I wanted to quickly share the first time user experience of Secret, an anonymous social sharing app for iOS.
I won’t go into a detailed review. Instead, I want to demonstrate how the use of the forced sign-in wall anti-pattern here is not only a point of first time user friction, but in conflict with the app’s value proposition.
Secret is about anonymous sharing, but asks for an account–including the seldom-requested phone number–without a clear explanation about how the information will be used. Only if a person tries to sign up without filling in the fields, will he get an alert with a bit more detail. Even then, he may wonder why finding friends is important in an anonymous app.