Getting started should be easy.

At Capacities, one of our core philosophies is to build beautiful, simple and elegant software that works out of the box. We hear from users all the time that Capacities “just works.” But what about the users it doesn’t click for straight away?

We realised our onboarding was one of the biggest areas of potential for us in getting new users to understand Capacities as quickly as possible, and to mitigate for some of our churn reasons. To be fully transparent, our biggest churn reasons at this time are: “I’m not using the app enough” and “it’s too complicated”. We know that with a strong onboarding, we could fix these issues.

Designing a good onboarding is a game of balance. You don’t want to alienate users who already have a good understanding of software and apps by over-explaining concepts they might be familiar with, but you don’t want to under-explain to new users who might need a bit more help initially. We had a couple goals with this new onboarding flow:

1. Flatten the perceived learning curve.
2. Get users into the app as quickly as possible, while providing enough information.
3. Get users to engage with the core concepts of Capacities straight away, and help them realise that they don’t need to watch endless tutorials and read all of the documentation to start using Capacities.
4. Be fun and exciting!

We might be biased, but we don’t think Capacities is a complicated app. Quite the contrary. The foundational elements of Capacities (object types and objects, linking your notes, anchoring them through time), are incredibly simple and come naturally to people, because we already think in these terms. The complexity was introduced to us elsewhere by folders and files, and hierarchical organisational systems that aren’t human-friendly. The complexity users feel when trying Capacities for the first time isn’t in Capacities directly, but in the letting go of existing systems they are used to. Ones that are less intuitive, but familiar.

We wanted the onboarding to reflect this mindset shift directly, which is why we decided to design an interactive onboarding that takes users through the creation of their first object, their first link, and their first daily note where they can see all of the objects they just created. Using the app really is that simple. We hope the onboarding reflects this sentiment.

We also made sure that users entering the app for the first time after the onboarding are greeted with content they are familiar with (made during the onboarding), as well as some further resources to support them in their first interactions with the app. This way they aren’t entering a fully empty blank canvas, which can feel daunting.

We want the onboarding to feel exciting, fresh, and a little magical. You are starting a whole new journey with Capacities after all. We wanted to capture this feeling.

Additionally, we updated our onboarding email series with six daily emails sharing ‘aha moments’ from existing users that explain features that made Capacities click for them, as well as insights from us.

The new onboarding, coupled with the email series, should have a significant impact on our churn rate and decrease user frustration. It is already live, and we’re really proud of it! It’s an entirely new introduction to Capacities for new users, hopefully one that feels exciting and even a little magic!