A quick product simplicity test: remove all the explainers

When I’m ready to launch a new product, one of the things I get excited about is the NUX, the New User Experience. After all, how else would people know how to use my great new product if I didn’t include in-depth education about it? I’ve created video walkthroughs describing which buttons to tap, multi-step tours that the user needs to click through, and banners advertising a new launch, all to make sure the user understands all the nuances of my amazing product.

But as a user, how many times have you opened an app just trying to pay a bill or send a message, and instead you have to click through a long “new product” tour, or try to figure out where your button went after it was covered by a new feature banner? I usually click through these as fast as possible, just to make sure I don’t lose track of the main thing I’m trying to do! And then I wonder what I missed.

An alternative way I’ve started thinking about the launch of a new product: what would happen if there was no NUX for my product at all? Could people figure it out without it being explained to them?

This is one of the best tests I know for whether a product is truly simple.

Sometimes an in-depth NUX is necessary. If I’m building a brand new product idea or system that people have never seen before, a NUX can help to orient them. Or if the product itself is locked but I can still update NUX content, that can provide the latest info. And a small, specific NUX can also be needed to draw attention to a new product or a navigation change — “Hey, this product now lives over here! Check it out.” NUXes can be necessary bridges between how the product operates and what a user needs to know.

But sometimes I get into the habit of using the NUX and other in-product education as a crutch. If I got feedback that a user wasn’t sure where to tap, I’d explain it rather than updating the product experience itself — the information architecture, visual design, product text, or iconography — to be clearer.

After all, people will only see the NUXes once, and have to go out of their way to look for more in-product education. But they’ll see the actual product every time they use it. If the product is self-explanatory, that’ll be far more effective than a temporary NUX.

Now, with each product launch, I do the mental exercise of “What would happen if there were *no* explainers or NUXes?” I can’t always execute that in reality, but the exercise of thinking through it always make the product more usable even when users fly past the NUX.