Improve onboarding in Photoshop for students

Problem Statement Description

Product context: Adobe is a creative, document, and marketing software company; its products include Creative Cloud, Photoshop, Illustrator, Acrobat, Adobe Express, Firefly, and Experience Cloud.

Adobe Photoshop is a powerful creative tool, but students often encounter it for the first time while working under time pressure for class projects, portfolios, social content, clubs, internships, or personal creative work. The product’s depth is a strength, but for new student users it can also create friction: unfamiliar terminology, dense toolbars, blank-canvas anxiety, uncertainty about what workflow to follow, and difficulty connecting Photoshop’s professional capabilities to the outcome they need right now.

Design an improved onboarding experience for students using Photoshop. Focus on how a student moves from first launch or early usage to successfully completing a meaningful first task, building confidence, and understanding when Photoshop is the right tool versus faster or simpler alternatives. The experience should account for different student skill levels, academic and non-academic use cases, and Adobe’s broader strengths in creative workflows, trust, collaboration, and emerging AI-assisted creation.

The scope is the onboarding product experience, not a full redesign of Photoshop. Consider how onboarding appears across desktop and/or web entry points, how it adapts to intent, how it teaches without overwhelming, and how it helps students progress from guided support to independent creation.

The experience should consider:

- Student segments such as complete beginners, design/media students, non-design students, hobbyists, and aspiring professionals

- Key student jobs-to-be-done, including editing an image, making a poster, creating social content, preparing a portfolio asset, or completing a class assignment

- Moments of friction in the first-session workflow, including setup, choosing a starting point, understanding tools, importing assets, using templates, and exporting or submitting work

- How to balance guided learning with creative freedom so onboarding does not feel like a blocker

- How AI-assisted features could help students get started while maintaining transparency, creative control, and trust

- How Photoshop should position its professional depth against simpler tools students may already use

- Accessibility, affordability perception, device constraints, and time pressure common in student environments

- Signals that indicate onboarding is working, such as task completion, confidence, retention, and progression to more advanced workflows

Your goal is to define a student-centered onboarding experience that reduces early confusion, helps users achieve a valuable first outcome, and creates a path toward deeper Photoshop mastery without diluting the product’s professional power.