UX Lessons / Opinion Piece - Why Extensive "Setup Wizards" and "First Start Tours / Onboarding Experiences" Suck

Last night I had to help Dad set up a new laptop. It was most enlightening and entertaining / heartening watching him ranting and seething about how Microsoft's new signup flow for Windows 11 was so Anti-User, with particular highlights being:

  * "I do NOT want to set up this machine like my previous one!  I want each one to be a separate / different experience!  Why do you try to force me to link them together?!"

  * "Why does it say, 'Welcome back?!'  This is a new machine!!!"

  * "I do not like how they try to scare and bully you into do things their way" (i.e. in reference to the repeated and scarily-worded prompts about enabling OneDrive sync by default to 'not lose your data')"

  * "Do I have to give it my phone number?  I don't want to give them that"

  * "Link my phone?  Whatever... I don't want that!" 

  * "Where's my internet browser?" 

  * "Argh... Where did I write down that pin again?  The one they forced me to create..." 

 

But of most relevance to today's blog post: 

  * "Why do I have to answer so many questions and sign in so many times just so that I can see what my computer looks like+ check that it's all working!"

 

That last point brings into clear view one of the things that has bothered me for many years: That is, why extensive "Setup Wizards" and "First Start / Onboarding Tour Flows" are problematic.

 

(And, to get this out of the way first:  I did offer to Dad that he could use something "much better" if "he ever got annoyed with what Microsoft were doing"... The main issue in his case is he currently does still need to do a lot of stuff where maintaining compatibility with MsOffice files is important, so I didn't want to force the matter... Otherwise, I'd strongly recommend not even touching Windows 11 at all.)

Software Wishlist / UX Gaps - Recent History is Underrated

Here's a short rant / feature request / app-idea for anyone so inclined

 

Problem Statement 

Currently, all too often, too many apps + tools are so "future focussed" that they neglect to show *what happened recently*.

Examples:

* 1) Weather apps by and large only show the forecast for the upcoming 24 hours. 

   Of the ones that do happen to show what has happened recently (e.g. Metservice NZ), they only show what happened up till Midnight on the current day. Which means, as soon as the clock ticks over midnight, you have no idea what happened over the last few hour.s.  The main use-case for something like this is answering the question:  "How 'bad' was the weather while I was asleep / outside doing something?"   (i.e. how hot it got, or how cold it got overnight, or how windy, or how heavy was the rain?)

 

* 2) Event Listing Sites

   AFAIK, *ALL* of the event listing sites here in NZ these days only really show events that haven't started and/or that you can still buy tickets for. There is no way then to find out what that random event you passed by on the way home was about (so that maybe you can try to get tickets next year, or the next time it is on). 

   While I can understand that they may do this as they make their income from showing things they can still earn money for (*), they are really reducing their utility by doing this!   

   (*) I also understand that they might not want to keep paying for hosting of all such things indefinitely may not be a worthwhile expense either!  However, surely leaving things up for at least 24-48 hrs after the scheduled end of an event wouldn't hurt, right? 

  Therefore, for this case, I put them them the proposition:  Your sites are meant to fuel the fire of "FOMO" (Fear of Missing Out), leading to people paying for tickets to flock to these things. By refusing to show people "what they have missed on on", you're leaving a whole lot on the table (i.e. all the potential customers who didn't even know what they have missed cannot have had any fear of missing out, as they by missing out, their "fear potential" has been actualised already!) 

  Or to put it in other terms: These sites are neglecting to "play the long game by seeding future demand"! 

 

Proposal

For anyone considering:

A) Doing updates to these services, OR

B)  Creating a startup, but looking for an idea

 

Please seriously give a thought to building a version of these services that shows you the recent past! 

Enshittification Rant - On the inanity of "modern data-driven" hiring processes...

Was reading this morning about yet another story of someone doing the job hunting dance, and getting some kind of role-unrelated "statistics test" thing...  (Thankfully this sort of thing didn't apply the last time I had to go through a recruitment process a few years ago... and with luck, won't have to again - or at least not for many many years to come, fingers crossed!)

 

More likely than not, the following happened:
* Previous long time HR person retired (there's a big wave of this happening everywhere). 

