How United Onboards New Users

So I know it's bash United week, but to be honest this is not even near the worst I've seen from large-company apps.

Obviously their onboarding process is terrible, but putting new users aside, the app works pretty fine for existing customers. It gives you your boarding I passes, flight status, and reservations automatically. You change seats and check your upgrade status. I've even booked fligjts via the mobile app before (I've never seen that "something has gone wrong" dialogue at the end).

Overall I've found it functional, which I cannot say for many other apps made by large companies (I'm looking at you Chase).

And I wouldn't go so far as to say the lack of great user onboarding experience represents some sort of culture problem. Maybe they just don't have a large team? Maybe their engineers don't have UX experience? Maybe they haven't done user onboarding studies and realized these problems? (Personally I think it's lack of staffing, but I don't actually know anybody who works on the app.)

I made a rant the other day about the 25-ish step process to pre-order a expansion pack for the MMO I play for access to the first week:

1. Open the Lodestone 2. Click expansion pre-order page. 3. Get redirected to expansion promo page. 4. Click pre-order. 5. Get sent to the EU store. 6. Log in with your Square Enix Store Account. 7. Find expansion and purchase. 8. Fill in purchase details, including phone number. 9. Pay for item. 10. Get told to check email for purchase verification. 11. Click verification link in email. 12. Get asked for phone number for verification. 13. Enter code texted to me. 14. Get told your purchase will be activated within a few hours and you will be emailed. 15. Receive email (20 minutes later) and click link. 16. Log in again with Square Enix Store Account. 17. Click redeem key. Read scary warning aout not being able to redeem anymore. Obtain Key 1 18. Go to expansion promo webpage. 19. Login with your Square Enix Account (not the same as steps 6 or 16) 20. Enter Key 1 on expansion promo web page. This one you can copy and paste 21. Redeem Key 1. Get new key (Key 2). 22. Head to account management website. 23. Log in again with your Square Enix Account(same account as step 19, but not as steps 6 or 16). 24. Enter key 2 (manually, no copy and paste for you) and redeem. 25. Enter key 2 and redeem again because the form field is case sensitive. 26. Congratulations, you have now pre-ordered stormblood.

Reddit link since I can't figure out how to format a 26 item list without it taking up half the page here with a blank line between each item or scrolling off the edge of the screen.

https://www.reddit.com/r/ffxiv/comments/658y97/your_handy_25...

It's a wonder some of these places get it _so_ wrong.

Sadly this entirely skips the user registration, which probably includes the brain-dead variant of "security questions", essentially forcing you to choose from a fixed list of both questions and answers.

Pretty much everyone told United the end effect is pretty much eliminating any security, but they simply don't care.

Hi all! I'm the person who made this. If you have any thoughts, please share em here. I will be checking this thread regularly. :)

@davesailer Thank you for sharing this!

With a blow to the head. :-)