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UX Fundamentals: Don’t Turn Ten Steps Into Two
OOBE Fail
As product design consultants, we love simplicity. While many in tech think typical users are stupid, we disagree. The problem is complex procedures often lead to difficulties with information retention and an increased likelihood for user error. This is particularly true during a user’s first experience with a product (aka “out of box experience” or “OOBE”). User error during the OOBE is more likely to give the user a negative view of the product and potentially cause them to not want to come back for a second try (or worse, abandon ship immediately and forever). What happens to many products is the desire to simplify, which is good, but often to simplify merely by reducing the perceived quantity of steps, which is not so good. To the right is our mocked-up screen shot (thanks again Balsamiq – we heart you!) of a not-to-far-from-real lousy OOBE.
To demonstrate, we’ll cook ourselves some chicken. Yes, chicken (don’t worry, it’s pasture raised). Imagine you’re getting ready to cook your first chicken parmesan. You buy the ingredients, prep the kitchen, grab the cookbook and open it up to find this “easy” recipe with “only” 2 steps:
Step 1: Preheat oven to 375 degrees F and pour beaten eggs into a shallow dish or bowl while, in another shallow dish or bowl, mix together the grated Parmesan cheese and bread crumbs, then dip chicken breasts into beaten egg, then into bread crumb mixture to coat then, in a large skillet, heat oil over medium high heat then add coated chicken and saute for about 8 to 10 minutes each side and pour tomato sauce into a lightly greased 9×13 inch baking dish. Add chicken, then place a slice of Monterey Jack cheese over each breast, and bake in the preheated oven for 20 minutes or until cheese is completely melted.
Step 2: Serve
Anyone finish the chicken? Nope. Anyone think that was either (a) only two steps or (b) easy? Nope.
Now for industry-relevant context (we have no recipe book clients at this time, but hopefully are well on our way). Imagine that Step 1 was all contained on one pop-up window on your computer screen with a big “NEXT” button and, once you click that button there’s no way to go back. Such is the case with far too many OOBE’s in the consumer tech space.
In a way, cookbooks are actually a great template for building a good first time user experience. A good recipe informs the user up front what they will need to get through the process, and how long it will take. It then walks the would-be chef through each step from prep to service. While we won’t bother outlining the above recipe (we’re kinda over the chicken thing by now), I think anyone preparing dinner would’ve been a lot more comfortable with the “real” 7-10 steps it takes than the “faked simplicity” the 2-step version proposed.
Steps are steps – whether you have a web service or a physical product, you need to strive for simplicity, but make sure you are only combining logical steps. For a tech example, let’s say your product requires the following steps (yes, ours goes to 11):
1. Connect device to power and confirm
2. Connect device to your internet router and confirm
3. Confirm internet connection
4. Register device
5. Give your device a name
6. Sign up for an account
7. Confirm account information
8. Disconnect from router
9. Set up Wi-Fi connection
10. Confirm Wi-Fi connection
11. Execute first “core” action in product (share, create, store, etc)
There is no reasonable way to take these 11 steps down to 2, so don’t even try. Instead, assess the logical fits in the user’s setup process (read: not what our super-smart engineers think a user’s setup process is – remember the whole inmates and asylum thingie?). So the above 11 steps are shrinkable, but our version brings it to 5:
Step 1: Connect your device to power and your router – these are both physical connections, easily explained in a graphic
Step 2: Register your device and give it a name you’ll remember – we’d envision a screen with a single “name” field and a big button with the word “Register Now” on it
Step 3: Sign up for an account – choosing a user name and password are effectively commonplace
Step 4: Disconnect from your router, choose a Wi-Fi network and enter your password to connect. Once connected, you will see a confirmation window appear. – again, something that might sound wordy, but really simple to convey with simple imagery either in a quick start guide or on-screen
Step 5: Welcome to your home screen! Let’s get started…
The key here is to present a logical flow of actions and not overwhelm the user with 10 things to do on a single screen. By reducing the number of steps we have created a more immediately satisfying user experience. By not overloading the user with steps, we’ve reduced the opportunity for user error.
To sum up, here are our 7 high-level rules on steps:
1. Never combine steps just for the sake of reducing steps
2. Never combine 2 elements if one of them has an effect on the other (e.g. “Name Your Recording” should not be in the same step as “Create Your Recording”)
3. Find logical combinations and put them together, where logical combinations are from the user’s eyes, not from the developer/system side
4. Always inform the user of the total number of steps they will have to complete and what they will need to complete them (for all of you hardware developers out there)
5. Less is not by definition better, in fact more is often better
6. Eliminate any step that is not essential to the process at hand. You want to get the user through your steps and into your product quickly. If the user doesn’t need to do some deep setup element before they can use the product, pull it from your setup flow and ask them to do it later.
7. Listen to Wolfie - the “right” number of steps are “just as many steps as are required. No more, no less.”
Take a hard look at the steps you’ve created for your first time user, apply our rules, and you should have happy users in no time (or, if you’ve read the wrong steps, you will have cooked a chicken parm). Either way – enjoy!
