Is "tip-of-the-day" good?

Question

Many programs (often large ones, like MS Office, The GIMP, Maxthon) have a feature called "tip-of-the-day". It explains a small part of the program, like this one in Maxthon:

"You can hide/show the main menu bar by pressing Ctrl+F11"

You can usually browse through them by clicking next. And other options provided are "Previous", "Close", "Do not show at startup".

I think I like the way Maxthon used to handle this; in the browser's statusbar (down at the bottom usually, together with "Done", the progress-bar etc), there would sometimes be a small hint or tip on what else you could do with it.

As Joel Spolsky wrote in his article-series "User Interface Design for Programmers", people don't like reading manuals. But we still want them to use the program, and the features they could benefit from, don't we? Therefore, I think it is useful to have such a feature, without the annoyance of the pop-up on startup.

What do you think? Pop-up? Maxthonstyle? No way?

Answer 1

Actually, I've never heard of Maxthon. But I actually like those as long as there is a checkbox to make them stop. I like the tips to actually tell me something interesting instead of something very obvious in the UI. But this is really preference. I don't think it is bad design to use them.

Answer 2

This might not be a direct answer to your question, but personally, I like the way StackOverflow handles this. The badge system essentially acts as a manual, rewarding users for discovering and utilizing the functionality it has to offer. Granted, this isn't really an option for most apps but it works beautifully for StackOverflow.

Answer 3

IMO Tip of the day (popup) is only within programs that have a certain level of complexity, that you use frequently. So when you open the program you learn a new trick that will help you.

Usually people either like it or hate it, so definitely have an option to disable it.

What I'm worried about with the other type is that it will go unnoticed, you wont believe the areas of programs people never look at.

Answer 4

A tip is a good idea, users can discover things they didn't know they didn't know. But rather than using a pop up getting in the way of working, I like how World of Warcraft does it. They put the tip on the loading screen, when you have nothing better to do then stare at the progress bar anyway.

Answer 5

I think this goes along with the issues against modals -- it's something in a user's way, despite how helpful it may be. Which is why the "Do not show at startup" is needed.

Though I've never used Maxthon before, the way it showed tips sounds like a really good idea. It's unobtrusive and entirely optional as to if users even have to pay them any attention.

IMO, it's not good idea to have a feature that has to ask the user if it should "keep quiet." ;)

And, while some tips can seem blatantly obvious, even these tips can still be useful to users that aren't quite as familiar. Those that already know it can just continue on with their day.

Answer 6

I really only like the idea of a "tip of the day" if it is displayed when I can't do anything else anyway. For example, when the program is loading a large file. Suppose it has to load some large amount of data when the program is first started. Along with the "loading" splash screen, show a small tip, and have it disappear when the program starts. It's simple, unobtrusive, and can sometimes be very helpful to some users.

I hate to bring up "World of Warcraft" as an example in a programming discussion, but it uses this technique when you first login. Here is an example loading screen. Along with the loading bar and a full screen piece of art, it displays a small tip at the bottom of the screen. Usually these tips lead users to things they can explore further (such as a settings window, character customization tools, etcetera). For example, "Pressing ESCAPE will bring up a menu that lets you customize the the look and feel of the game".

Above all else: allow the user to easily close the tips and stop them from appearing each time. Make every key close the tip dialog when pressed. Have two buttons: "Close Tip" and "Close Tip and Never Show Again", or something to that effect.

Answer 7

Maybe put it in something like a "tool tip" (or down at the bottom like the OP described) and make it contextual. A few seconds after you change to a new mode it slides in some text about the current mode.

And YES make the OFF button easy to find!!!

Answer 8

It must be easy to banish the tips---but when learning a new GUI, I use them often. If it's a tip at startup I usually turn it off after at most a dozen runs, but if tips are well designed this gives me a sense of the application space.

Ways tips could be improved:

• Don't tip a user about a feature that user has used recently.

• Making tips sensitive to context can be helpful (the new Vista bars are an example --- pause to get the vapors; I have just said something nice about Vista).

• Tips that are unobtrusive or appear during otherwise wasted time are good.

• Tip during loading screen is good, but it must be findable after loading is over. Some popular game, maybe it was Baldur's Gate, would give you a tip during loading, and then afterward you could go back and review the tips in your journal. So if you had a vague memory of a useful tip a few screens back, you could find it quickly, in the same place you were accustomed to look for other recent information. A 'recently tipped' item on the help menu perhaps?

Answer 9

No - I dislike them pretty strongly. When I am starting a software application, I almost always have a specific task in mind. The TOTD just interrupts this flow and tries to get me to think about the software rather than the task.

Answer 10

Norman Ramsey made some great points about how tips could be improved. My problem with tips of the day (and I'm speaking as someone who's implemented them in my own apps) is that they are not timely and a bit too intrusive. The typical tip of the day comes up when you start the program, and requires a button click to make it go away. When I actually see a useful tip, my train of thought is usually "I'll have to remember that when I do option ". Of course, it's forgotten by the time I get around to using . And clicking OK during program startup gets old fast, I'll usually disable the tips after the first dozen or so.

My suggestion would be to go the next step and make the tip of the day much more context sensitive. For example, if the program detects that the user is constantly going to Edit | Copy and then Edit | Paste, a good tip would be "Not for nothing, but CTRL+C followed by CTRL+V accomplishes the same thing" and tell them right when they are clicking away at the menu like a lost monkey, not during program startup. Oh, and don't interrupt their work by forcing them to click OK.

What I just suggested - is that what that damn paperclip dude used to do?

Answer 11

Personally, I prefer software that’s simple enough to not need “Tip of the Day”.

Answer 12

Tip of the day can be good if it's

• non-modal, and never in the way
• has a "history" I can access
• is context sensitive to what I do

Unfortunately, the crappy initial Office implementation Clippy of has completely killed the last idea.

So IMO a good implementation would:

• Show up at startup
• Make "don't show at startup" the obvious choice
• Indicate (with an animation?) that TOTD is accessible from e.g. the toolbar
• MouseOver the toolbar icon would give the title/abstract of the "current tip"
• clicking on it would give me the tip, give forward/backward navigation through tips, link to "show all tips" in the manual.
• For a large tip database, a "related tips" link might encourage me to explore the manual

Context-sensitive

Later incarnations of Clippy were almost helpful actually: it was nonmodal and stayed out of the way not requiring interaction (the jumping around was attention-grabbing, though), and I remember a few instances where the suggestion was good - e.g. a keyboard shortcut for a command I had accessed repeatedly through the menu.

A simpler method could still be effective:

"Did you know... you can customize the print templates to look like a pie chart on LSD - the manual shows you how! [clickety]" on a print dialog

Did you know... I can remember your custom searches. Just click 'Goof/Barf/Hidden/Create Index for last Query' - and they'll show up in the 'Search' menu. They'll run much faster, too! whe working with a search/query form