* They replace them with one or two younger job hopping ones. The ones that stay like 1-6 years at any place, and then chase a promotion elsewhere

* These roving marauder folk pitch to their manager that they will help "modernise" their hiring practices, with "data driven insights" and so forth to ensure they can "better select the right fit" or some synonyms for all of the above, generated by LLM of the week

* Of course, this will sound awesome to the higher ups. All those buzzphrases always do, as they imply "progress" and "improvement", and most importantly, provide a bunch of juicy trackable metrics that seem less arbitrary

* They implement such hiring process changes, and then likely get handsomely awarded in the company employee awards the next year  (which naturally helps them in their next leap)

* In the meantime, the hiring process has now gained:
  * An AI based resume scanner  
  * 2x phone screens with the recruiter team (or their AI surrogates)
  * 3x online quiz tests (e.g. personality, behavioural, and some kind of "basic competence" test)
  * Possibly a recommended "take home" test or similar + (increasingly prescriptive) guidance to interview panels on questions to ask

Granted, you now have a lot more folk using LLM's to generate their CV's and spam them everywhere, even jobs they are totally not suited to, in the hope that something sticks... but still!

Yay (NOT!) for everyone apeing what they heard from MBA school + trickle-down rumor blogs/podcasts about what hip innovative things the BigTech titans had been doing... 🙄

Linux Rant / Wishlist - The Ongoing Quest for Achieving My Dream Desktop Setup

Yet again, I was recently reminded about how *ALL* current desktop environments suck rather badly when it comes to doing "session management" in the way that I want.

 

In short, my bottom line is:

Every time I wake up my computer to get some work done, I want it to effectively be in the exact same state as I left it (at least from "My POV").  This matters as I typically have several different projects on the go at a time, and want things in a particular state, ordered + grouped in a particular way.

 

What Currently Happens:

* Every time a system / browser / etc. update happens, a non-trivial chunk of my setup gets blasted away

* When it comes back, most if not all that state is now in a scrambled state that needs me to waste 10-15 minutes restoring it back to the way I want it, e.g

   * On Home Windows Boxes (after a forced update), 

        * I only get back my Firefox windows on the right workspaces, and "maybe" if I'm lucky, all the folder windows I had open. 

        * Everything else (terminals, text editors, git clients, temporary reference image windows, etc.)... ALL GONE!

       * Worse still, when I restore my Sublime Text windows, they all open again on the first Virtual Desktop, so now I have to spend time clunkily dragging them back to the ones I want them on! 

       * The only saving grace:  My VMWare virtual machines all just get suspended, and then when I reanimate / restore them, they are exactly as I left them, each with their own window grouping state (like with the VNC sessions at work, but local)!  Hmm... now there's an idea! 

   * On Work Windows Boxes (after a forced update - which happens once a month)

        * Email usually comes back by itself... Usually... unless it is somehow time delayed, and now I get 2 from trying to open one myself 

        * I have to 2FA log back into 3-5 different SSH tunnels, so that I can then revive the corresponding VNC sessions. But, I need to space each 2FA login apart by 1 minute per attempt (assuming I don't typo the password, and need to try again a minute later again)

        * I then need to restore my browser windows:

           * Chrome for our internal tooling nearly always loses its open tabs (due to an IT policy), and so I have to spam the Ctrl-Shift-T key to bring them all back. With luck, I haven't also been kicked out of the tool, and need to re-sign in on the first such tab (or else all of them end up in "log in again" mode that doesn't take nicely to double-submits)

           * Firefox for external "out in the wild" browsing 

       * Oh, and Teams... yeah, that thing never comes back after an update, and you have to search for it in the laggy Windows start/search thing, as pinning it doesn't work either (as the reinstalls always invalidate the old shortcuts!)

   * On KDE Boxes

       * Only the windows in the first workspace get restored

       * Terminals and Dolphin windows all get closed, leaving only a single instance of each, stuck in your home folder (i.e. useless)

           NOTE: Initially I was quite excited to see that both of these included a "Restore Session" option, thinking that this would be great for this very case.  Unfortunately, that implementation is so braindead borked, that I have to leave it off!  I mean, the problem is that it doesn't just do that on Machine / KDE Session restart! It does it every time you go to the taskbar launcher and try to fire up an extra window/instance! So, all of a sudden, you have double the number of terminals/folders open, all showing all the tabs you've already got open... UGH!  That is so utterly stupid!