Detailed Breakdown: How Nintendo Alarmo Nails User Onboarding
And what we can learn from it
After years as a UX Designer, I’ve come to deeply appreciate well-crafted user onboardings for new products or features. It’s not just about UX design—any qualified UX Designer can do it—but rather about everything else within the company. Too often, Product Managers and other decision-makers view user onboarding as a “nice-to-have” because they’re focused on delivering more features. However, a feature isn’t truly delivered if users can’t find it or don’t know how to use it.
Some years ago, I tried to persuade the team to implement user onboarding. After reviewing the design, a developer argued, “Our users aren’t stupid!” The whole team laughed. That’s when I realized they didn’t need a designer, and I soon left the company.
To implement good user onboarding, a company must prioritize it and allocate resources, which requires decision-makers with common sense—a rare quality. Fortunately, several companies still truly care about user experience, and Nintendo is one of them.
Recently, Nintendo released a new device called Alarmo, an adorable alarm clock. After setting it up, I can’t help but be amazed by its user onboarding. I decided to write a detailed breakdown to learn it by heart and hopefully inspire others. The world would be a much better place if all new products had such great user onboarding.
More in the PDF as slides:
Please read it on LinkedIn if you don’t want to download the PDF: https://www.linkedin.com/posts/jackschwarz2017_how-nintendo-alarmo-nails-user-onboarding-activity-7260331596422037507-aGE4