Crafting an Unforgettable Onboarding Experience for Your Mobile App
When it comes to mobile applications, the first impression is everything. And, more often than not, that first impression is formed during the onboarding process. However, onboarding can easily become a mundane task if not done correctly. It’s essential to strike a balance between providing necessary information and keeping the user engaged.
The Anatomy of a Great Onboarding Process
A well-designed onboarding process should:
- Provide an attractive and engaging user interface
- Present users with necessary licenses and agreements
- Gather relevant data for a seamless app experience
In this article, we’ll explore how to create an exceptional onboarding experience for a travel app called “Synergy Travel.” Let’s dive in!
Planning the Onboarding Process
Before we begin, it’s crucial to plan the look and feel of our onboarding process. We want to create an engaging opening slideshow that scales and fades to draw the user in, followed by a license agreement and a screen to select their interests.
Creating an Engaging Opening Slideshow
Our opening slideshow consists of several pictures overlaid with a single word. We’ll use Flutter to render the slideshow on the device, ensuring a reduced installation package size and an excellent visual presentation.
To create the slideshow, we’ll specify the words we want to show, and then use Timer.periodic to change the images every 2 seconds. We’ll also add an AnimatedSwitcher, a Stack, and an AnimatedOpacity widget to create a smooth transition between slides.
Adding Motion to Enhance the Experience
To take our slideshow to the next level, we’ll introduce some motion. We’ll combine a ScaleTransition and FadeTransition to produce an effect that’s both visually appealing and nuanced.
Configuring the Flutter PageView Widgets
To complete our opener, we’ll configure two PageView widgets. The first will operate on the vertical axis, moving the viewport vertically after the user taps the button. The second will operate on the horizontal axis, allowing the user to swipe to move in a certain direction.
Setting Up Onboarding Steps
We’ll create an OnboardStep widget that accepts a list of children and shows an image. This will ensure consistency in visual design across every step.
Creating the Interest Selection Screen
During the onboarding process, we want to gather information from the user. In this case, we want to know what they’re interested in doing on their holidays. We’ll create a list of possible activities and use a Set to track what’s selected.
Wrapping Up
A well-designed onboarding process can make all the difference in wowing your users from the get-go. By incorporating basic motion and Flutter’s implicit animations, you can create an onboarding experience that’s both engaging and effective.