| name | first-mile-experience-design |
| description | Optimize the first 30 seconds of a user's journey by designing for the "Lazy, Vain, and Selfish" psychological state. Use this when building onboarding flows, launching new products, or diagnosing high bounce rates at the top of the funnel. |
First Mile Experience Design
In the first 30 seconds of using any product, users are biologically wired to be Lazy, Vain, and Selfish. Most teams spend the "final mile" of their development time on the "first mile" of the user experience, leading to high-friction products that fail to activate users. This framework forces you to collapse the onboarding stack and optimize for immediate psychological success.
1. Apply the Psychological Lens
Evaluate every element of the initial experience (onboarding, landing pages, and first screens) against these three primal tendencies:
- Lazy: Users do not want to read, watch a tour, or endure a learning curve. If it requires cognitive load, they will bounce.
- Vain: Users want to look good to their peers, colleagues, or followers immediately. They seek a "success moment" they can show off.
- Selfish: Users want to know "What’s in it for me?" right now. They don't care about your mission; they care about their immediate problem.
2. Optimize the Three Pillars
Focus exclusively on these three areas during the first mile:
Onboarding
- Kill the "Tour": If you have to explain the UI, the UI is failing.
- Reduce to the "Half": Audit your planned feature list. Remove half the steps and half the options.
- Immediate Utility: Get the user into the "flow" before asking for "work" (e.g., let them see the value before requiring a complex password setup).
Orientation
- The Three Questions: Every screen must answer:
