Making users successful through experiential learning.
With examples from the game Dota 2.
How this blog came to life…
It was a usual Saturday in the present corona times when my wife mentioned Dota for the first time in 8 years since we had met. “ Do you know what Dota 2 is?”, she said. While she sat waiting for a reply, I went into a flashback (10 years back) of my engineering days. Back then, I did nothing but play Dota 2, discuss Dota 2, eat food so that we could play Dota 2, sleep because our eyes hurt playing so much Dota 2 and then woke up to play a little more Dota 2. “Yeah, I used to play this game back in my engineering days,” I said.
“Ishpreet has started playing it nowadays and is asking if we would want to join”. Old fond memories got rekindled and I agreed.
“But I don’t know how to play it. And I’m not into games.”, my wife said. “I’ll teach you some basics and then you can figure it out.”, I said. After a lot of convincing and promises, she caved in and we took out our laptops to download the game.
Convincing my wife to try the game was easy, but making her understand the nuances of the game was my biggest challenge. From what I remembered, Dota 2 was a pretty complex game with an even more confusing UI.
This is when I got introduced to the newer and updated version of the game. The following are some examples of onboarding to ensure the success of first-time users.
But first, What is Dota 2?
Gameplay & Intro
Dota or Defense of the Ancients is a multiplayer strategy and action game. Dota 2 (the game being referred to in this blog) is a sequel of Dota.
“Dota 2 is played in matches between two teams of five players, with each team occupying and defending their own separate base on the map. Each of the ten players controls a powerful character, known as a “hero”, who all have unique abilities and differing styles of play. During a match, players collect experience points and items for their heroes to defeat the opposing team’s heroes in player versus player combat. A team wins by being the first to destroy the other team’s “Ancient”, a large structure located within their base.” — Wikipedia,
Collecting items during the game and combining specific ones to form recipes makes a hero strong and respond to one’s gameplay. Not all items are created equally. Some items are designed to be good only in the hands of certain heroes and completely useless in some.
The information and decision-making overload contribute to the game’s steep learning curve. And this is where some of Dota 2’s interventions for onboarding users are spot on.
Alright, let’s get back to making the user successful.
Once you have managed to get users to try your product, the next important task at hand is to make them successful and fulfill the purpose of your product. Educating users to build their confidence becomes essential if your product has a steep learning curve.
User onboarding is the process of orienting users to the product with an intention to assist them in completing a specific task. Most often our efforts stop at creating tooltips and help tutorials or a few welcome screens. A successful onboarding gives the users the confidence to invest and grow in the high ceilings of your product.
And there’s nothing better than making your users learn by doing.
Experiential Learning
Experiential learning or learning by doing is an active learning method for teaching. It focuses on learners reflecting on their experience of doing something, to gain conceptual insight as well as practical expertise.
“It’s a hands-on approach to learning, meaning students must interact with their environment to adapt and learn” — Wikipedia
Hands-on guided task completion as an onboarding tool is an example of experiential learning.
Hands-On guided task completion
Guided task completion is a method of prompting users to take certain actions through their respective journeys. The idea behind making these tasks hands-on is making the user “learn by doing”. It helps them familiarize themselves with aspects of the product in context.
For this, the key is to identify key and complex decisions to be made by your users and guide them to make a better-informed decision. It’s important for them to be in control all the time instead of making decisions on their behalf. This will not only help them build confidence but also make them grow in the skill of use of your product. Helping users win early on in their journey will improve the chances of them coming back to your product.
Now let’s see how Dota 2 covers some solid ground on hands-on guided task completion.
Guide; don’t control
Don’t take decisions on behalf of your users. Get users to learn by doing by using interactive guides that prompt them to interact with key areas.
The image above is a screenshot of the user’s camera view for a hero named Phantom Lancer. The highlighted area shows the different powers one can choose to level up. At each level upgrade of the hero, the player is required to upgrade any one of these abilities. Instead of choosing a hero ability, the onboarding signals the ability to be upgraded and makes the player take the required action. Apart from making the player learn the interface, this also instills confidence. I love that instead of getting controlled by the onboarding, users can choose to skip/disregard the tips to control their gameplay.
