The secret power of onboarding, w/Canva's Melanie Perkins

Speed to productivity is the key metric in onboarding. The faster your users get good at your product, the more likely they are to stay. On the other hand, if they start feeling lost or annoyed, they might just say 'This isn't for me.'

A long, frustrating ramp up to proficiency isn't just inefficient; it's actually discouraging. When someone has a bad onboarding experience, it can turn them off not to just that one piece of software but to an entire creative path.

Most people learn best through human stories, and the more visual or sensory we make the stories, the more they'll stick. Like Ron White, the memory expert, pointed out, the mind remembers what it sees.

It matters that your pitch to investors onboards them not just to the what of your company but the why. Start by giving them a quick win. Make your investment thesis clear. Present the most compelling hook of your business as soon as you possibly can.

Training new employees is typically one of the most expensive processes a company will ever take on. The longer it takes, the more costly it becomes. And like in user onboarding, a slow and frustrating climb to proficiency can hurt the employee experience.

One of my favorite quotes in the world is 'Happiness is when what you do, what you think, and what you say are in harmony.'

We often think of user onboarding as a way of bringing them up to a target level of competence, because you can't really unlock a product's benefits until you know how to use it.

If [a user] clicks a button and they expect that button to work in a certain way, we want that button to work in the way that someone expected because the person is never wrong; it's always the software.