Pay by Card

Mobile payments are on the rise. Many apps are struggling to customize payment service providers to native mobile apps. 

Take the case of Ryanair. 

Firstly, it gives you an option of Card or Paypal. 

Secondly, it gives you an option to type the card details or use the camera option to scan the card, which in turn automatically pre-fills the card.

Thirdly, it allows you to save the card/paypal details.

What more could one ask for?

Email Activation Messages

Ryanair is one of the top airlines in Europe. Despite its bad reputation with customers, they continue to be profitable for the low cost carrier options they offer to travellers. The email activation message on their mobile app looks cool.

Take a look at the screenshot. It tells you you'll receive an email. It tells you which email id was it sent to. It tells you what they sent. 

If this isn't good enough, what is?

Password Assistance

Passwords can be nasty. You start with typing the simplest password, and each time you are warned with a different error message.

GoDaddy provides the criteria upfront. As you key in the password, it provides real-time feedback if it is accepted or what is missing.

How do you guide users on strong passwords?

Helpful Messaging

Copenhagen Context is a popular conference in Denmark. Speakers and attendees come from across the world to attend this elite conference. 

Just when people started to travel for the conference, the conference team sent out a Weather Report tweet, warning people to pack accordingly. 

A tweetful tweet indeed!

Non-responsive pages on Responsive apps

Mobile web apps claim super-responsive behavior. Apps load web pages in mobile context and expect everything to work magically. In such cases, neither the app team nor the web team takes ownership for the issues, thus leading to incompatibility within the app.

The Nationality field loads very differently, while the checkbox label is truncated. The web team may claim innocence, while app team blames them or vice versa. In either case, it is the job of the entire team to take note and get it to work. The customer doesn't care which team did it. They only care if it works.

What do you care about?

Dear Uber, you are definitely not improving Uber

Uber wants to improve the lives of riders. So, they send one survey every two weeks (or every time the rider hasn't taken a ride, Uber expected them to take. And the survey form looks like this:

I am not happy with Uber because  of - Driver Quality, Issues with payment/fares, High wait times to get a ride, and Surge. 

Uber forces me to choose just one option.

Uber conveniently ignored the Text field for users to give subjective feedback.

Dear Uber, you are definitely not worried about improving Uber.

Are you?

Same Book, Same Address, Overcharged Shipping

Amazon is notorious on developing markets. In India, the strategy started by not charging for shipping. Slowly, they started to charge a small fee for shipping and now, they are charging crazy shipping charges.

I ordered 3 copies of 1 book.  In all probability, same dealer will ship all 3 books. In all practicality, same dealer will ship all 3 books at same time, to same address. And yet, amazon charges Rs. 40/- on each book. 

What happened to common sense at all?

Hold On........... Construction in Progress

I was driving with few friends in Nice, France in a car, blindly following GPS. We went wherever GPS wanted us to go. During the journey, many times, we found roads to be closed, sometimes, even hitting dead ends and taking long roundabouts. 

When we were fed up, we went to Google Maps. Google clearly told us which roads to take and which ones to avoid. The next few weeks, we chucked GPS and used Google.

Thank You Google!

Alerts

Users want multiple touchpoints to track payment related alerts. If you enable such alerts on phone, you may not receive them if you are traveling without internet data. if you enabled email option, you many not view emails at some times. The baseline - enable alerts across multiple touchpoints.

The payment screen above doesn't allow users to enable both email and mobile alerts.

What a shame!

Offering Flexibility

Tourist visas force travelers to book accommodation in advance. Travelers often find this hard as they may need to cancel accommodations due to unforeseen emergencies. Cancellations lead to penalties which no traveler likes to pay for.

Booking.com sees this as a genuine concern for their customers. If travelers book hotels in advance, they offer a Tip - Since your dates are a while from now, pick free cancellation to stay flexible. A change of plans is a breeze when you have free cancellation!

A typical organiation may opt to exclude Free Cancellation feature as it puts a hole in the revenue. But Booking.com believes that this only makes more customers to book often and cancel less often.

Talk about building customer loyalty over years. This is one of them.

Which one are you?

