Duck Tales: Browser onboarding — why first impressions matter, user education, and the role of personality (Ep.21)

This episode, Mary (Associate VP, Brand) Beah (Chief Product Officer) and Bobby (Director, Product) discuss how DuckDuckGo’s browser onboarding was designed, why it matters for a privacy browser, and how Dax’s personality helps users feel confident in their protections.

Disclaimers: (1) The audio, video (above), and transcript (below) are unedited and may contain minor inaccuracies or transcription errors. (2) This website is operated by Substack. This is their privacy policy.

Mary: Hi everyone and welcome to Duck Tales where we go behind the scenes at DuckDuckGo and discuss stories, technology and people that help build privacy tools for everyone. In each episode you’ll hear from employees about our vision, product updates, engineering and our approach to AI. I’m Mary McGee, I work on brand and marketing here at DuckDuckGo and I have two fellow product folks here with me today that I will let introduce themselves. Beah, why don’t you start?

Beah: I’m Beah, I’m on the product team. How was that?

Mary: I mean, I couldn’t have done that. You did great. Bobby.

Bobby: This is stuff. I’m Bobby. I’m also on the product team.

Mary: Wow, this was good.

Beah: And furthermore, we both have the word burger in our last names.

Mary: That’s true.

Bobby: This is true.

Mary: We are here to talk about browser onboarding today. And we have both Beah and Bobby here as folks that have worked on onboarding over the years. We can take you back to its origin. We can take you to some of the new changes. That’s kind of what we’re gonna do here and talk a little bit more about it. So why don’t we jump right in? I think, you know, why don’t I ask this to you Beah? Why don’t we start with you? What do we mean by browser onboarding? Like what is effective onboarding and why do you think it’s important for a privacy browser to nail this?

Beah: Yeah, so I think of onboarding as like, basically, the user’s first experience getting to know the app, what is this, how do I use it, and potentially beyond that first experience, could onboarding could last over multiple uses of the app or multiple days. But like the thing that you need to do to get a user from interested, sure, I’ll download it to like, I know how to use this. I know what this is. I know what the value is to me. I know that I want to keep using it ideally. And it’s really important, I think, for probably any app because many, I think for most app categories, the majority of users become non-users after one initial trial of the app, if not the majority, certainly a lot. And so that is a very important moment to show users what you are and what value you can bring to them. And to your question about for a privacy app or privacy browser, I think one of the challenges is that our apps are browsers with a built-in search engine, and all of that should just work. And the privacy protections that we’re providing, for the most part, aren’t really visible for intentional and just organic reasons, like we don’t want to get in your way, and like when, like the absence of bad things is just kind of invisible. So like, you know, I think it’s important for us in particular to like communicate in onboarding what actually is happening when you use the app.

Mary: So there’s like an explanation component of like how to use the app. And then there’s sort of a first impression, like this is who we are, this is how you should feel using it. Bobby, like can you talk a little bit about the role of the more like emotive kind of relationship in onboarding?

Bobby: Yeah, ultimately, there are, I think, stages to actually understanding and feeling connected with an app. And the first one is just knowing what it does. But there are stages beyond that which are feeling connected with what it does and really feeling like you understand it through experience, not just in theory. And so we try to reveal both through the tone with which we describe things and just really emphasizing demonstration and nudging you to try our features and see them and experiencing them for the first time and let you draw your own conclusions about whether that serves you.

Mary: There’s this line in our current onboarding that’s like, it’s something about a tracker losing its wings. Beah, has that been in there since the beginning or is that like...

Beah: Well, yeah, since I’ve been working on onboarding, which is like seven years maybe now, it was one of the first big projects that I worked on after I joined DuckDuckGo. Yeah, I think that, I mean, that copy was part of the, I think every time you browse with me, a creepy ad loses its wings. I think that copy came out of the very first version that we pushed live. And yeah, I don’t know. I think it actually hits with people. I mean, maybe, probably not all people, but just all things. I just remember, first of all, the early versions of that onboarding, some of the copy was super silly. I was hand sketching things and just saying whatever I wanted. And then our copy team had a little conversation with me and was like, hmm, maybe we can dial it down a smidge and I was like okay yeah maybe.

Mary: It’s, yeah, but it’s a good example of what Bobby you’re mentioning and Beah, your point. Like, it’s like, how do you talk about what the product does, but do it in a way that develops that sort of emotional connection. And it’s a funny testament that it stayed around this long. Since you, go ahead.

