Tino onboarding improvement

2026

Eight screens between tapping a brand new app and having an account that works. I made four of them compulsory. The other four all carry a close button.1

Role
Product design for the first run experience
Platform
iOS and Android, inside the Tino superapp
Scope
Splash, language, sign-up, the welcome split, and the card prompt
Year
2026
Design file
Tino Phase 2, onboarding

Eight screens

Eight phone screens in two rows of four. Top row: a blue splash with a glass orb, a language sheet in Mongolian, the same sheet in English, and a screen offering log in or register. Bottom row: a sign-up screen with a phone field and social buttons, a welcome sheet asking local or travelling, a card prompt, and the wallet.
The whole first run, reading across the top row then the bottom.

What I fought for is how little of it is compulsory.

The eight steps as a vertical list, with filled dots marking required steps and dashed circles marking optional ones. Splash, language, the log in or register choice and the sign-up screen are required. The local or travelling question and the add card prompt carry close buttons.
Filled dots are compulsory. The dashed ones have a close button in the corner.

Language before anything else

I put the language sheet before the app asks who you are. Six options: Mongolian, English, Chinese, Japanese, Korean and Russian, which is a fair map of who actually lands in Ulaanbaatar and needs a taxi.

The part I care about more than the sheet is the pill. Once you pick, I keep a small flag and code in the top right of every screen that follows, and you can change your mind at any point. Language choice at the door is a trap if it is also a one way door, because the person most likely to pick wrong is the person least able to read their way back out.

The language sheet in Mongolian, headed change language with a subtitle about translating content into your own language. Six rows with flags: Mongolian, English US, China Simplified, Japan, Korea and Russia.
Two language names and four country names, in one list.

Two doors, two promises

A deep blue screen with the Tino orb in the centre, a language pill top right, and two glass cards at the bottom. The first reads log in, and continue right away. The second reads register, in just 2 minutes.
Two cards, and each one carries a cost rather than just a label.

Most apps put Log in and Sign up side by side as equals and leave you to guess which is longer. I made the two cards say. Log in, and continue right away. Register, in just 2 minutes.

That second line is the same promise I put on Tino’s recruitment posters, where the headline is that two minutes is enough.2 Landing it on the actual screen is the point at which marketing stops being marketing and becomes a spec I have to meet.

No password anywhere

The sign-up screen. A heading reading let's get started, one combined field labelled email or phone, a register button, a Face ID button beside it, a recover account link, then register with Apple and register with Google, and a terms of service line at the bottom.
One field, one code, and a Face ID button for people who have been here before.

I took the password out of this flow entirely. One field takes a phone number or an email, a code arrives, and that is the account. No strength meter, no confirm field, no rule about symbols that nobody reads and everybody resents.

Three details I argued for. The single field accepts either input rather than making you pick a tab first. Recover account sits on the register screen, which is exactly where somebody who forgot they already had one will be standing. And consent is by action, worded as agreeing by tapping register, rather than a checkbox nobody has ever read.

Local or travelling

A welcome sheet over a blurred home screen. It reads welcome to Tino, let's get you to right place, then asks are you, with two cards: Local with a house icon, and Traveling with a plane icon, each with a Mongolian subtitle. A sheet reading let's unlock your Tino. Connect your card to unlock tons of services right away, an add card row with Visa and Mastercard logos, then three service icons for taxi, powerbank and eSIM under a line about unlocking the following services.
Both sheets sit over a blurred home screen, so you can see what you are being let into before you agree to anything.

The welcome sheet asks one question. Are you local, or travelling. It is the same split I built into the new tino.mn landing page. I decided the audience divides that way and then held the line across the marketing site and the app, which is rarer than it should be.

Unlock, not set up

The card prompt is the most interesting screen in the flow, because it is the one the business needs most and the user needs least.

I framed it as unlocking rather than setting up. Connect a card, and it names the three things that turns on: taxi, powerbank, eSIM. Not a vague promise of full access. Three icons for three services you can go and use in the next ten minutes.

And it has a close button. The screen that makes the company money is the one screen here you can walk past. That took an argument, and I am glad I had it.

I kept the blurred home behind both sheets on purpose. You can see the grid of services sitting there, slightly out of focus, before you have handed over anything. It is a preview of the thing you are being asked to join.

  1. Design files rather than production screenshots. The balances, names and service icons are placeholder data.
  2. One of the recruitment posters in this set runs the headline that two minutes is all it takes. Same number, different surface, which is the only way a claim like that stays honest.