Two Opposing Experiences
I just wanted to share a couple of thoughts on user experience as related to Apple this week.
Apple Pay is this week’s buzz, because in case you haven’t heard yet, some businesses will use it and others have said no – placing user experience in the spot light.
Apple Pay intends to streamline the payment process at businesses in a secure and user friendly manner.
The other side of the camp intends to add steps in a less secure payment process while disabling Apple Pay for their customers.
Which side will win? User Experience
Users of Apple Pay are already tweeting their views against the businesses who have disabled Apple Pay from working.
Drove a whole 2 blocks past the CVS to buy at Walgreens with Apple Pay. I didn't really pay attention to drug store brands until now.
— alexlindsay (@alexlindsay) October 28, 2014
Yes Walgreens accepts Apple Pay whereas CVS and Rite Aid do not. The businesses not supporting Apple Pay believe that they can offer a better solution – even if it requires more steps with a phone and is less secure (did you know their solution was already hacked?). Their solution involves more tracking of user data, whereas Apple Pay provides better privacy for user data.
Well, doesn't this inspire confidence. Walgreens, here I come. MT “@panzer: Yep, CurrentC has already been hacked. http://t.co/Zl6BgOjFGl”
— teaneedz (@teaneedz) October 29, 2014
Those opposed to a better user experience will lose. Check out this article:
Apple Pay: Retailers like Walmart will lose using CurrentC.
Apple will win that war.
On the flip side of the coin, Apple has lost sight of the user experience within some of its recent product details. What Apple would never have allowed to see the light of day in the past due to harming its brand image and user experience, it now packages up real nice-and-pretty with hopes that the smell will not bother us too much.
Look no further than Predictive Text. That “feature” that’s supposed to make tapping out text much faster is actually making everyone look more illiterate at a faster rate.
Using this feature requires that we now double check each and every character before tapping on the send icon. With auto correction, it will replace correct words and substitute random gibberish taking up more time and edits.
User Experience is in the details.
The introduction of 3rd-party keyboards has left many of those details up to users to figure out and pull hair over.
Predictive Text and auto-correction can be turned off for Apple’s built in keyboard but this is not always the case for 3rd party keyboards. Many of these keyboards actually do greater harm to Apple’s image than Apple should allow.
Blaming 3rd party keyboard developers is not an acceptable answer either. Apple introduced the feature which allows us to use other keyboards and ultimately should own the user experience for them – if Apple cares about the details. Some, like Minuum use their own form of predictive text which offers an even worse user experience than Apple’s own built in “feature”.
Searching “Predictive Text” on Twitter reveals tweet after tweet of unhappy users. They are not all Android users either.
This is me, running from Predictive Text and hoping that Apple pays better attention to the details that its reputation was built on in the past.
