How Google Maps used April Fools to improve its user onboarding
Google Maps is one of my favorite (and most used apps) so I’m really excited to write about how they nailed user onboarding (my favorite topic).
Although Google Maps is an old product (launched 2005), it continues to gain importance, and may eventually be a pillar for Google’s self-driving efforts.
About a year ago, the Maps team added a cool feature: Location Sharing. It allows me to share my ongoing real-time location with someone. It’s great for family and when you’re on the way to meet someone and want to update them on your progress (or lack thereof…)
Location Sharing wasn’t getting enough adoption
However most people don’t know about this feature and aren’t using it. This is a problem, because it’s really important for Maps to better understand and leverage our movement patterns. It’s a key data source and the foundation of many other products (targeted advertising?! 😓)
And the underlying problem is not uncommon: new features often have low adoption amongst existing users. This is because change is hard and products do a bad job of onboarding existing users.
People forget: user onboarding isn’t just for new users, it’s also for existing users to new or changed features.
This is really really important to understand if you are looking to drive feature adoption and continued product engagement. User Onboarding 3.0 is about extending user education throughout the lifecycle.
Do this in small bitesized chunks at the right time, and the right place. The goal is to help users take the next step, just in time, instead of the traditional way: overwhelming them at the beginning and then going silent.
An awesome way to onboard existing users
Google is the Queen of Data (does that make Facebook the Witch of Data? 🤔) and Google Maps is one of it’s flagship products. The Maps team HAD to figure out adoption and so created an awesome user onboarding experience for Location Sharing…. a game on April Fools: Where’s Waldo!
When I discovered this, I was sitting in a tiny airport in Colorado, and spent most of my layover (and battery) finding each Waldo character (Woof took 80% of the time) and getting all my badges 😎. This tweet captures it:
As I was playing, I realized they were doing an incredible job with my user onboarding and knew that I had to share this with you all. I grabbed some screenshots in the middle and took some notes…
The game consisted of using the Location Sharing screens within Maps, to open different Waldo maps and find each of the characters. It was a great way to drive attention to this functionality and make it fun (opposite of scary, which is what “location sharing” might otherwise be).
User onboarding lessons for product people
Let’s break it down and review what made this such a great product innovation and what lessons other products can draw.
Aside from using a well-loved character with broad appeal, in Waldo, the Maps team leveraged some smart product design.
1. In-product changes to highlight new feature
We saw in the gif above how Waldo peeks out to notify a user, and this was supplemented by other UX changes to promote the game:
UX changes beat out emails when driving feature adoption.
Instead of relying on a noisy, text-based channel, try to leverage an announcement inside your product. Focus on users that are engaged and more ready to try this new thing you’ve built.
Google Maps used a very distinct color scheme (in contrast to their typical palette) to help the game stand out (e.g. the full-color Waldo icon). They also used simple copy within a tooltip to generate curiosity 👀 and provide a call-to-action (and didn’t try to explain it all there).
2. Simple high-level explanation at the beginning
When entering the game there was a simple overlay to explain what the game was, and who the characters were. See this below:
This is a great way to give users the high-level picture, and exactly what they need at the beginning.
Users don’t need a thorough explanation of every feature and interface item before they dive in and before they decide they want to invest the time.
Most SaaS onboarding is very front-heavy, whereas games (the leaders in good user onboarding) do teach users incrementally as they make progress.
For your product, think about the most important concepts you need to explain at the beginning, and provide a high-level summary of these. 👍
Another example: Pinterest explains the concepts of boards and pins during its user onboarding, because it found that once users understood these concepts they were more effectively able to discover the underlying functionality.
3. More in-product guidance as users engage
As I continued to play, I received congratulations screens and gentle prompts about how to continue to play.
This progressive disclosure (slowly showing more over time) of more information is super valuable in creating on-going engagement. A user is taken on a bread-crumbed trail to discover more and slowly build habits.
As you think about in-product guidance, leverage actions users are taking to create success and congratulation messages and further direct users. This can provide users the little extra motivation they need to take the next step.
4. Rotating in-product messages retains novelty
If I made a mistake and tapped someone who wasn’t one of the Waldo characters, I got a simple, fun and changing error message.
This randomness is adding another layer of sophistication, but is something you might be able to do to help transform your product from static to dynamic.
Remember when Facebook first launched its News Feed. It was so weird to be shown different content to your friend; I remember it being unnerving because I didn’t know what I was missing out on. That kind of dynamic content is now the norm, but how products look and behave is still often one-size-fits-all.
This shift to more dynamic products is part of a mega-trend towards more conversational interfaces. Users just want their specific problem or goal answered (“contextual UX”) and don’t want to spend time learning new products.
Many companies are working on enabling this (e.g. my company, Chameleon helps software companies build contextual UX, while others, such as Intercom provide more personalized chat).
5. Unexpected and delightful states
Back to the game: I burned through all 5 levels and was just about to take my breath-of-satisfaction.. but no, wait, what is this?! A secret level! 🤩
This moment was a special one, because it helped create a fan. Creating delightful experiences that go beyond what a user expects is what’s necessary to create proponents and build loyalty.
To do this for your product, think about the “aha moments” you can provide users. With thoughtful messaging you can help people discover these, and start to build fandom.
The Secret Level turned out to be just okay; another Where’s Waldo location... ironically a space center, because my expectations were sky high. 🙄
My takeaways as a product manager and founder
Everything happened so fast. One minute I was bored at this tiny airport, and the next minute I had all my badges and was planning my Medium post.
That’s how quick and powerful user engagement can be. And not just that, I was compelled to share with my friends, creating the viral loop that is the holy grail of so many software teams.
I’m not promoting “dark UX” or addictive destructive experiences, but there are some key lessons here on how to create a pleasant and engaging software experience. I hope designers, product managers and marketers use this to discuss which of the UX practices (outlined above) they can apply, and make your users as happy as Google Maps did me on April Fools :)
