Levels of user onboarding | Krystal Higgins
March 25, 2025
Discussion about user onboarding often focuses on teaching new users how to use a product’s interface. There are dozens of third-party plugins that offer various ways to point out product navigation, features, and affordances. However, this only scratches the surface of what onboarding can be about. The biggest opportunities for onboarding happen at higher levels. Similar to how The Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM) says that employee onboarding can happen at multiple levels, user onboarding can also be tiered. Here’s the 4 levels of user onboarding that I currently think about, from lowest highest level: interface orientation, process onboarding, new meanings onboarding, and systems understanding.
Krystal Higgins quite literally wrote there book on onboarding. Here she explores different kinds of onboarding (for example new features, versus an entirely new set of concepts) and key considerations for each.