In Progress Intimation

Online courses are amazing to learn and practice a new skill. Coursera app does a decent job of notifying students of the assignments. At the end of every assignment, some students might get anxious about their results while the grading is still in progress.

Coursera handles this anxiety well by saying, 'Grading in progress'. The wait, although, I hope, is worth it.

Booking Receipts

Travelers requiring a tourist visa know how critical a hotel booking is, yet may not be fully sure where to stay and what to do at the time of visa application. The 'Zero cancellation fee' policy from Booking.com is a big hit with travelers for this reason. 



However, their confirmation receipt lacks one critical information - Name of the guest. I scanned multiple receipts from multiple bookings only to realize that their pdf receipt doesn't have the name of the guest.

An expensive error indeed!

Instant Editing on Mobile Forms

Filling details on mobile forms is daunting, especially if the forms are too lengthy, tiny fonts and the user has fat fingers. In flight booking apps, it can be particularly damaging if a user abandons the flow midway because mobile forms are not friendly.

Turkish Airlines and Ryan Air are sensitive to this fact and provide an ability to add passenger details from phone contact book. 

A wow feature indeed!

Unhelpful Error Messages

Google drops its standards more often than not. Here is one example.

This message tells me, "Cant find a way there". Okay. But, why? I have a strong wi-fi connection. The places are valid. There is a rail system available between my current location and Austin and yet, this error throws up.

While it's easy to get into false blame and tell myself to relaunch the app or retry, that is not the solution at any cost.

Unhelpful messages are just that, UNHELPFUL!

This Seat is Not Available

Many airlines don't allow travelers to select seats after check-in as they prefer auto-allocating seats in a random manner. Few airlines do allow travelers to select seats, but only few are accessible. 

For any seatmap, legends are critical. How far is the seat from the toilet/galley, is this free or chargeable, is this blocked for someone else, is this available, is the seat near the wing or exit row are some questions that pop in the mind especially for frequent travelers.

Suppose, you have clarity and select the seat of your choice, what if you see an error like this:



I tried selecting a seat that was available as per the legend, yet I got this message. If the seat was not available, the legend should be different. If the seat is available, I should be allowed to choose. If it was a chargeable seat and the airline wanted me to buy it, they should have stated their intent.

Its design decisions like these that stop airlines from losing customer service points and potential revenue from a sellable seat.

Information Kiosks at Bus Stops

When you are in a foreign land where a language you don't know is spoken, it's quite hard to use public transport system. Without knowing where to board the bus and where to get off without a bus time table and a working internet connection, it can be traumatic.

The governance in Nice city does a fairly good job in this regard.

The timetable lists the bus number and all the places it takes passengers to along with timings. In a majority of cases, the buses are on time as mentioned in the time table.

In low population countries, it is expensive to run an information kiosk in most cities. Hence, timetables like this can be helpful. Sweden and New Zealand are a step ahead. Every bus stop displays a digital signage which clearly tells what time the next bus will arrive at a particular stop, and where is it heading.

Great thinking around building smart cities!

Time to the gate

When you are at the airport, in one gate, trying to catch a flight from another gate, far far away, it can be quite stressful.While airport signage is helpful to a great extent, some extra signage like this one can be soothing.

This signage tells the traveler where he is right now and how long it would take to go to different gates. Information like this truly serves travelers.

Metrics Gone Wrong?

Metrics are very interesting. No matter what sample size was used for measurement, results seem both interesting and surprising. Take a look at this one:

This survey question has 100% vote. When carefully viewed, its only 1 vote so far. The moment anyone sees this survey and hardly notices the number of votes, it becomes clear that meaningless metrics got their win.

Creepy App Permisions

Users often feel creepy when intrusive permissions are sought. In most situations, users often decline permissions to be on the safer side, thereby missing the benefits one may get.

A permission pop-up from Air India shown above clearly states the category of permission (Location Services), why is the benefit for user if he gave permission and if he is interested to provide permission. 

Users, if well-informed in advance wouldn't mind giving permissions to get personalized attention and services from mobile app players.

Currency Conversions

Currency Conversion tools are helpful for travelers. However, many websites and apps that offer this service either work only with an internet connection or support only select few currencies. I have installed many currency conversion apps and even uninstalled them as I wasn't satisfied.

Elk app is an exception. It is a zero-clutter currency conversion app. Allowing users to use change currency is one thing.

When I launched the app in the Czech Republic, the currency was obviously different. So the app asked me instantaneously to CZK. Although the app asks users to buy the premium version to access many currencies at one shot, it doesn't punish free app users.

The app gives users what they want, exactly when they want it.

Timetables

Flight journeys can be frustrating if you don't know the time for departure or if it has changed. If gate or terminals have changed, travelers have to navigate through couple kilometers depending on airport design. In some scenarios, you reach your gate and see another plane standing there and you keep wondering if that is the right gate indeed. 

Flio airport app is super helpful. If you launch the app in any airport, it provides the timetable for all flights departing/arriving from that airport. 

This feature is particularly helpful for family/friends who come to the airport to receive their kith or kin.

Features as scheduled / estimated times are critical for efficient management of airports and airlines. Have you seen such a feature?

Prices Dropped

Online shopping is a global addiction today. Users with no intention of buying spend hours and days looking at products they like. Alar Kolk, founder of European Innovation Academy once said, "People don't like ads because they are not useful."

What if ads are useful? People would love it?

Chrome browser hooks onto all the shopping websites user window-shops on and notifies price drops information when some of those products become cheaper.

A simple way to sell more!

Cancel Reservation

More often than not, one needs to cancel hotel / Airbnb reservations due to changing plans. Websites or apps serving such customers make it hard to cancel reservations like call a toll-free number, write an email, wait for 3 days etc. Booking.com gives away free cancellations, which is a big hit. Having said that, what if the customer needs to re-schedule the dates, but not cancel entirely.

Airbnb offers a good option to change the reservation dates. 

Offering flexibility during cancellations lead to increased revenues if only, customers' problems were kept in mind.