Evernote’s eye-catching feature announcements

Notes, more notes, organized notes! Evernote has certainly made its mark as a user-friendly note-taking app. And the brand does a great job of introducing their users to new features and updates.

Evernote leans on several UX patterns—checklists, hotspots, and tooltips—to capture their users’ attention and provide information.

When users click on “What’s New” in the sidebar, they’re given a concise checklist of features to explore. A hotspot encourages users to click and learn more about each update.

When users click on one of the items in the checklist, a tooltip draws the user’s attention to the specific feature that has changed, and a short description explains how it works.

Just in case users want more detail, Evernote provides a link to the full release notes at the bottom of the “What’s New” checklist.

What makes this really good UX:

• The checklist shows users how many new features have been added. If users don’t explore them all in one sitting, they can come back later and easily see what’s left to review.
• The short tooltip description explains why a feature would be used (“capture thoughts and ideas when inspiration strikes”). By providing a simple use case, Evernote helps improve new feature adoption, giving users a reason to check out the new feature.
• The release notes are divided into New and Fixed categories (with cute little star and tool icons), so that users can quickly differentiate between the changes. Plus, Evernote adds some nice touches of personality within the notes, “because we can all use a little encouragement.”