Another way of giving control in your user’s hand is through staged disclosure. It is a non-invasive technique of showing sequential and relevant information as the users embark on their journey. The game’s onboarding informs the players about the ability to upgrade one at a time. As a result, they do not need to get overwhelmed by remembering the entire sequence of upgrades at once. Instead, focus on choosing what is required at the given moment.
Reflect:
- What are some workflows in your product that once explained, can help retain your users?
- Are you making decisions on behalf of your users while onboarding them? Will it help if you guide them instead?
- Can your product help/guide be broken into sequential steps for a better onboarding?
Instill Deja Vu
Providing users with a safe environment to practice and hone their skills is always a great idea. Especially for products involving complex features like advanced photo editing apps and games, simulating a real-world experience for users to practice features at their own pace, goes a long way in helping them gain confidence and reduce anxiety.
The screenshot above shows a feature in Dota 2 called “Demo hero”. Here, the players can choose to practice with any hero of their choice (or even a dummy target) and test the hero’s powers before playing with it in a competitive match. They can learn the fundamentals of the gameplay and gain confidence for future competitive games.
Another area where I have experienced products execute this successfully is photo editing. Apps like Photoshop Express, Lightroom, etc. allow users to learn and test photo editing tools on sample photos before they start editing some of their photos.
Reflect:
- Will it help to provide a “fail-safe” area for your users to try out/experience complex features?
Explain the “when and why”
Explaining the “what and how” are table stakes. Go the extra mile by explaining the “when and why”.
Supplementing the context of use to your onboarding will turn amateur users into experts. Users need to move from the nascent stage to the pro stage and this is where the context of use comes into play. Informing users about a feature and how to use it, enables them to complete their task through the said feature. However, to truly make your users self-sufficient, explain to them when and why to use the feature.
The screenshot above shows a tooltip that appears on hovering over the hero abilities. It details the context of use for the ability in addition to what it does. It helps a new player understand when one should use this ability during the game while singling out the core value proposition of the ability.
A concise and informative description like this helps dormant users re-engage with a product.
It also enabled a dormant player like me to re-engage with the game by getting informed by the nuanced changes in hero abilities since I last played the game.
*I found the info on the tooltips to be a bit too verbose. I would suggest making tooltips concise.
Reflect:
- Are there similar but nuanced actions in your product? Will it help to explain the context of use for the actions?
Make it repeatable
Provide users a way back into any guides or walkthroughs in case they might have missed. Often, when introduced to skippable on-boarding at the start of a user’s journey, users impulsively skip their way into the core of the product to figure out the product by themselves. Do not assume that users won’t need to access the onboarding later in their journey. Giving them the option of accessing help at a time of their choice will increase the completion and impact of guides.
Consider the screenshots above. The left screenshot shows guide selection before starting the game. Whereas, the right one shows the same guide selection during the game.
Dota 2 allows players to switch on (or change) the hero guide at any point in the game. The selected guide gets adjusted to the current level of the hero and guides the player for the remaining gameplay. This is a great value add as a new player might miss selecting a hero guide before the game starts. And finding a way to select one mid-game surely is an “aha” moment.
Reflect:
- Is your product’s onboarding skippable? Can your users re-invoke it later in their journey if needed?
Curate for different types of users
Every user is different. The problem with generic onboarding flows is that they don’t cater to different needs. Customizing the onboarding based on a user’s proficiency will help you prioritize their goals and needs. Thereby, ensuring a quicker success.
The UI in the screenshot above shows a list of hero guides a player can choose from based on their intended style of play (goal). Instead of showing all players the same onboarding, Dota 2 allows its users to select a guide that resonates the most with their playing style. This supplemented with social proofing (name of the curator, date of update, and the guide’s success rate) helps them make an informed decision. Moreover, by asking the players to select a guide (other than recommending a default one) the game makes them equal owners in the onboarding experience.
Reflect:
- Does your product support users with multiple proficiency? Will all of them benefit from the single generic onboarding?
- Would it be better if you would explicitly ask the user or make an informed guess about their intent and show them a customized one instead?
Thank you for reading! If you like this post or have more thoughts about it, please comment or let me know! Thank you raina agarwal for the cover image illustration and Himanshu Khanna for proofreading this. 🙏
And for anyone with a mutual love for Dota 2, let's get connected! 🎮
