The resume entrance must be findable
Aliases: findable resume · continue application · unfinished-task door
What it is
Progress written to the account still needs a door. A findable resume entrance means that after the interruption, ordinary wayfinding—home, a task list, the page that started the application, mail—can run into “that unfinished one” again, rather than depending on an unsaved wizard URL from the first sitting. Saving answers whether the data is still there. Finding answers whether the person can still recognize the road.
Why it happens
The first-time entrance to a long flow is usually loud: “Start application.” The second time, people are not in a “start” state; they are looking for “mine.” If the entrance still lives only on the marketing page’s primary button, still labelled “Start,” they fear it will overwrite what they have and do not click. The deep link in working memory dies with the tab; the wizard URL in browser history may have expired or been written as a meaningless SPA hash. Without a stable, nameable object (“Zhang’s account opening · unfinished”), resume is luck.
Discovery also has to match where the task came from. An application started from mail should be reachable from that same mail thread or from an in-product application list, not only from a session banner. Banners die with a login; a list is an object. People search for “my applications,” “drafts,” “unfinished.” If the labeling system has none of those words, the entrance does not exist.
Studying it
Have people stop halfway, wait, then start from the product home and find “that unfinished one,” without a deep link supplied by the experimenter.
- Independent variables: entrance location (origin page only / home banner / a list of named objects / mail), button copy (Start / Continue).
- Dependent variables: time to find the entrance, accidental new copies from tapping “Start,” abandonment with “I cannot find last time’s.”
- Methodological note: looking immediately in the same session overestimates the banner, which is still up. Real finding happens after the banner is gone and the person entered from a different door. Do not treat “they received a resume email” as already-findable—also test whether they can get it back from inside the product without opening that mail.
Where it stops holding
If the user explicitly discarded the progress, “not found” is the correct result and the entrance should vanish. When several unfinished copies coexist, the entrance must distinguish objects; a single “continue last time” opens the wrong one. Logged out, there is no account-side object; discovery can only use that browser or a mailed token, and home cannot invent an entrance. A one-shot external form (a survey with a deadline) may live only on the mail link and not as an in-product object, but that mail must still work until the deadline.
Applying it
- Give every unfinished long flow a named record in the product, on a list such as “My applications / Drafts,” and again on the page that originated it, labelled “Continue” not “Start.”
- A home banner is a reminder, not the only entrance; after the banner is dismissed the list item remains.
- Mail reminders carry a deep link and also say which in-product path reaches the same object.
- Verify: stop halfway, sign out, drop the current URL. Find it from home, from the origin page, and without mail. If any path misses, or “Start” opens a blank copy, the entrance is not findable.