We need to provide users with contextual way to learn about the app
Why
On apps, helping users learn is a major part of the journey and is a major usability heuristic metric and dialogue principle 'suitability for learning'.
At the moment, the app only educates the user through an onboarding carousel which informs the user about the main features of the app.
There are other means to educate users about how to use the app which includes offline materials and people showing users how to do it.
What we do not do is provide a lot of this learning opportunities within the app itself.
We have seen evidence of users being affected whenever we make updates to the app, especially ones which involve changing the position of content or in some cases, users do not discover new features added to the app because no one told them.
The app conventions for this is often wrapped in a 'What's new' interrupt screen or a mini tutorial showing what new feature is and how the user can interact with it.
Another app convention is 'Tips' which is a UI overlay which points the user to specific parts of the app and informs them of what they can do
User behaviour
An observation I picked on in user research sessions is that quite often, people who are used to app conventions will use them without much thinking whereas the opposite is the case for users who use app less. For example, in the usability research sessions done in Leeds by the native and design system team. I observed that users who had used apps more immediately used the tab bar to jump around the different parts of the app whereas users who use apps less where often focused on the home page as where they might find their next destination. One thing that stands out was that in some cases, users who used app less eventually stumbled on the tab bar and began to use it more out of curiosity which means they can learn it
Details
According to Apple's documentation
TipKit makes it easy to teach people about a brand-new feature in your app, help them discover a hidden feature, or demonstrate faster ways to accomplish a task.
According to Google's documentation
Tooltips display brief labels or messages
Persistent rich tooltips appear when either:
The parent element is clicked
The page loads and a new feature is being explained
Persistent rich tooltips remain active even when leaving the target region. They only disappear once you interact with another UI element. Hovering doesn't trigger the tooltip.
What
We need to provide users with contextual way to learn about the app
Why
On apps, helping users learn is a major part of the journey and is a major usability heuristic metric and dialogue principle 'suitability for learning'.
At the moment, the app only educates the user through an onboarding carousel which informs the user about the main features of the app.
There are other means to educate users about how to use the app which includes offline materials and people showing users how to do it.
What we do not do is provide a lot of this learning opportunities within the app itself.
We have seen evidence of users being affected whenever we make updates to the app, especially ones which involve changing the position of content or in some cases, users do not discover new features added to the app because no one told them.
The app conventions for this is often wrapped in a 'What's new' interrupt screen or a mini tutorial showing what new feature is and how the user can interact with it.
Another app convention is 'Tips' which is a UI overlay which points the user to specific parts of the app and informs them of what they can do
User behaviour
An observation I picked on in user research sessions is that quite often, people who are used to app conventions will use them without much thinking whereas the opposite is the case for users who use app less. For example, in the usability research sessions done in Leeds by the native and design system team. I observed that users who had used apps more immediately used the tab bar to jump around the different parts of the app whereas users who use apps less where often focused on the home page as where they might find their next destination. One thing that stands out was that in some cases, users who used app less eventually stumbled on the tab bar and began to use it more out of curiosity which means they can learn it
Details
According to Apple's documentation
According to Google's documentation
Examples in apps
Reference
https://www.nngroup.com/articles/ten-usability-heuristics/ https://www.usability.de/en/usability-user-experience/glossary/dialogue-principles.html https://developer.apple.com/tipkit/ https://m3.material.io/components/tooltips/overview