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!