Keep in-app guidance in-sync with target application changes
Written by Jiri Walek
This theme has always been a challenge – how to ensure that the onboarding routines and user guidance stay in sync with the changes you are making to the digital toolchain? All of us in the industry were afraid to embrace changes to tools, because of the costs when adjusting all the onboarding and training materials.
At Newired we did find a solution for this … But let’s start from the beginning.
Media formats
The ability to maintain onboarding and training content very much depends on the media contained in it. Let’s first review the different media options:
Textual guidance
Pro
- Quite easy to maintain, as you can really adjust just the paragraphs that need adjustments
Con
- The textual guidance performs poorly in terms of how the information retains imprinted in user’s memory
- The ability to guide users on how to do something is limited, and so its explanation capabilities are pretty low.
- Usually very disconnected from the user when he/she needs this
Video guidance
Pro
- With proper video post-processing (addition of visual hints), it does provide a pretty good level of explanatory points and information is imprinted on a decent level.
Con
- Expensive to create and adjust
- Usually very disconnected from the user when he/she needs this , as they are available normally at external knowledge bases and not the app itself.
Mixed Approach (e.g. text + images + videos)
Traditionally the most common format. Skilled people can design the educative content on a satisfactory level using different media.
Pro
- The most common approach, people are trained on how to prepare such content
Con
- Expensive to create
- Maintenance brings struggles: the more visual content you add, the harder to maintain . Contrary the less you add, the worse is the guiding factor
- Usually very disconnected from the user when he/she needs this, as it is normally available at external knowledge bases and not the app itself.
Early days of in-app guidance
On top of these scenarios, the pioneering solutions for in-app guidance have emerged, allowing product vendors to embed the step-by-step guidance into their tools.
The early day’s guidance relied on techniques used in so-called “UI Testing”, to bind the guidance to the tools. That either requires lots of technical coding skills or is well-known for getting broken at every product change (oh yes, we all have been there, with broken UI tests almost daily upon every change).
Pro
- It provides the best-in-class guiding factor
Con
- Expensive to create – only IT people can create it by using coding
- OR Expensive to maintain – as the guidance related to the tool was not robust enough.
Newired Solution
Now we come … We spent a big amount of time and effort to change the status quo – and we brought to the market a solution that not only balances guiding factor and maintenance cost – but actually excels in both areas.
Pro
- It provides the best-in-class ‘guiding factor’ by contextual and in-app step-by-step guidance;
- It provides the lowest maintenance cost possible;
Cons
- Not so well-known and diffused, people responsible for digital onboarding need to be educated on this alternative approach.
We address in previous blog articles what the benefits of having the in-app guidance and onboarding media embedded into the app are. Let’s add a few words on how can you maintain the content when you have a Digital Adoption Solution in place.
Visual Changes
Newired guidance – i.e. how it links to the target web application – is resistant to most visual changes on the target application – changing texts, sizes, the position of elements on the screen, etc. We do not rely on the application visual presentation, but on the structural presentation on the screen, and we collect multiple identikits that ensure the element is always recognize.
Flow changes
Of course, it may happen that the actual process (steps to achieve the goal) changes. In this case, you just need to add (or remove) the steps into the Journeys and all the existing steps keep unchanged. Combining with the previous paragraph, this covers most target application changes.
Environment changes
We also focus on other external changes, such as adding new localization/language to your toolchain. The guiding content translations are maintained separately and you can maintain (add, change, publish) them without worrying about the actual flow or bindings.
Give it a try
Do you want to learn more about the Newired Digital Adoption solution? What about giving it a try? Download the free newired editor and learn by yourself how it works.
