Teaching should be re-triggerable by the user

What it is

The product’s guess about “whether and when to teach” will be wrong: launch was skipped, attention was elsewhere, the device changed, three months passed. Teaching must be openable on demand—a gesture page in Help, “show gestures” in Settings, “demo once” on an empty state. Timing cannot live only in the first-run state machine.

Why it happens

The first-run judgement is one-way: seen or succeeded, never play again. Forgetting, a shared device, and a changed meaning all stale that bit. Retrievable teaching returns timing to the person: they press at the moment motive exists, so situation and goal line up again. That is not the system automatically blocking them—automatic replay is unsolicited; retrievable is request-driven. A help page also temporarily turns recall into recognition (the diagram is in view).

Studying it

Among people who learned, then waited weeks, compare “nowhere to look” versus “a gesture diagram in Help” on re-success. Record whether they can find the door. A door three settings deep counts as failure. Do not test re-triggering on people who have never seen the gesture—that is discoverability.

Where it stops holding

Auto-playing every launch is not retrievable; it is repeated interruption. Safety teaching may be forced, but should still be re-readable in Settings. Re-teaching of system gestures lives in system Settings; the app should not ship a wrong finger drawing. Retriggerability is who owns timing, not which beat a hint should appear on.

Applying it

• Put a “gesture guide” in Help or Settings, with object screenshots, and a jump from that page to a real object that can be practised.
• On the first hint, say that it can be found later in Help, and name the path.
• Ask a several-weeks-idle user to “remind me how to zoom one-handed”: if they have to search the public web, the door is missing.

Related

• Same group: C3.32.1 First-launch teaching happens before motive, so little is retained · C3.32.2 Contextual hints should appear at the moment of need · C3.32.3 After one successful gesture, do not repeat the same hint
• Adjacent: C3.21 Gesture memory load · C3.20 Gesture discoverability
• Search: retrievable help · gesture cheat sheet · retraining