Loud and Proud
There’s a lot of design ways to introduce new features in your product. Two of the popular ways are to to add tooltips or pop up a modal. Here’s a few examples:
And those are not bad ways. And for sure 100% they make sense to use.
But I’m really digging what Canva and Shopify are doing*
Loud And Proud
Both Canva and Spotify are being very loud and and proud of new features. No simple modal or tooltips here, but rather a whole experience.
Check out Canva’s UX on showcases new updates:
They do some really cool things.
They have a dedicated site highlighting all their new changes
The site includes simple gifs that highlight the value prop
Each feature gets a dedicated amount of space. IE not a simple bullet point, it’s get a description and imagery to highlight it
Highlights the benefits where appropriate
They cater to different roles (marketing, sales, Creative, HR)
These can easily be a simple page, or tooltips and more or less a quiet announcement. Canva is loud and proud.
SHOPIFY UX
Shopify does a similar thing to announce new features. Every summer and winter they release what they call Editions - a way to publish all the changes they built.
They created a dedicated site and - well let’s just say the designers get to have a lot of fun. Check out the latest from Winter Editions 2024:
They have a “boring” version which is plain text, simple images, and hyperlinks. But there’s an option to select a “Not Boring” option. Doing so brings an old school TV and Remote on screen and you can flip through channels. Each channel is an AI generated video highlighting new features.
It’s so fun and feels like the team had fun doing it.
And it might not be your cup of tea but the point remains: they are loud and proud of what they do. And clearly they spent a lot of time one it.
It shows they care and they are proud of what they are releasing.
Proud Of Design Work
Personally I love all of this because it’s way to be proud of the work done. Adding all these features is a ton of work. It’s something a product team should be proud of.
Yes it’s one thing to get it released, but why not be vocal about it? Especially if the work is truly good and benefits customers, you should be very vocal about it:
“HEY WE RELEASED SOME AWESOME NEW FEATURES THAT ARE TOTALLY GOING TO HELP YOU OUT AND MAKE YOU EVEN MORE OF A ROCKSTAR!”
Customers would love that. I use Canva and Shopify and I love seeing these new features that I might otherwise gloss over if it was a simple tooltip.
Design And Marketing
There’s always a push to foster collaboration between product designers / ux designers and product management, and engineering. Marketing is often left out of that convo.
In my experience, marketing is a key factor to foster collaboration for reasons like this. A product designer can design a great experience that highlights new features in an engaging way. A way that gets customers excited and more informed. Working with marketing is a way to get this done.
*I’m sure there are other companies doing this as well, these are two I’m personally aware of.
