I’ve started writing a new book.
It’s called The Psychology of Onboarding.
And I think it might be the best book I’ve written so far.
It's far from the most academic. It's not because it tries to turn psychology into a grand theory of product design. It doesn’t. But because it starts in the right place: with the customer.
That sounds obvious. It hasn't been for me in past book writing.
Most books and articles about onboarding begin with the product. The interface. The checklist. The empty state. The tooltip. The email sequence. The activation metric.
All of those matter. But they are not the beginning.
The beginning is the person arriving with a problem, a hope, a habit, a memory of other products, a half-formed expectation, and a limited amount of patience.
In this way, onboarding is not so much about explaining your product, but more about helping someone move from “this might help me” to “this works for me.”
That shift is psychological before it is technical. But the book is not an academic book about psychology. It is a practical book about onboarding, backed up by psychology, informed by psychology, but grounded in what real users actually do.
As part of writing it, I’ve started publishing some of the ideas as blog posts.
A few early pieces are already out:
User Onboarding Starts Before the Product
Onboarding begins way before signup: with the first promise you make.
User Onboarding and the Moment It Clicks
Rather than thinking in check-lists and plans, think in the path to recognizable value.
User Onboarding Beyond Day One
Onboarding extends past signup and continues as the user’s understanding deepens.
User Onboarding and the Shift From Repeat Use to Habit
How to go from repeated use to natural use.
User Onboarding and the Shortest Path to Action
The best onboarding helps the user do the next meaningful thing (rather than teaching).
A Behavioral Model of User Onboarding
A model for thinking about onboarding through motivation, ability, prompts, context, and progress.
I’ll be publishing more of these as the book develops.
The working premise is simple:
Good onboarding is not decoration around the product. It is not a layer of guidance applied after the real work is done. It is the design of the user’s movement from uncertainty to progress.
That movement begins before the product and continues through the first moment of value. If done well, it becomes part of how the user works.
That is the book I want to finish.
A practical way to understand why people continue, why they stop, and what we can design to help them move forward.
More soon.
