Your first-time learning experience (FTLX) is an owned experience you create that teaches users how to use your product.
This would be something like:
- In-app onboarding
- Course
- Quickstart tutorial
- Sample app
- Readme
There's another adjacent term, first-time user experience. That is used within the product context. I'm talking about a learning context within DevEd – where the experience could live inside or outside your product.
- How does someone learn to use your project?
- What are the learning objectives?
- What are you wanting them to retain?
- What's critical for success?
- What can you leave out (just as important)?
- Where will they go when they are ready to keep learning?
- Where can they go for help?
Imagine a game that never taught you how to play. Do you think people would play it?
Well, the answer is yes, someone will be willing to.
But there's a reason most game designers spend an inordinate amount of time on tutorial levels and carefully designing the first-time learning experience... they want people to play the game and game mechanics need to be taught to the player.
If you want the most people to use your open source project, I think you need an intentionally designed first-time learning experience.
Have a lovely day,
Kamran
