Onboarding is the process of getting users familiar with a new interface. It can involve one or more of the following components: feature promotion, customization, and instructions. - Nielsen Norman Group
Onboarding refers to the process of guiding users as they first interact with a digital product such as a website or app. The goal of UX onboarding is to help users quickly understand how to use the product, its features, and its value, ultimately improving the user experience. Effective onboarding helps reduce user frustration, increases user engagement and enhances overall satisfaction with the product. It's a critical aspect of creating a positive user experience especially for new users who may not be familiar with the product's interface and functionality. Monzo is an example of a really good onboarding experience as it talks new users through how their app works step by step using imagery to help direct them.
Offboarding is the process of helping users gracefully exit or conclude their interactions with a digital product or service. It ensures that users can easily complete tasks such as closing accounts, unsubscribing from services or removing information. Offboarding is an essential aspect of UX design as it impacts the overall user experience an leaves a lasting final impressions with the users that have used that product or service.
A good offboarding process will minimise disruption with the user, gain helpful feedback on improvements and provide a goodbye and thank you to the user. Just like onboarding, an effective offboarding UX contributes to a positive overall user experience, even when users are ending their engagement with a product or service. It helps build trust and leaves users with a favourable impression, which can be essential for brand reputation and potential future interactions.
Dark patterns or deceptive patterns are manipulative techniques that are used to trick users into taking actions they may not have intended like buying or signing up for something. While offboarding is typically associated with providing users with a smooth and transparent exit from a product or service, dark patterns in offboarding can involve tactics that make it difficult for users to leave, hide information or lead them into making unintended choices. It's important for UX designers and product teams to prioritize ethical design practices and avoid implementing dark patterns. Users should be able to make informed decisions about whether to continue or discontinue their engagement with a product and the offboarding process should be transparent, user-friendly and respectful of their choices. Using dark patterns in offboarding can damage the reputation of a product or service and ruin trust with users.
An of Dark Patterns used within the offboarding experience is Amazon Prime who used to offer you a great free trial package and once you would want to cancel, they would make it very hard to cancel before being billed a large fee. Previously Amazon was very well known for using these dark patterns to make it harder for people to delete their accounts or unsubscribe but in recent years have approved this. Another example of dark and deceptive patterns is large pop up ads which fill the whole screen, distracting the user from the task at hand and using large call to action buttons to make users click!
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