In 2015, I sat in a ballroom at SXSW and listened to a talk that honestly changed my entire product career.
The talk was called “New Users Matter Too! Designing Better Onboarding” by Krystal Higgins.
I showed up expecting some light UX inspiration - what I got was a total reframe of how I think about product design.
The Icebreaker That Wasn’t
Krystal opened her talk by asking us to turn to the person next to us and greet them the way our apps greet new users.
(No one really did it - we all sort of blinked at each other in silence).
And then she said:
“Most of you should have just turned and said ‘App name. Login.’”
💀 Brutal, but completely fair.
That's stuck with me for years - cracked open a way of thinking I hadn’t put words to yet:
How much value are we hiding behind registration?
What could we let people do before they create an account?
How might we show them the magic first, and only ask for commitment once they want to stick around?
That’s not just onboarding, that’s generosity.
That’s trust.
First-time UX isn’t extra. It’s essential.
Every time I work on a product, I think about:
What the user sees first—and how it makes them feel
How to introduce just enough—but not too much
When to hold their hand, and when to let go
What happens if they come back after a week (or a month)
I’ve used these principles everywhere since:
At GatsbyJS, designing better CLI and UI entry points for devs
At Kaiser Permanente, simplifying complex healthcare workflows for patients
At startups and nonprofits, where trust needs to be earned fast
Here’s what I now believe:
You can’t build loyalty without clarity.
People don’t churn because they’re lazy—they churn because they’re lost.
New users aren’t a funnel metric. They’re real people, taking a risk on you.
And that means onboarding isn’t a tour - it’s a trust-building exercise.
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Krystal Higgins - if you ever read this - thank you.
Your 2015 talk was a product awakening. Your work continues to inspire how I coach, design, write, and lead.
And to anyone reading this:
If you’re building something right now, ask yourself:
“What would this feel like if I’d never seen it before?”
That’s where the real work begins.
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