I've never liked those "focus hijacking guided tours" and never really followed through any such onboarding process.

But they are so common, i don't know who designs them and makes me feel like 5yo.

You gotta understand, people will use the product you made, in a way that makes sense to them, not according to your devised "one way". And that's fine because it allows user to own his workflow using your product.

I like the "checklist" and "load sample data" approach better.

This is primary reason perhaps why my apps are growing fast.

>> But they are so common, i don't know who designs them and makes me feel like 5yo.

Often these are the product managers building follow-on features that don't get the usage they want. Users aren't using them, but monthly usage is the currency of so much PM work that they have to try to draw attention to it.