I get it that you thought that adding humor to the narration would make the courses more fun but the only thing they achieve is act as a distraction.
You’re paying attention trying to learn what’s happening and suddenly the narrator makes a joke taking you completely away from the learning experience.
You’re trying to get back to focusing on the learning part and minutes (or seconds) later again…a joke that takes you completely out of the learning experience.
And this happens in every.damn.course…
I am not looking for any guidance on how to stay focused. Just wanted to raise the issue because it was a terrible decision. Webflow is already too hard with a very steep learning curve and we have to listen to all those attempts at humor?
The only lesson here is that their decision makes for a terrible UX.
I would like to introduce YouTubers: Pixel Geek and Flux! Although they’re not as direct as the Webflow university tutorials in terms of what they teach and when - but they have some videos that may be more helpful!
If you already know of them both then I apologise, I wish you the best!
Thanks, Akeem.
If these YouTubers are not as direct as Webflow’s (meaning more fluff and unnecessary talking) then I’ll get even more frustrated.
I will give them a look though. Thanks.
Although I fully appreciate your comments, I must point out that I do not agree with you. McGuire’s unique way of teaching helps greatly to pass the various learning stages of Webflow.
Can’t agree with what you’re saying.
I am not a 10 year old that needs jokes to stay focused in class. I am a captive audience with no need to be coaxed into paying attention. What I need is a minimalist approach. Show me what I need in a clear and direct way and trim any fat. Also, 9/10 jokes are just cringe.
So, although I know why they made that choice, for me, it gets in the way of learning. It ends up being a ‘hipster choice.’
UPDATE:
I would like to add how I feel about the jokes part after learning more about how Webflow works:
I want to admit that I was mostly wrong and partially right: Now that I am able to understand more about how Webflow works (I created this thread about this experience), I no longer find the narrator’s humor as infuriating as I did the very first time I watched WF tutorials.
The reason for me feeling this way before was because I was already having a terrible onboarding experience, feeling lost, unable to comprehend what’s happening on on the screen and wondering how am I going to learn this platform. Having the narrator making jokes during that time felt like the straw that broke the camel’s back.
I still believe that sometimes he tends to veer off more than he should (i.e. the joke with his mouse not working and the tech support guy trying to solve the issue), but overall, now that I can enjoy watching a tutorial because I understand what’s happening and I’m not hanging from the narrator’s every word, I will admit that I am not wholly against it.
@panos drawing on all of this then with your recent experiences - what would you suggest for the Webflow team to improve this?
Do you think a single, basic, focused course should be offered, completely deadpan, in order to get beginners to a level where they feel more relaxed and are more susceptible to a more relaxed method of delivery, including some humour?
It’s not so much about whether there is humor or not in the narration of a course, but more about if the right type of course is offered to a new user at the appropriate stage of the onboarding process.
For example, the very first course I watched was Webflow 101 (as was suggested by the welcome email I got when I registered.) For someone with no web design experience and knowledge, it was an absolutely awful onboarding experience. I was clueless as to what was happening and felt utterly frustrated.
I was about to quit Webflow for good but I’ve noticed that there was a course with assets so I’ve decided to give Webflow one last chance. That course was the Lawyer Firm website course, which was not only advanced in its difficulty, but there was humor in its narration as well and I had no problem following it, completing it and enjoying the jokes in it.
So, it’s not about whether there’s humor in the narration or not, but how well guided a new user feels while taking that course.
Judging from my experience, the mistake happens with suggesting a new user to passively watch the Webflow 101 videos. That doesn’t work for users without web design experience. None of what’s shown will make sense to them.
But if the very first course has the user building something, no matter how simple that may be, it honestly won’t matter if there is humor in its narration or not.
In fact, I wouldn’t lose the humorous approach or try to hide it. I would simply offer courses in which new users actually build something, getting acquainted with Webflow and feeling that they are indeed making progress. A gamification approach instead of passively watching introductory videos.
Then users will most certainly enjoy the humor the way I did after rewatching the Webflow 101 courses today (because I was able to make sense of what was happening because I finished the two building courses yesterday.)
It sounds like you were frustrated mainly with the on-boarding process and not so much with the delivery of helpful resources—a valid response that I chimed in on within your original thread. It’s always difficult trying to wrap your brain around new concepts and unfamiliar tools, and getting left out of jokes that are included throughout the experience can seem like adding insult to injury. I still believe that most Webflow users are not complete newcomers to the development world—but as they start to take on more user-friendly website builders they’re going to need to be more inclusive of all skill levels. I think your comments have been proof of that.