Beah: I was gonna say, I remember like user testing in like doing video user testing sessions with some of the early prototypes, which were like messy and weird and like hearing participants like laugh out loud, like chortle, say like wow and shriek or like, get mad. Like just have like an emotional reaction that like I definitely had not seen in user testing other components of the app. And I remember being like, I was still relatively new to DuckDuckGo. And I was like, this feels like it’s like doing something different, but maybe I’m just like, want it to feel like that. And I remember sending the videos to our like, kind of head of user insights and being like, am I wrong? Or is this like, are people like really having a reaction? And he was like, no, that’s yeah, they’re spitting their water out. Like, yeah, that’s interesting.

Mary: A chortle. Haven’t heard one of those in many, many years. I mean, since you mentioned it, Beah, like what was onboarding before? So we were talking about onboarding as this like personality, emotive. We can get into who Dax is as we talk about this, but I’m curious, like when you started, when you were doing these explorations and these videos, like what did we have and what were you, what sort of made you start doing this? Like why did you start the exploration that you did?

Beah: Yeah, it’s funny because we had these, I think the onboarding that we replaced was these tooltips that popped up as you moved around the app that were like, this is the fire button, it burns things, this is where you type, I don’t know. And I realized in retrospect after we launched this that on paper it was not that different. We went from tooltips explaining some of the features of the app to what we call Dax dialogues, our mascot Dax telling you things, but there were just a lot of details, I think, that made it feel very different. You could almost imagine the same onboarding coming out of the same written spec, like both, sorry, both very different onboardings coming out of the same written spec, but in practice and application, they felt very different.

Mary: Hmm, that makes sense. Do you have, I know you have maybe some images to share at some point, but yeah, we can always throw these in in post. But I want to, if there’s, yeah, if you want to share, we can always take a look.

Beah: Yeah, yeah, yeah, I can share things. I don’t know. Wait, okay, I think I can share things. Oh boy, I gotta do settings. You talk amongst yourselves.

Mary: In the meantime, Bobby, I’m curious, like you came into onboarding. So Bobby came in and was sort of tasked. It was maybe your first project of how can we improve this thing that is working really well, which is not the easiest task. I’m curious, like, what was your first impression? What did you think was working? Where did you want to focus your time?

Bobby: Yeah, I think, well, we’ve been talking about the feeling that we were trying to evoke from people. And one thing that immediately was already working in the version that Beah had previously done is helping you feel confident in the app about how to protect your privacy. And I think that’s a pretty high bar. That’s kind of a challenging thing. Privacy protections can be this vague, intimidating concept, but the tone and particularly using Dax’s voice to deliver these messages was not only unique to really any browser that I had seen, but certainly unique for a pretty serious topic and something that is somewhat technical to understand. So the first thing that stood out to me was that lighthearted approach and the lighthearted language while still being very clear that you can be confident that your protections are active and working for you. And then I guess the second thing I mentioned a little bit earlier, which is just really focusing on demonstrating and helping you experience things. The aha moment for me, and I think a lot of the user tests that we observed was when you see the trackers that are being blocked on the first page you visit and it names the companies. You can find that on any page in DuckDuckGo just by clicking on the shield in the address bar, but to reveal it and the first time you visit any page with trackers that are blocked, you see that list right at the top of the screen. And I think that is really illuminating and eye-opening to understand that it’s actually working and that these trackers might be even more prevalent than you think. And they’re probably popping up on nearly every site you visit, which I think is a good, both a helpful way to understand privacy protection in general and maybe a shift toward privacy browsers are actually good everyday browsers.

Mary: And what were you trying to improve? Obviously you felt like that connection, that demonstration component was there. What were you hoping as you started watching these user testing videos? What did you want to change?

