highlighting what just happened , and how you can change your behaviour in the future, can be a great way of teaching users to be more productive and efficient.
- Where on this screen would "Reactive Onboarding" show up as friction or misunderstanding?
- What would a first-time user misunderstand here in under five seconds?