Why It's Bad to Explain Features on Your Onboarding Screen

Reducing cognitive effort

When users open an app for the first time, they aren’t sure what to expect. Most designers will provide a tutorial on the app’s features on the onboarding screen to help users get started. However, doing this is a big mistake because users will forget most of that information once they enter the app.

The human working memory has limited capacity and can only hold a small amount of information in an accessible form for a short period. It’s difficult for users to retain the information they read on the onboarding screen for their tasks. All the effort spent explaining the features will only go to waste.