Bobby: Yeah, there were a few things. I mean, we wanted to build on that really, build on using those tools, using the tone and using the demonstration mechanisms to one, highlight more features. So search wasn’t actually highlighted at all during the onboarding flow and we know users love our search. And so we wanted to help people experience that for the first time, notice that it has fewer ads than other search options. Second, we wanted to increase the trial of those features that we were highlighting. So there, that is a drop off, a potential drop off moment where people are like, I downloaded this, but I don’t actually have anything to do with it immediately. I didn’t come because I have one search in mind or one page I’m trying to visit. So they open it. They’re like, okay, I kind of get it. And then they close it and maybe forget about it. How can we actually help you just get through that flow, see how the features work the first time. And then also adding some concrete benefits when we’re asking you to set it up a little bit. So I can elaborate on this a little bit, but we really wanted to introduce the concept of this is a browser. You can directly compare it to your existing browser, Chrome or Safari, wherever you’re coming from. Almost everyone is starting with an existing browser. And so we want it to be familiar, but differentiated. And when we ask you to set those things up, how can we help you set it up as very familiar to what you’re already used to?

Mary: It’s such a good point because we’ve even found, you know, like we get social comments, we get feedback from users. There’s just a lot of skepticism that it can work just as well because, you know, people have been told that you have to sacrifice your privacy for convenience, you know, for the tool, you know, the bookmarking, the sites to work as you want. And so there’s just a lot of built-in, well, it can’t work, it can’t work the same. I can’t use it the same. And so what you’re talking about is like that direct comparison. It really, it seems like it really addresses that straight on. So I’m not surprised that that was effective. Beah, do you have anything to take us back?

Beah: Yeah, yeah. You were talking about the like, aha moment of seeing that we block trackers. Let me show you guys the, maybe, probably the first, this is like just a prototype in Figma, a design tool that we made. So that moment here, and by we made, I think I mean I made it, the design finesse is really something. So yes, this is the first version of that, Uncreepify it. Those arrows were just like, I don’t know, I need people to look at this URL bar somehow.

Mary: Oh my God, look at the old Dax. Look at his skinny beak.

Beah: Privacy grade. Yeah, yeah.

Mary: Wow. That’s pretty good.

Bobby: I’m sad I never got to experience the bent beak. It was already smoothed out and straightened out by the time I got here.

Mary: Indeed, indeed. That’s really cool to see because even though obviously, you know, we don’t have the privacy grade anymore, Dax looks different. The structure of this has really maintained, which was just pretty cool to see.

Beah: Yeah, I remember by the way to the point about like people have to understand this is a replacement browser and that it is in fact like good enough to... I remember one user testing fella who was like, you’d be a fool not to use this. That was like his takeaway. I think he used those words like, and I was just like, yes, like that is like, right, right? Why wouldn’t you want your browser to block this stuff? But yeah, it’s like he had to like get a certain amount of engagement with that, with what we’re trying to do in onboarding to really process and appreciate that and believe it.

Mary: That makes sense. I mean, to your point from the beginning, Beah, it’s like much of the product benefits of DuckDuckGo are the absence of things. It’s like the absence of ads or trackers or cookie pop-ups. That’s actually really hard to communicate because you’re not usually switching and using both and noticing that difference. Is there anything that either of you remember working on this that was like particularly tricky to figure out how to explain or make emotive or find a way to communicate from that perspective?

Bobby: I actually think one of the trickiest things, this isn’t related to those privacy protections, but one of the trickiest things is helping people understand how a browser fits with their OS basically and how to reconfigure their settings. Basically, one of the first things we ask you to do in our app is leave our app and go change your OS settings. That’s a tricky thing to explain that we want you to leave, but we also want you to come right back so that you can understand everything else. That’s a tricky moment. But I think more broadly in terms of privacy, we tried to introduce some consistency to help you feel that your privacy protections are active at all times. And so we use language like protections activated is on the second screen. And then we now have consistent usage of the screen shield that shows up in the address bar on our app, on our search results page, in our Duck AI products, all of which is supposed to just remind you and reassure you and help you feel confident that the protections are actually working for you. And we try to just show you one time what happens if you click on that. It shows you the details of what exactly is happening, what is being blocked, what is being prevented. And I’m reasonably confident that just that one use or an occasional tapping on those details helps you recognize that every time you see this green shield from now forward, behind there are those details, but you don’t need to worry about them most of the time. So highlighting that I think can be a really effective way to minimize distractions in your everyday usage, but introduce it with a reinforcing mechanism as you do.

Mary: How do you think about the cost of onboarding? Like, you know, someone has downloaded this app. I know you said, Bobby, that people won’t always have one search they have in mind, but they’ve downloaded it to probably do something. And we’re, you know, when you create an onboarding experience, you’re saying, before you can do that thing, you have to do this. Like, how do you think of that trade-off of like the user intent versus like what we want them to know and appreciate about the product that they’ve downloaded? For either of you.

Beah: Yeah, I mean, we struggle with this quite a bit and like, and there we get feedback that people don’t want to go through onboarding and we’re sympathetic like, you know, most internal employees who work on the app have gone through onboarding approximately 7,583,000 times like, I get it. And in fact, we’ve experimented with giving people a big skip option. And even when it’s just an option, and we don’t make it super, try not to make it super tempting, but try to let people really self-select in. It has actually harmed retention as we’ve been able to measure it, which is sometimes a tough metric to move. So yeah, it’s tricky. We try really hard to just, I think, pick the content that is most relevant and also make it easy to dismiss and get out of the way if you’re halfway through and you’re done and not having it. And Bobby’s done a lot of work on that, like just making it more dismissible.

Bobby: Yeah, we, I mean, we do, every screen is dismissible. So if you’re just not, if you’re trying to get to something right now, you can just click the X at every point and do whatever you’re trying to get done. And then we’ll still introduce some contextual nudges and tips as your path unfolds. But one other thing to mention about the efficiency versus like the efficiency of getting through onboarding versus helping people really understand and learn the benefits. That is in user testing, the most common challenge in really understanding are people getting through this or are they just annoyed by it? I really believe that Dax’s tone gives us a little bit of leeway and offsets some of the frustration because you can literally, as Beah mentioned, you can hear people laughing and smiling as they go through something. I think that automatically offsets a little bit of the, am I doing this? Because at least you’re not having like being forced through what feels like a lecture, hopefully. That’s what we aspire to. I know some people still do feel that and they still feel like even in that tone, or especially in that tone, it’s kind of annoying. But ultimately, I think more user testers feel really good and smile and recognize that they’re having a little bit of fun on their day also.

Mary: Who could get mad at the duck? Come on. So cute. Yeah, terrible. All right. Before I wrap up, is there anything either of you want to say about onboarding that I didn’t ask you or anything you want to call out?

Beah: Maybe just riffing off of what Bobby was just saying, I think when we originally worked on this format, the thing in my mind was really a video game. I’m not a gamer, so I don’t know what the language is for the video games where you’re exploring a world and you get the dialogues. I think I’d been recently introduced to Animal Crossing, probably COVID times. So maybe there’s some inspiration in that.

Bobby: I’ll just say one more thing, which is that we’re doing even more. We’re still working on onboarding. We’re always trying to improve it. So we’ve got some new and exciting stuff coming soon that I think will make it even more illuminating and hopefully a bit more fun.

Mary: Yeah, and I can attest that Bobby reads all user feedback related to onboarding. So if you have some, please share. I can guarantee it’ll be read right over there. All right, closing rapid fire questions. I’ll ask you both just to. Beah, how long have you been at DuckDuckGo and why do you work here?

Beah: About seven years, or maybe coming up on eight, so a while. Why I work here, because I get to hang out with people like you and talk about fun things like duck onboarding.

Mary: Love it. Bobby, same question.

Bobby: I’ve been here a little over two years and I guess I work here because I used the product for a very long time and I liked contributing to something that I value. Particularly like I came probably for the unpersonalized results and I stick around to help more people discover them and improve them.

Mary: Hmm. Okay, that answer didn’t involve me at all, but fine. Yeah, yeah, I preferred Beah’s answer.

Beah: I felt upstaged like Bobby was like taking the high moral ground. I’m like, okay, it’s just rapid fire Bobby like, but cool.

Bobby: I was anticipating another question, but maybe not which is where I was gonna mention you, Mary, but personally, by name and how much I love working with you.

Mary: Nope. Nope. No, we’re cut for time. Cut for time.

Bobby: Alright, fine.

Beah: I work here because I like seeing Bobby dress up in Dax costumes.

Mary: Yeah, famous for it, always. Yeah.

Bobby: That’s a good one. Well, something that surprises me about working here is that not only are people very smart, but they’re also very funny. You two are very funny and there may be some other very funny employees, which keeps every day entertaining.

Beah: Thanks, Bobby.

Mary: Yeah. It’s actually, I said something similar, when I answered this question. So that’s interesting. All right. Thank you both. Thanks, everyone for watching. See you next time.

Bobby: Thank you.