guiding-users_skill

Overview

This skill implements onboarding and contextual help systems to guide users from first-time setup through ongoing feature discovery. It bundles product tours, interactive tutorials, tooltips, checklists, help panels, and progressive disclosure patterns with accessibility and analytics guidance. Use it to increase activation, reduce support load, and drive feature adoption.

How this skill works

The skill maps user journeys to appropriate guidance mechanisms and provides implementation patterns, timing strategies, and accessibility requirements. It recommends libraries and integration points, supplies example flows (tours, spotlights, checklists, help panels) and shows how to instrument metrics like completion rate and time-to-first-value. It also includes progressive enhancement guidance so you can start simple and iterate based on analytics.

When to use it

• First-time experiences and product walkthroughs
• Announcing or spotlighting newly released features
• Guided, task-based tutorials for complex workflows
• Account setup flows and persistent completion checklists
• Contextual help, tooltips, and in-app documentation

Best practices

• Keep tours short (ideally ≤7 steps) and always offer skip/resume controls
• Trigger guidance contextually (not mid-task) and avoid repeating every session
• Respect accessibility: keyboard navigation, ARIA announcements, reduced-motion support
• Measure outcomes (completion rate, drop-off points, feature adoption) and iterate
• Use progressive disclosure: surface only the next action or detail users need

Example use cases

• First-login tour that highlights core features and tracks completion
• Feature spotlight with a pulsing hotspot and single-click acknowledgment
• Interactive tutorial with task validation, sandbox data, and celebration on completion
• Setup checklist showing progress and direct links to incomplete items
• Help panel sidebar with contextual search, video demos, and support contact