Rebuilt onboarding for an AI creative suite.

The suite had a discoverability problem pretending to be a conversion problem. New users saw the canvas, froze, and closed the tab — the product was capable of ten things they hadn't asked about and none of the three they had.

We ripped out the tour. The new first-run is a single blank canvas with one prompt, a visible cursor, and a small suggestions rail. Everything else — the model picker, the layers panel, the export flow — stays behind a chevron until the user has produced something they care about.

The model selection is the hidden unlock. Rather than ask the user to understand what model they need, the canvas picks one based on the first prompt and names it quietly in the bottom corner. Advanced users can override; new users never have to know.

Second-session return is where onboarding's real work lives. The empty state of session two was the biggest shift — it leads with the user's last artifact, not a tutorial. If you made something, we show you the thing you made. Continuity is its own kind of welcome.

Activation on day-three cohorts moved up materially. The more telling number was time-to-first-artifact, which halved. The product didn't need more features. It needed fewer choices in the first ninety seconds.