Why slide tutorials get skipped
Carroll and Rosson (1987) described the paradox of the active user: people try to use a system rather than read about it. Five feature slides at first launch are mostly swiped past and forgotten. Kendrick (2020) divides onboarding into feature promotion, tutorials and personalisation, and notes simple apps are better started directly. Showing too much at once raises cognitive load and overflows working memory.
Learning by doing
Carroll's (1990) minimalist instruction says start with real tasks, cut reading and make errors easy to recover from. Strahm et al. (2018) applied it to mobile onboarding and found short contextual tips at the right moment effective. Reveal features through progressive disclosure, and treat the first data-less screen as an empty state that guides the first action.
Permissions and first success
Fogg (2009) explains behaviour happens when it is easy and a trigger arrives. Ask for notification or location permission at the moment the feature needs it, with a reason, rather than all at launch. Personalisation questions matter only if results show immediately. Nielsen's (1994) learnability can be measured as how fast a newcomer reaches a first goal, which drives retention.
FAQ
- Is an onboarding tutorial necessary?
- Not for simple apps; contextual tips at the right moment often beat first-run slides.
- When should permissions be requested?
- At the moment the related feature is first used, with a clear reason.
Sources reviewed: 2026-10-27
References
- Strahm, B., Gray, C. M., & Vorvoreanu, M. (2018). Generating mobile application onboarding insights through minimalist instruction. In Proceedings of the 2018 Designing Interactive Systems Conference (pp. 361–372). ACM. Analyses mobile onboarding through minimalist instruction.
- Carroll, J. M. (1990). The Nurnberg funnel: Designing minimalist instruction for practical computer skill. MIT Press. The source of minimalist instruction: people learn by doing, not reading.
- Carroll, J. M., & Rosson, M. B. (1987). Paradox of the active user. In J. M. Carroll (Ed.), Interfacing thought: Cognitive aspects of human-computer interaction (pp. 80–111). MIT Press. The paradox of the active user: people skip instructions and start using.
- Kendrick, A. (2020, June 21). Mobile-app onboarding: An analysis of components and techniques. Nielsen Norman Group. Analyses onboarding components such as feature promotion, tutorials and personalisation.
- Fogg, B. J. (2009). A behavior model for persuasive design. In Proceedings of the 4th International Conference on Persuasive Technology (Article 40). ACM. Make the first action easy and well-timed; useful for first-success design.
- Nielsen, J. (1994). Usability engineering. Morgan Kaufmann. Defines learnability as a core usability attribute.
- Lidwell, W., Holden, K., & Butler, J. (2010). Universal principles of design (Rev. ed.). Rockport. An encyclopedia of design principles such as progressive disclosure and shaping.