Ask HN: Why has nobody done this?
This may sound familiar: You check out a new tool/software, don't get how it works and … leave to find a simpler alternative. This seems like a huge waste of potential, and at the same time an easy-to-solve problem. I still don't understand why no one has solved it yet (so decided to work on a tool to solve that). Feel free to roast my thinking.
Hypothesis: Simple software is better for user activation.
The problem: As time goes on, any software becomes more cluttered with features, which make it less simple and therefore harder for new users to use. They try the software, they don't get it, they leave. -> The company loses out on money.
The solution: Most SaaS companies try to counteract this by using ……… PRODUCT TOURS. Product tours make the problem even worse, by further cluttering the software more and hence make it even harder to understand. Also, many users just skip them and get annoyed.
The REAL solution: Software should be simple in the beginning – only basic functionality. Advanced and non-essential features should be hidden for new users (with the option to show all features of course). Advanced features should be revealed when a user is "ready" to use them.
Am I missing something? For a while, this was a fairly common solution. Several pieces of complex software I use today still do this. PrusaSlicer, for instance. I do wish it were a more widespread practice. "Product Tours" are, in my opinion, worthless. Worse than worthless, they also force people who know what they're doing (eg, are just reinstalling the software) to sit through them or at least click through them. Best is when "skip tour" just hastens you onto the next tour. Just had this with battle.net. Twice. I wonder why it didn’t stick then. Jira does this, but I haven’t seen any other tools do it. Do you know of any other web-app/saas doing this? I think the practice subsided when the minimalism trend became popular in software. > Do you know of any other web-app/saas doing this? I don't use webapp/SaaS tools, so I'm not in a position to answer this. Perhaps someone else can, though. Every user considers themselves a pro computer toucher who want all the advanced functionality now. From my own experience, this isn't true at all. Maybe your social circles are like that, but in my world it's quite common for people to profess open ignorance of the basics of operating a computer, and they sometimes even take pride in it.