Mobile-first onboarding journey
A phone-shaped onboarding path a new joiner finishes in about ten minutes, in five short steps, with progress saved between sessions so it can be picked up on the commute and finished at a desk.
The layout is built for a phone first and scales up, rather than a desktop course squeezed down. Progress is stored on the device, so closing the tab does not lose it; the module includes a reset control so you can run it again from the start.
The five steps
Welcome aboard
Three short screens that set expectations: how long the path takes, that it can be stopped at any point, and what the joiner will have by the end. One minute.
Meet your team
Four people with a face, a role and what to actually ask them for: team lead, onboarding buddy, people partner and IT support. Two minutes.
Get set up
A five-item checklist covering email, two-step verification, the team chat channel, a profile photo and a first call with the buddy. Two minutes.
How we work
A short quiz of workplace situations, with an explanation after each answer rather than a score alone. Two minutes.
Plan your first week
The joiner picks commitments from five options, so the path ends with something they chose rather than a certificate. One minute.
Onboarding that fits the week someone actually has
A new joiner's first week is the worst possible time to ask for ninety uninterrupted minutes. They are meeting people, waiting on a laptop, and finding out where things are. Onboarding content built as one long desktop course gets opened once, half finished, and never returned to.
This sample is shaped around that reality. Five steps, none longer than two minutes, laid out for a phone and saved as you go, so it survives being done in pieces.
Why progress has to persist
The single most important behaviour here is unglamorous: close the tab, come back, and you are where you left off. Without that, a path meant to be done in gaps becomes a path that has to be done in one sitting, which defeats the point. In this sample progress is stored on the device. In a live rollout the same state comes from the LMS, so it follows the person across devices rather than living in one browser.
What the five steps are doing
The order is not arbitrary. People before process: the team introduction comes second, before any checklist, because knowing who to ask is what unblocks everything afterwards. The setup checklist follows while the joiner has their laptop open. The culture quiz comes once they have enough context for the situations to mean something.
The last step is the one most onboarding courses leave out. Instead of finishing on a congratulations screen, the joiner chooses what they will do in week one from a short list. Ending on a commitment the learner made themselves is what turns an induction into a plan.
Feedback rather than a score
The quiz step follows every answer with an explanation, including the correct ones. A new joiner guessing right about how a team handles mistakes has not learned the norm; reading why it works that way is what makes it stick, and it is cheap to include.
How it would be delivered
This is a published HTML5 build hosted on our site. For a rollout the same path is packaged as SCORM or xAPI and placed in your LMS or joiner portal, reporting completion and, with xAPI, which steps people stop at. If step three is where everyone stalls, that is usually an IT access problem rather than a training one, and it is worth knowing.
This is part of our e-learning development services. Our guides to microlearning people finish and mobile-first learning go further into the design decisions behind it.
Frequently asked
What is mobile-first e-learning?
Why build onboarding for mobile?
How long should an onboarding module be?
Does progress carry across devices?
Can this be built in Rise 360 instead?
Joiners losing their first week to paperwork?
Tell us what a new starter has to know by day five. We come back within one business day with a scope and timeline.