The Onboarding standard is one of the flagship example of my work on studio-wide standards for PikPok. Built for the entire studio ecosystem around mid-2024, it has since been adopted by at least three published titles.

Initial research

Example of agenda and notes for one of the roundtable discussions about player onboarding during the research phase

Example of agenda and notes for one of the roundtable discussions about player onboarding during the research phase

“Our player onboarding is way too long!”

For years I kept hearing these same words over and over again, meeting after another long meeting. This was my starting point for initiating research. Well, that, and maybe a few other things…

More causes for research

About roundtables

…with all this new information, I was finally ready to formulate main issues, goals and what potential success for this project looked like.

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Goals

Improve early-game retention metrics (different targets for each product/game) and achieve smoother progression through first-time funnels without huge drop-off cliffs

Reduce the need for onboarding-related development revisions (i.e. less time spent of development of onboarding systems over the lifetime of a product/game)