Name: Better Onboarding
Author: Krystal Higgins
ISBN: 978-1-952616-00-6

foreword by Chetana Deorah

Successfully welcome new users and authentically entice them to keep coming back.

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When users try your product for the first time, what keeps them coming back? Onboarding can make the difference between abandoned accounts and devoted use—if we design it as a holistic, ongoing process.

Krystal Higgins demonstrates how the best onboarding experiences guide people as they interact, helping them follow their own path to success. Gain practical strategies and techniques for designing effective guidance, whether you’re working through a redesign, launching new features, rolling out service updates, or welcoming back returning users. Set aside the tutorials, manuals, and intrusive instructions of the past, and learn how to use guided interaction to help users find their way—and get value out of every step.

This book explores:

How to effectively greet, engage, and retain customers
Best practices for mapping users’ onboarding journeys from start to finish
Bringing research, content, design, and functionality together to support new users
Steps for breaking down onboarding actions for more efficient implementation
Techniques for embedding guidance in the context of the full product experience

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Few people can speak about onboarding design with the authority of Krystal Higgins. Better Onboarding is an essential knowledge source for anyone serious about building successful products and businesses.

Joe MacLeod

Founder and head of endineering at andEnd

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This book could truly be titled Better Products. Krystal Higgins beautifully debunks the myth of one-and-done onboarding approaches, and provides a practical guide to making products that welcome users over and over again.

Kate Rutter

Principal at Intelleto and cohost of What is Wrong with UX podcast

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This book is full of actionable advice that looks thoughtfully beyond a first-time, single-pathway use case. Krystal explores how we can positively shape a user’s experience by meeting them in context. The result is a must-have guide to guiding that sets users up for success.

Patima Tantiprasut

Managing director at PetRescue

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About the Author

Krystal Higgins is a UX designer who connects the dots between products, systems, and the people who use them. She’s taught teams across the world how to design better, human-centered onboarding at events like SXSW, An Event Apart, UX London, and UX Days Tokyo; through her catalog of first-run experiences at first-run-ux.com; and through her onboarding articles at kryshiggins.com. Krystal has more than 15 years of experience in the US and Australia designing innovative products for mobile, web, wearable, and new platforms at companies like NVIDIA, eBay, and Google. When she’s not working on tech-meets-humans projects, she enjoys painting, illustration, and scuba diving