Guru’s accessible wiki creation process

Knowledge management software Guru minimizes information woes by keeping all of your team’s internal resources centralized and easy to find.

Signing up for Guru is incredibly simple and fast. Users can get started by connecting their Google accounts or filling out a short form.

Once a user signs up for an account, Guru doesn’t require them to fill out a long profile—they just need to input their name, upload a picture, and select their role within their team. Guru makes sure to tell users that they’re collecting this information to personalize the product for their needs.

After users fill out the short profile form, they get to name their team and pick their plan. Guru doesn’t crowd this page (and overwhelm new users) with a plan comparison table. Instead, there’s a link within the form that users can click to get more information.

Guru checks the box permitting users’ teammates to find the newly created Guru team, making new users more likely to connect and collaborate with teammates on the platform.

Once a user has submitted their information and created their team, Guru sets them up with templates, aka Frameworks. Alternatively, folks can forgo the templates and build their own structures from scratch.

We selected “Marketing” when we filled out our profile, so we got two marketing templates and a standard Framework to select from.

Once a user selects a Framework to import, a status page appears to let them know they’ll be ready to go in no time.

Finally, Guru sends users to their team dashboard so they can start building their company wiki.

Guru isn’t just a web app—it’s also available as a browser extension. The colorful banner at the very top of the dashboard encourages users to try the Guru Chrome Extension.

What makes this really good UX:

• Guru requires very little input from users upfront, which makes setting up an account easy. Users only have to select a couple of options along the way, type in their name, and decide what they’d like to call their team.
• Guru’s “We’re on it” status page that appears right before users see their dashboard gives them immediate feedback as to what’s going on behind the scenes. The Framework is the first time users experience a delay during the wiki setup (albeit only a few seconds). Because the delay may be unexpected, the status page is a great way to reassure users that things are still working.  
• When users get to the main dashboard, it’s pre-populated with “Getting Started with Guru” cards. This feature gives users an example of what a completed wiki looks like on the platform, and it gives users the information they need to get started—all in one place.

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