Uber Pool is Not Cool

Uber pools are weird because they offer reasonable prices. Uber makes sure that passengers who pool are punished enough, so they allocate two people far far away for pooling and make them spend 2-3 hours for a 1 hour trip. 

When a passenger complains of long wait+drive times for fellow passengers, Uber sends a smart message.

Hey, we noticed you rated the recent POOL trip low...................In the meantime, enjoy #PaisaVasool fares...........

Is this done? Nope.

Not Found

Search algorithms can be quite funny, unless you are Google.

Kwench mobile app has a huge collection of hindi books. Yet, when a user searches 'Hindi books', the result is: No Results Found.

Can the app do better?

Of course, yes!

Bot is a Bot is a Bot

Bots are capable of doing amazing things like this one:

As you see, the bot added a non-existent item to the shopping list. How could one really order a product titled, Show me my shopping list. 

Bots don't understand the meta layer of commands issued to them. They just understand THE COMMANDS. 

What kind of bots are you building?

Marketing New Features

Product Managers want products to make money. If they have spent a bomb on a brand new feature, they have more pressure to make money quickly.

When you release a new feature, you need to market it well. Goibibo announces new features by using a bright red notification. 

What if people don't use it, even then? They may not use it, but they may learn about it and that is the first step towards people using it. Eventually.

Tiny Icons

Videos are a tricky item on the internet. They are associated with multiple challenges like quality, size, and what not.

Ellen DeGeneres posted a video interview with Kim Kardashian a while ago. Spot the Play icon on the video.

Agreed that clicking anywhere on the picture plays the video. Before that, people need to know its a video. Play icon can do that. 

Does the icon do its job well? May be, not!

Flight Information Display System (FIDS)

You are about to catch a flight.

You are running late.

You are looking for Flight Information Display System (FIDS) to see flight status.

Except that you are at home.

What do you do?

A mobile flight booking app displays flight status on the mobile app, based on three criteria - Schedule, Flight No. and Route.

What more does a user need?

Currency Conversion

You are traveling to a different country.

You want to choose a specific currency.

You know the name of the currency.

You do not know the symbol.

Here is what you see.

How do you choose?

Fare Calendars

Flights fall into expensive travel category in most countries. While searching for flights, travelers expect cheap prices and best offers.

Make My Trip offers Fare Calendar with complete price visibility for each day. Lowest prices are indicated using green color. This helps travelers looking for cheap prices.

Does your product inform travelers about cheaper options?

Flight Maps and Geography Settings

Interactive flight maps are a great way to kill time on long haul flights. Few In Flight Entertainment (IFE) systems can get the geography wrong on the maps. Take a look at this one on Malaysian Airlines.

On the world map, we know that Auckland is far far away from Kuala Lumpur to its right. On this map, representation shows that Kuala Lumpur is to the right of Auckland, and the flight is flying from Auckland to Kuala Lumpur. 

As you might notice, a natural mapping is missing on the interactive map. 

Mapping is a technical term meaning the relationship between two things.

Consider the steering wheel in a car. To turn the car to the right, one turns the steering wheel clockwise (so that its top moves to the right). The mapping is easily learned and always remembered.

Natural mapping takes advantage of physical analogies and cultural standards (Another example - red traffic light means stop; green means go). The human mind is trained for natural mapping. As a result, products, in general, should exploit natural mapping to design enchanted experiences.

Progressive Progress Bars

Progress bars come in different designs. In mobile apps, the demand for progress bars is even high given the short attention span of users.

One mobile app decided to offer 3 progress indicators rolled into one.

A progress bar, a loading icon and a contextual message, 'Sending link...' appear to offer a consolation to the user. Instead, the user is confused with confusing jargon and rolling gif files.

Quoting John Maeda:

"When speeding-up a process is not an option, giving extra care to a customer makes the experience of waiting more tolerable. I appreciate the free cookies and other samples in line at the Whole Foods store during the Thanksgiving season as the checkout queue snakes across the entire store. Saving time is thus the trade-off between the quantitatively fast versus the qualitatively fast."

The focus of loading indicators should be more on the progress rather than making wait times longer and intolerable.