You know the feeling.
You spend months building features.
Then a user signs up… and bounces.

They never make it past the first few screens.
The checklist didn’t help.
The value prop got skipped.
The tooltip got ignored.
The help doc came too late.
80% of features are not used.

Traditional onboarding is:

Too static.
Too one-size-fits-all.
Too forgettable.
Doesn't consider lifecycle.
Doesn't evolve as the user evolves.

What if your product could talk to each user, learn from them, and grow with them?

Not a chatbot pretending to be human.
Not just another nudge or modal.
But an experience that evolves.

Think Samantha, the AI in Spike Jonze's 2013 film "Her," which 12 years ago was just a dream but is now reality (well, except the romantic bit 🫣; let's focus more on the relational side of this AI—oops, spoiler alert!).

LLMs make this possible.
They can:
Ask users what they’re trying to achieve.
Tailor the flow to their goals.
Explain things differently to different people.
Learn what works from each interaction.
Check in later with helpful context.

Why does this matter?

Because time-to-value is everything.
The sooner users succeed, the more likely they will stick around.

And users aren’t just looking for features.
They’re looking for momentum, and you have a limited window of time (10 days).
They're looking for someone or something to guide them forward.

This is the next shift in product design: onboarding as a relationship, not a flow.

This is about meeting users where they are and helping them move forward This is about enabling them one contextual step at a time.

Ask yourself:
What if your product could build trust from day one?
What if it listened, responded, and adapted like a teammate?
What would that do for your retention?

Interested in building this into your product?
We’ve been using behavioural design, the hooked model, and other proven techniques since our days at Skype; back in 2013.