Design activation-first onboarding

Treat onboarding as the shortest trustworthy path from first launch to a meaningful product result. A quiz is optional. Use the fewest screens and questions the product actually needs.

Posture choice. This is the activation-first / honest default archetype. For paid consumer subscription apps where the goal is maximum trial-start and trial-to-paid conversion, the deliberate alternative is the sales-funnel archetype (design-onboarding-funnel) — longer, quiz-based, with psychological levers (effort investment, pain amplification, anchoring). Read both and choose deliberately; neither is universally correct. The conversion data is unambiguous that the sales-funnel archetype wins for paid single-purpose consumer apps (Cal AI: $50M ARR).

Start with the activation contract

Before drawing screens, define: