Long time readers will know I used to work in the mobile industry. I used to blog about all the crappy things that customers experienced. Well, I’m back, with a doozey! I decided to sign a new contract with Virgin Mobile. After a brief chat with customer services, I agreed a contract for two new…
Continue reading →I have a lot of smarthome gadgets – but my favourite is the Tado° Thermostat. I think it might be the most boring gadget I’ve ever used – and that’s why I love it! We spend far too much time staring at our screens. We obsessively tend to our digital gardens and rarely spend the…
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I’ve started using BitWarden – the open source password manager. As I’ve been binge-watching Marie Kondo, I thought it was about time that I deleted all the accounts that I no longer user. I got rid of dozens related to previous employers. I hope the passwords wouldn’t work after I left but 🤷♂️. I scanned…
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Back when I used to help people design mobile phone apps, I would talk about the platonic ideal of an app. It’s quite simple and effective. You press the button in the middle of your screen – and it makes everything better! You push that button and a taxi arrives, or a pizza is delivered,…
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Twenty One. I have 21 accounts which use Two-Factor Authentication. I use the Authy app to manage them all, but it is still a pain to scroll through and find the exact 2FA token I need. Encouraged by my friend Tom Morris’s blog post, I picked up a YubiKey NEO for £50. It implements the…
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I’m incredibly disappointed with “Doctor” Emmett Brown. His forays into time-travel could have extremely profound consequences for the space/time continuum. Worse than that, his time machine has a crap user interface. In this clip from “Back To The Future” we get a brief glimpse at the controls for setting the destination date: Ok, we can…
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I don’t get Google. I really don’t. Some of my smartest friends work there – and yet, as an organisation, Google continually demonstrates an imbecilic attitude to quality. I’ve already shared some of my thoughts on Android 5.0 Lollipop – it’s slow, buggy, and shows that Google either doesn’t bother with testing, or simply doesn’t…
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Having recently moved house, I have become very aware of which companies have modern back end systems. The most top-notch ones let me log on to their website, fill in a form, and all the address changes are made. A few required me to ring up and speak to a human being, which was a…
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For the last few months, I’ve been curating a Tumblr of a very specific annoyance. I’ll let Aral Balkan take credit for inspiring me. Any modal message—full-screen or alert—that interrupts user flow to ask them to download your app suffers from #doorslam #ux antipattern. — Aral Balkan (@aral) May 20, 2012 First, a quick definition:…
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I’ve been a big fan of Ovo Energy since switching to them last year. They email me a PDF statement, pay me 3% interest on any overpayments, and have their call centre waiting times displayed prominently on their homepage. So, when they announced their new app, I was expecting something a little bit special. And…
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