An onboarding experience you’ll soon want to forget

Courtesy of musical.ly

About two weeks ago, I started listening (and listening, and listening… the guy is awesome) to Gary Vaynerchuk’s #askgaryvee show.

Among other things, Gary kept mentioning a thing called musical.ly. Intrigued, I decided to investigate, so I went in the Play Store and downloaded the app.

This is my story.

Immediately after launching the app, I got a splash screen. While I see no reason for having splash screens anywhere (I mean, if you want to put your logo somewhere, just put it on your Sign Up or Log In screen which actually serves a purpose), I thought “OK, first launch, lots of apps do it, I can roll with this”.

A couple of seconds later, I got this:

Needless to say, the freakin’ splash screen is a pretty weird place for the app to ask for permission to access your device’s media. I am not some sort of privacy nut and, since Gary Vee keeps mentioning it, I’m pretty sure that it’s not some sort of scummy, steal-your-data-and-send-it-to-China-to-make-sweet-and-sour-data-out-of-it app but it still made me raise my eyebrows a little.

I tapped ALLOW and got the following screen

Nice sign up screen, wouldn’t you agree? Nothing special, but it doesn’t need to be.

But what if I told you that immediately after showing this screen, the app started playing Omi’s “Cheerleader” in the background without giving me any warning that it intended to do so? Yep.

The following line is what I actually scribbled down on my notepad during the sign up procedure

music starts playing on sign up / register screen -> nearly shat myself

To add insult to injury, the app doesn’t offer a mute switch so the only way to stop the music from playing was to mess around with my phone’s media volume to get it to stop. However, curiosity got the best of me and decided to turn it back on to see if the music would stop on the next screen.

After selecting Sign Up, I was presented with this dialog

Since I don’t like being tied down to one particular service (or phone number, at that) for my registration purposes (I mean, what if Facebook decided to cancel my account tomorrow for not posting enough pictures of motivational quotes over sunset photos or something?) I chose email address and got this

Thinking I was some sort of hot shit, I tried to trick the app by entering a string of characters that didn’t form an email address and the app was all like “Nuh uh, motherfucker. This stops now”. Good job on this front.

By the way, I want you to notice something on this screen. See something missing? If you don’t, let me direct your attention towards the top of the screen and the missing status bar. I know it’s not a huge deal but why the hell remove it in the first place? It’s not like the sign up procedure needs to be immersive.

Oh, remember when I turned the media volume back to to see when the music would stop? It still hasn’t. Those fifteen seconds of “Cheerleader” are still looping on this screen. Better luck next screen, I guess.

Now, because I’m a total butterfinger, I managed to accidentally press back in the navigation bar and went back to the previous screen, only this time it had no background

Know what it still had? That’s right: fucking “Cheerleader”.

Curious, I turned my screen off to see if that would cause “Cheerleader” to stop playing. Omi and Felix Jaehn audibly laughed in my face as the song kept playing. I thought “Google should hire these guys to fix the YouTube app” and tapped Sign Up again.

This time, I cut the shit and entered an actual email address like a normal, well-adjusted member of society.

Last letter of the email address omitted to protect MUH PRIVACY

And so we come to the next screen…

…with the TINIEST. DATE. PICKER. EVER.

After fumbling around with it for about two minutes with the help of a super-advanced electron microscope, I entered yesterday’s date to see what would happen. My date may have suggested that I was born yesterday, but musical.ly certainly wasn’t: it told me that I wasn’t old enough to create an account.

I’m not one to give up easily, so I entered a date that, this time, suggested I was a one-year old infant (and, in some ways, I am). musical.ly caught my BS again decided to punish me by throwing me back to the Sign Up screen. Je ne suis shitting toi pas.

The following is an excerpt from the actual notes I was taking during the procedure

Say I was born today. Does not let me proceed. Say I was born yesterday. Still won’t let me proceed. Nice. Say I was born last year. THROWS ME BACK TO THE SIGN UP / LOGIN SCREEN. No background picture again. “Cheerleader” still playing. Starting over. Loading shotgun.

After going through the same steps again (with Omi still slamming me right in the middle of the face with his smooth sounds), I reached the Enter Birthday page again. Having learned my lesson, I entered my real birthday and tapped OK.

Entering my real birthday was not a problem, by the way, since the app assured me that it wouldn’t be shared publicly. Thank god for that because I have a really embarrassing birthday.

This screen asks me for a username and a password to create my account. What I’m wondering is why this info couldn’t have been entered on a single screen.

Why have a screen to enter my email, another one to enter my birthday and yet another one to enter a username and password? To give me some fake sense of progress and manipulate me like a little bitch? I’m not a one-year old infant, musical.ly. You called my bluff a screen ago.

But I digress.

Oh, by the way, “Cheerleader” is still playing. I maniacally tap Create Account and… it still doesn’t stop.

Next screen has an actual reCAPTCHA “I’m not a robot” thingy, like what happens on websites. On a mobile app. I shit you not.

I tap “I’m not a robot”.

musical.ly is not conviced, so it decides to go caveman on my ass by showing me another CAPTCHA-like screen and asking me to perform some pattern recognition exercises

Let me remind you that this is happening inside a mobile app.

And “Cheerleader” is still playing. Fuck this shit. I complete the vehicle challenge and then musical.ly hits me with another pattern recognition exercise in which I have to tap all squares with street signs.

Fucking musical.ly! I’m not a number, I’m a free man!!!

musical.ly senses that I’m starting to lose my shit, so on the next screen “Cheerleader” stops playing!! Yessss!!! VICTORYYYYYYYYYYYYYY!!

But the app is not done with me yet: on the next screen it asks me if I want to take a selfie to be used as a profile picture or skip. Afraid that if I choose to take a selfie “Cheerleader” might start playing again, I tap Not Now.

I am now ready to start using the app.

YOU THINK, MOTHERFUCKER!!!!

musical.ly now asks me for my full name. I enter “Brian Shitstain” because that’s what I feel like entering.

Now, can I use the app? Not yet: musical.ly wants to help me find friends on their service by using my contacts or Facebook account

I think “there has to be a way to skip this” but I can’t find any, so I agree. Same thing almost happens when the app asks me to use my Facebook account to find some of my contacts there.

I’m about to agree, because I can’t find a way to skip the procedure, when at the very last second I notice something on the upper-right corner of the screen, right under where the status bar would be, if the app hadn’t decided to make it disappear

I mean, call me a perfectionist but I don’t think that a tiny off-white Skip non-button on a perfectly white background is a good way to go about giving your users the option to skip this procedure.

And yes, you may have noticed that I keep calling this a “procedure” and not an “onboarding experience” since it’s about as pleasant as a colonoscopy, hence the more medical terminology.

After clicking Skip, I finally reach the main app interface.

“Cheerleader” starts playing again.

Oh, fuck.

Turns out, this time it’s on TV.