Swarm First Time User Experience
The good bits:
- Swarm leverages its availability email to provide context as to the capabilities of the app. The photos associated with the app in the App Store are also informative
- The app leverages a short wizard to clarify some of the settings it recommends be enabled. A user’s photo and profile name is used to make the wizard a bit more personal.
- Instead of forcing a user to add her friends, the app uses inline cues on the blank slate home screen to encourage her to complete this action.
To be improved:
- Unfortunately the app starts with a sign-in wall, forcing a user to connect their Foursquare account or create a new one. The app banks on users wanting, or already having, an account and friends with accounts to try out some of its features. A lot of the details about how information is shared is not shown until after a user connects an account.
- A lot of activity happens on the home screen when a user signs in. The wizard overlay appears; a banner asking a user to connect friends appears; and a tooltip next to the check-in icon appears. Each of these actions happening in short succession makes it difficult for someone to know exactly what to do next.
- The tooltip for the check-in icon would likely be unnecessary if the icon incorporated a persistent label. It disappears after first tap, assuming that users will remember this piece of information moving forward (this is not too different than “hamburger” menu icon issues).