Procreate recently introduced a major update for their iPad app. The onboarding experience for this update involved a lengthy slideshow, with each panel comprised of text overlaying rich videos.
The good bits:
- The videos are high quality and do a fairly decent job of illustrating the major changes Procreate talks about.
To be improved:
- This introductory slideshow, which begins with a generic “Welcome to Procreate” message, may be frustrating to existing users. After all, they have already been using the product, so this makes it sound like they’re about to be treated like a new user. As a result, they may exit out before proceeding.
- The “Close” action (an “X” in a small circle) is hard to see, since it is semi-transparent and overlaying moving video.
- The videos autoplays, so it can be hard to read the text on each slideshow screen and then catch the video before it’s already played partway through.
- The text is thin and overlaying moving video, making it very difficult to read. It’s also quite verbose, making it difficult to parse.
- There’s no sense of progress. The slideshow is not paginated, and it’s not clear how long each video clip is.
- If an existing user skips this tutorial, there is no follow-up guidance in the product itself to reinforce major changes, and no discoverable way to replay this tutorial later. The tutorial has 9 slides loaded with video and text information, and it’s unlikely anyone can retain that much information from one sitting–especially since it was presented out of the context of use.