Something that already works. The best first screens hand the user a filled-in example rather than an empty box, because a blank canvas asks a stranger to do work before they have any reason to trust you. Figma drops you into a real design file, Canva opens a pre-filled layout, Slack fills its empty states with what to do next instead of leaving them blank. Ask at most one question up front, and only if the answer genuinely changes what they see next. Everything else, the profile, the team invite, the integrations, can wait until after they have seen the product do something, at which point they will happily do the setup you could not have asked for a minute earlier.
5 hand-picked resources, 5 link-checked. Pick how you want to dig in.
Why we picked it A screen by screen teardown of a real first minute, with three people arguing about what each choice costs the new user. That is the fastest way to develop an eye for whether your own first screen hands someone something that already works.
On ProductLed by Ramli John, Wes Bush and Josh Garofalo 31 min
Why we picked it Screen by screen through the most copied onboarding flow in software, including the empty states and Slackbot conversation, and honest about where the approach fails for less curious users.
From UserGuiding by Serra Alban 15 min read
Open userguiding.com →Why we picked it Twenty onboarding flows torn apart by product category, so you can find the two or three closest to yours instead of copying Slack when you are building a developer tool.
From Appcues by Sara Detrik 20 min read
Open appcues.com →Why we picked it The practical build guide: welcome screens, checklists, contextual tooltips, and where each one actually belongs. It also gives a hard target for mobile time to value of under 60 seconds.
From Appcues by Jared DeLuca 15 min read
Open appcues.com →Why we picked it It defines time to value precisely enough to instrument: a start event, a value event, and the gap between them. The insistence that logging in is not value is the point most teams need to hear.
From Amplitude 12 min read
Open amplitude.com →How activation and onboarding reads from a different seat.
The same ground, over in Grow & market, our Starting Up track.
