The effect of user onboarding : How can a tailored user onboarding be designed for an audiobook application to increase its usage?

Abstract: User onboarding is a concept to convince and introduce users to use an application and a way for users to understand the application and what it can be used for. This research aimed to explore whether user onboarding could increase the usage of an audiobook application, and help users to find a suitable book. To examine the research question a human-center-design method was applied. It consisted of an extensive literature study, interviews, journey mapping and iterative prototyping, which resulted in an implemented user onboarding prototype for an audiobook application. The prototype was evaluated with an A/B-test, where the user onboarding prototype was compared to another prototype without user onboarding.  Interesting results have emerged through A/B-testing. Findings in this research did not provide any significant correlation between user onboarding and increased usage of an audiobook application. However, the user onboarding motivated users to listen to books, compared to one not being exposed to a user onboarding.  Furthermore, results also revealed that the prototype with user onboarding was helping the users to find a book they were interested in. The results also showed that women who were introduced to the prototype with user onboarding were more positive to use the application again. There was a significant correlation between user onboarding and the perceived simplicity of finding an interesting book in the group of participants aged between 26 and 30. Regarding the perceived usability, findings showed that the users who were introduced to the user onboarding experienced that it was easier to find a book, felt more motivated to listen to a book, felt that the application helped them to find a book that suited them and felt that the application introduced them to the audiobook format to a greater extent than those who were not exposed to user onboarding. However, it could not be proven that there was a statistically significant difference between the group that was introduced to the user onboarding and the group that was not exposed to the user onboarding.  In this research a total of 66 people participated in the A/B-test. For future research a larger number of participants could provide interesting results, since an A/B-test benefits from a high number of participants. Some of the results were bordering to prove that there were a significant correlation between being exposed to user onboarding and greater usage of an application.