What Flowo's Onboarding Asks For and What We Removed

The steps and what each one costs

Flowo's onboarding has eleven screens, and only one of them requires the person to produce content. We list them here with the action each one requires.

1. 1.Welcome: a name field that can be left empty.
2. 2.Eligibility: one statement and one button whose label is the confirmation itself.
3. 3.Consent: one switch per optional purpose, each off by default.
4. 4.Describe your week: a text field with a microphone, or a link to answer cards.
5. 5.Generating: a wait of about ten seconds with a way out.
6. 6.Clarifying questions: shown only when the draft needs them.
7. 7.Review: the draft plan and one button to apply it.
8. 8.One thing for this week: one text field and a 'Later' button.
9. 9.Reminders: one button that opens the system permission dialog.
10. 10.Where did you find Flowo: optional, with Skip.
11. 11.Your week is ready: today's plan and one button.

The eligibility screen used to have a tick box and a Continue button that stayed grey until the box was ticked. That was two controls for one decision. It is now one button labelled 'I'm 16 or Older'.

One description replaces a questionnaire

The only required input in Flowo's onboarding is a description of the week, and the screen says that a few sentences are enough. The field accepts up to 4000 characters. Dictation writes into the same field, so there is one copy of the text whichever way it arrives.

The service may answer with follow-up questions, and the backend caps them at five. Each one is a card with tappable options. Free text from the service that quotes a number is not shown on the review, because a figure in a sentence could disagree with the row we actually apply.

A person who does not want to write can tap 'Answer a few questions' and get five fixed cards. Three are marked required and open on a preselected default: a 23:00 to 07:00 night, Monday to Friday as busy days, three meals. Two are marked helpful. The last of them asks how often each chosen activity happens, and the app passes over it when no activity was chosen, so nobody lands on a heading above an empty card.

The review screen lists the decisions the app made on the person's behalf, such as 'Used one rhythm for all seven days'. That list shows three lines and folds the others behind a link.

The wait is a step with an exit

Generating the draft takes about ten seconds, and Flowo presents that time as its own screen. An earlier version kept the text field on screen, disabled, with a spinner inside the main button. It said 'wait' without saying for what.

The generating screen draws the empty outline of the review card that is about to arrive, so only the contents change when the draft lands. A line of text changes every three seconds through three stages: 'Reading your week', 'Placing sleep, meals and work', 'Checking what to ask you'. The timer stops at the last line and does not loop. The line is a live region, so a screen reader announces each change.

The link to the question cards stays active for the whole wait. Tapping it raises an internal revision counter first, so a draft that arrives late is dropped and does not pull the person out of the cards.

Permissions arrive when they are used

Flowo asks for each permission at the point where the feature behind it is about to run. Privacy consent comes before the description screen because the description is the first thing that leaves the device. Analytics SDKs are not started at launch at all. They start only after the person turns the analytics switch on.

Consent to upload voice is a separate question. It is asked before the first dictation session and only if the person taps the microphone. Someone who types never sees it.

The reminders screen sits after the plan has been applied, when reminders are the next thing that would happen. It has exactly one button, and that button shows the system dialog. There is no 'skip' and no second button, because the real choice belongs to the system prompt. Onboarding continues whichever answer is given.

The coach mark does not block the screen

After onboarding, Flowo teaches with a coach mark that outlines one control and leaves everything else usable. The mark is a 3-point ring in the accent colour with a card beside it. The card holds a step label, a title, a short body, and two buttons, 'Later' and 'Got it'. Nothing behind it is dimmed.

Only one mark exists at a time. A mark requested while a page or sheet covers the main screen waits until that screen is in front and has stopped moving. A tap inside the ring closes the mark and still reaches the control, so tapping the outlined button does the thing. A tap or drag anywhere else just closes it.

The ring pulses on a 1.4 second cycle. With Reduce Motion on, the ring is drawn still. Both card buttons have a minimum touch target of 44 by 44 points.

What we removed or deferred

Most of the attention we saved in Flowo's onboarding came from deleting things. This is the list as of October 2026.

• The spotlight tour is gone. Inline tips replaced it, one per place, closed for good once dismissed or once the person does what the tip describes.
• The separate tutorial screen was removed.
• The hosted 'start here' guide is no longer called. It ran through the analytics vendor's guide SDK, which only loads after analytics consent, and that consent is off by default. The replacement is our own coach mark, which works with analytics off.
• The checklist has five steps. We designed six. The Recovery step was cut because a clean install usually has no task that fails to fit, so there was nothing for the ring to point at.
• We decided against field-level hints such as 'type the name here'. A hint has to show where to tap and where that leads.
• A mascot inside the hints is postponed.

Three things are planned and not built. Hints at the moment of need for Recovery, Braindump and the assistant are specified but not implemented. First-week reminders are not implemented. A progress indicator for how much the planner has learned from confirmed blocks was approved as an idea and kept out of the Today header, because that header was already carrying enough.