That said, the humor is deeply ingrained within the Webflow brand (watch any of the quarterly QA sessions with Vlad—spoiler alert, dad jokes are everywhere) that I personal find refreshing in the stale world of web development. It keeps things fresh and as long as the content is valuable, which is definitely is, I welcome the opportunity to not take things as seriously. In fact, they have one of the most comprehensive learning centers that I’ve come across that’s not only open and available to everyone, but extremely high quality in its presentation. All jokes aside, they don’t kid around with teaching folks.
I firmly believe we’re in the middle of a pretty massive shift at Webflow with not only the platform features but how they guide their users and empower them to create amazing things without the use of code. I would encourage anyone and everyone to give feedback as it’s the only way they can address the friction points that may be hidden below the surface.
Personally, I think the course style is really engaging and delivers everything you need in appropriate bite size chunks.
I completely understand that people’s learning preferences differ though, and understand that sometimes something totally new is quite a stressful experience. It’s difficult for me to properly give my judgement on this because I’ve got 15 years of various web dev experience behind me, and was able to blast through the whole Webflow course set in a few weeks and just ‘got it’ helped largely by my experience. As a new starter? Yes, I can see there may be some frustrations, I think this is compounded by the fact the interface elements are also slightly out of date in many of the videos. This even caught me out a few times. That said, I think Webflow have tried really hard and, on the whole, succeeded in making the materials really engaging to try and counter this stress.
I think this probably comes down to personal preference on course style more than anything else but it’s certainly valid to express.
Exactly. There are 2 types of new Webflow users. Those with web design experience and those without.
Users in group will find the Webflow 101 courses very helpful experience and they will help them understand immediately what Webflow offers and what are its capabilities.
Those in the second group though would need to be onboarded with courses that are interactive, relying more on getting the user to perform actions with Webflow and build something instead of just watching the informative videos in Webflow 101.
That’s what I got from my experience. The courses that had downloadable assets are the reason I am still here. If I had relied only on the Webflow 101 courses to learn to use Webflow, I would have tap out immediately.
It sounds like you were frustrated mainly with the on-boarding process and not so much with the delivery of helpful resources
You hit the nail on the head. It’s the kind of course that’s used when on-boarding a new user without web design experience that’s crucial.
It’s always difficult trying to wrap your brain around new concepts and unfamiliar tools, and getting left out of jokes that are included throughout the experience can seem like adding insult to injury.
Exactly!
That said, the humor is deeply ingrained within the Webflow brand… that I personal find refreshing in the stale world of web development.
I agree that’s why I wrote in my reply to @Andy_Vaughan “In fact, I wouldn’t lose the humorous approach or try to hide it. I would simply offer courses in which new users actually build something…”
So, the gist of it is, Webflow has 2 kind of users to think of how it on-boards; those with and those without web design experience and Webflow 101 is effective to only one kind of user.
I for one find the guy to be the face of Webflow. The two founders are nothing like him and doubt the bond would between their customers, e.g. me would be anywhere near it is now.
I would like to know more about the guy and if he indeed is a major stakeholder as he really should be as all companies need an interaction face.
I completely agree. McGuire’s humor and narration is the number 1 thing that attracted me to Webflow in the first place. I find most online tutorials incredibly dry because they don’t leave room for anything human. They’re too direct, robotic even.
The humor and comparative humanity of Webflow’s tutorials was the reason chose it over competitors like WordPress and Semplice. I stuck with it and fought through the steep learning curve because of the great tutorials. Webflow and McGuire made learning fun and that’s a huge win for me.
In my eyes, these are the absolut easiest tutorials I have ever seen in Webdesign. Nobody ever explained it easier, more engaging and more helpful. Thank you guys! *find standard gdpr solutions please
Thank you for the feedback @panos, or ευχαριστω if you prefer It’s really always good to have this kind of direct feedback, some will love the humor and some will not, especially if you have to rewind the video and hear the joke a few times, I totally get where you’re coming from.
I’ll share this with our education team, so at the very least they can cointinue to be mindful of this in the future.
Creating tutorials that take into consideration how users without web design experience will perceive them will definitely help the Webflow community grow.
community!
