UserOnboarding.ai
Onboarding for AI productsCreativegamma.app ↗

Gamma

Gamma's creation flow starts with a three-way choice — Paste in text, Generate, or Import file or URL — then a Generate screen where users pick a format, card count and language before typing a one-line topic. The AI returns an editable outline first, not a finished deck.

Still frame from help GIF: "Create with AI — How would you like to get started?" with Paste in text, Generate (POPULAR) and Import file or URL cards
Still frame from help GIF: "Create with AI — How would you like to get started?" with Paste in text, Generate (POPULAR) and Import file or URL cards · Gamma Help Center · 2025-04
Still frame from help GIF: Generate screen with format tiles, 8-card stepper, language picker, prompt field and "Generate outline" button
Still frame from help GIF: Generate screen with format tiles, 8-card stepper, language picker, prompt field and "Generate outline" button · Gamma Help Center · 2025-04

Notes

  • "Create new (AI)" on the dashboard opens a full-screen "Create with AI — How would you like to get started?" chooser with three illustrated cards; Generate carries a "POPULAR" badge and the promise "Create from a one-line prompt in a few seconds."
  • Paste ("Create from notes, an outline, or existing content") and Import ("Enhance existing docs, presentations, or webpages") let users bring existing material instead of starting from a blank prompt — the help article pitches Paste as best for text "from notes, ChatGPT, or other sources."
  • The Generate screen asks "What would you like to create today?" with format tiles (Presentation, Webpage, Document, Social), an "8 cards" stepper, a layout dropdown and a language dropdown above the prompt field; a grid of "Example prompts" sits below the empty field.
  • The primary button is "Generate outline", so the first output is an outline the user can edit before any slides are designed — a checkpoint before spending the full generation.
  • The chooser also lists "Your recent prompts" with DRAFT labels, so abandoned generations are recoverable on return.
  • After creation, a sparkle icon on each slide opens AI editing; the help article notes multi-slide AI edits are Pro-only, and "View Source Prompt" in the … menu shows the original prompt.
  • Co-founder Grant Lee says Gamma spent three to four months after its launch rebuilding onboarding "so that AI was part of the actual onboarding", so every new user would feel "magic in the first 30 seconds". Signups then went from a few hundred a day to 20,000 a day (Lenny's Podcast, 2025-11-13, ~11:22).
  • Lee's "one egg" rule for the first run: throw a new user one idea ("create a slide in seconds"), not four or five features. He tells the team to treat new users as "selfish, vain, and lazy", with no wish to learn a new tool, and to earn each next 30 seconds (Lenny's Podcast, ~18:18-20:12).
  • The team's mantra for the first 30 seconds was to make it "dead simple" to create and to share. They found problems by watching usability tests of the onboarding flow and saw people "stuck on the first screen" (Lenny's Podcast, ~15:09 and ~1:06:36).

Patterns

start-mode chooserimport existing contentexample promptsoutline before generationformat pickerrecent draftsAI generation as the first-run experiencesingle hero action

Articles

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