The onboarding revamp was the first complete project I was involved in when I started working at Flightradar24. It was both an "easy" and complex task. Easy because the app's onboarding was very poor and bare, so it could only get better (you can see the analysis I made of the old onboarding here). Complex because onboarding is a crucial part of an app's success so getting it as right as possible from the start was vital.
The first decision we made was to use tooltips as the main element for the onboarding. I then started creating preliminary flows with the features I thought would be the most important to introduce during the onboarding. In the end, we decided that we would introduce Search (the most critical functional element) and AR view (a nice feature that differentiates us from the rest) to achieve the Aha! Moment.
After a process of back and forth feedback with initial suggestions, I created a high-fidelity prototype to test with real users. As the COVID-19 pandemic hit during this time, we ran the tests entirely online using usertesting.com.
We got exciting results and made the corrections accordingly. The main points were the onboarding promo - which offers users a longer free trial - and the AR view tooltip.
After the tests with real users, we iterated a bit more and ended up with a solid project ready for development. Our main tools for handing over to developers were Zeplin and Confluence. Zeplin as the design handover tool and Confluence for documentation. I created a product map that was very useful for developers to see all possible scenarios and how interactions affected the user experience.
Development took around one month, with both iOS and Android teams working concurrently. The final product was released first on Google Play and then on App Store.
The main objectives for this project were to generate more subscriptions, educate the user without interrupting their experience, and let them reach the Aha! Moment, or the moment they see real value in the app, as soon as possible. We're tracking whether we achieve this or not and keep improving when necessary. At this point, numbers are very promising. We are A/B testing some variations of the onboarding promo to see which one performs better, and we will be introducing more tooltip experiences for other app elements.
Get a feel of the onboarding experience yourself and just use the best flight tracking app in the market by downloading the apps!