I have the feeling the usage for “checking in” apps has declined a bit. This is an observation based on absolutely nothing except for the people in my immediate surrounding. Way back I’ve used Foursquare briefly. Battled to be the mayor of Wrep HQ with Mathijs which was fun for about 2 times. Aaaanyway, for this edition of the onboarding challenge I wanted to return and take a look at the current Foursquare experience.

Foursquare home page

• First thought: messy. Lots of things going on
• All things on the page are targeted based on my current location, which is really good
• They use 4 different styles for the “Log In”, “Sign Up”, “Sign in with Facebook” and “Sign up via Email” buttons, which is a bit distracting
• The “Sign Up” button on the top right expands into a popout with another “Sign Up with Facebook” button and also the option to “Sign up with Google” (don’t see that one a lot). The popout also contains a “Or use your email” link, which shows the same dialog as the button right on the front page

Sign up with e-mail dialog

• I like the clear function of Foursquare in this dialog. This is the same text as displayed in the huge header on the frontpage, but because this dialog is much less messy I’m reading it for the first time
• Filling out the form displays checkmarks next to each field which is entered correctly: nice
• I have to enter my birthday. It is a bit buggy, because the tooltip which should explain why exactly I have to enter my birthday is displayed behind the dialog so it is not readable
• The day field does not autotab into the next field after entering 2 numbers
• The gender field is required, but I’m allowed to “Rather not say”: why not make it optional and autofill with “Rather not say” when the value is not entered? Much friendlier

Select tastes

• No requirement in number of tastes to select: good
• Nice animation of appearing tastes, makes me smile
• Another nice animation when selecting a taste, this feels like a game
• No visual indication how many tastes I have selected so far

Completed onboarding

• This is a friendly dialog
• Why give me a choice between showing and closing the dialog? I don’t know what to do now.

Foursquare main page

• The top part of the page is filled with suggestions
• The suggestions are not specifically targeted based on the tastes I given earlier. I’d expected this, because they are highlighted
• Below it there are two buttons that should help me connect my social profiles and find my friends on Foursquare
• Scrolling further down, there are more suggestions with nice pictures, based on my current location. They don’t seem tailored to my selection so far