You’ve probably already skipped those introductory screens that explain how the application works, a.k.a onboardings, or you’ve given up putting your information on a very long form. I know! I was also on that boat once! 👀👀

Although there are several super cool new technologies and features, it’s also necessary that we know how to apply them in a correct way, ensuring a more fluid and pleasing experience within the application. The same applies to releasing a new feature, for example, how can people learn what your app is able to do?

On the third day of the WWDC21 event, the “Discoverable design” session was able to deliver to us several insights on how to create a more interactive app and memorable experiences starting with the onboarding and coming all the way to the app itself. I will comment on two of the ones that I liked the most ❤️

Discoverable interfaces 📱

Do you remember the onboarding screens? They are a way to communicate and assist the user on how the application works, however, we can use a more effective way to communicate, that is: making your user LEARN BY DOING. 💡

How does Tumblr handle this?

Regarding the iOS app, Tumblr is able to create a step by step tutorial that helps you in this beginning phase, and at the end, a video is displayed with some of its features within the app. It’s interactive, fast, smart and engages the user in continuing their exploration. 💚

Despite being part of this exploration, it would be really cool if a social platform like Tumblr suggested the same guided tutorial for the initial creation of a post, showing all the media possibilities, and at the end, giving a “reward” ⭐️ that makes the user continues following this gamified stage, this can be used to show the application core.

Provide explicit feedback 🗣

Explicit feedback comes from people’s intentional opinions. When there’s a way to tell a system what you like and dislike, this is explicit feedback. This behavioural reinforcement will feed useful data from the recommendation engine that will mark relevant items and provide content discovery. Therefore, it’s necessary to pay exceptional attention to how we communicate and make these feedback actions discoverable.

Hashtags are a great way of knowing what kind of content to display to the user who chooses to follow that specific tag. However, this feature is not always used properly and users often tag something out of context.

Having an option to leave this feedback is important in the same way that we are able to give a “like” ❤️ on a post. One option that can be used in this case is to adopt the usage of icons for this kind of communication.

When people use our app, they should know what to do right away, even without having to do any interactive tutorial. Think about your target audience and what they might know, their behaviour and preferences, good design is often done with trial and error.

This can be correctly achieved by the feedback loop, which consists of making the desired change, showing it to the user base, and collecting and learning from the provided feedback. ✨

By: @victoriafaria