Enhancing Usability and User Experience Through User Onboarding in an Ecological Information App

In a digitally driven society, where mobile devices are central to accessing information and learning, from real-time bird identification to recording observations. This study uses different user onboarding types to investigate its impact on app usability and user experience for Taiwan’s endemic bird species. The app design processes employed simplified bird images, an interactive framework, user onboarding design, and user interface design to conduct the structure of the app. And invited experts in related fields to examine the structure and proceeded with repeated design by focus groups and heuristic evaluations. Finally, the usability test is conducted to explore the relationship between onboarding tutorials, contextual help, and overall usability within the same interactive structure. The usability test used the MAZE website, and evaluation via the System Usability Scale (SUS) and User Experience Questionnaire (UEQ) were conducted. The results showed that the app prototype using onboarding tutorials obtained an average usability score of 74.773, rated between good and excellent, and a user experience rating of excellent for dependency, stimulation, and novelty. The prototype used contextual help reached an average usability score of 67.868, rated between OK and good, having a lower user experience rating than onboarding tutorials. Significant usability and user experience differences were discovered between the group, given onboarding tutorials and contextual help. The research result suggested that onboarding tutorials can be incorporated in an ecological information interactive framework to ensure the system’s usability is high and offers perspicuity and efficiency in the user experience.