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“It works better in the app”

shkspr.mobi

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Re: “It works better in the app”

#311

Post by munificent »

The anecdote in the article is at odds with the title.

* In the anecdote, the problem is that the web version works better and the app is missing functionality.

* The title pays reference to an annoying observation about many products where the web version lacks functionality the app has.

Both are frustrating. If a company is going to bother to have both an app and a website, users deserve an experience where both are fully featured. It should be an professional embarrassment for a company to have to route users from the app to the site or vice versa because one is half-baked.

Have some God-damned professional pride and do it right.

Re: “It works better in the app”

#312

Post by wafflemaker »

nunez wrote: post #83
brk wrote: post #9

At this point the barrier for me to install an app is pretty high. If you're going to needlessly gate certain functions behind an app that work on a desktop browser (or could work in-browser), then I just won't use those functions. If by extension that degrades the value I get from your site, then I just won't use the site, and I won't be contributing to ADU stats you promote to advertisers. Every single company has…

100% same. So many apps are just a WebView vessel for Crashlytics and Sentry and Dog knows how much more tracking. (My phone is always VPNed into my home network which has DNS-level ad and tracker blocking. This doesn't cover all the bases though.) Some, like Home Depot, have websites that are terrible and battery-draining enough to make the app nominally useful by comparison.

I didn't want to write in this thread. Complaining is just not good for the person complaining.

But this: >My phone is always VPNed into my home network which has DNS-level ad and tracker blocking. This doesn't cover all the bases though.

Is a great idea for a fun weekend project. Any tips, good practices or things to watch out for when setting it up?

Re: “It works better in the app”

#313

Post by yepyeppers »

leot wrote: post #172
surajrmal wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In some cases it's just because the userbase using the web on their phone instead of the app is incredibly small and it's not worth funding feature parity. It can be difficult to distinguish this case from more hostile takes like reddit and Twitter.

Reddit has started putting up a paywall of sorts to block mobile web users, saying that instead, users should install the app. old.reddit.com remains as an ugly workaround. The whole thing is nuts: 1. All of reddit's content is UGC. They write literally nothing themselves. There's a strong argument that everything there written by unpaid users should be considered a public good. 2. Tech companies are now, ostensibly,…

old.reddit was the only tolerable interface but it is now login-walled too. God forbid you post any comments that deviate even slightly from the Reddit consensus or you will soon find yourself IP-blocked. That’s barely an exaggeration.

Re: “It works better in the app”

#314

Post by edent »

cjrp wrote: post #260
edent wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

NFC reading is one. That's why lots of Governments publish apps - it's a reliable way to check your passport if you need a visa etc. It might be coming to the web - https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/Web_NFC_API

Do they require it though? I've used a few, but it's always been a convenience thing to use the NFC-scanning app; the alternative is just typing in the details manually.

Yes. It offers cryptographic proof that you physically have the passport with you. It also gets a digital copy of the photo and other biometrics held on the NFC chip. From a user point of view it reduces the number of typos entered.

Re: “It works better in the app”

#315

Post by saratogacx »

princevegeta89 wrote: post #220
pj_mukh wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The flip side is: I have an Audioguide app with reams of fancy of AI features. Even a basic non-AI one is we use GPS in the background to auto-trigger when you approach certain checkpoints on your tour, and we don't want you staring or constantly manually fiddling with the phone when you're on a tour in a neighborhood. This is all stuff just not possible with the web app I get it, "I'm just traveling, why do I need t…

The issue is that people often forget to uninstall these apps almost all the time. Apps like Delta, Southwest etc. are the perfect candidate for this. We require something similar to ephemeral apps that exist only for a limited period and automatically get deleted later. If the OS could provide such a feature by default, it would be a blessing. However, this again contradicts the commercial interests of many companie…

My android phone will put apps into "deep sleep" and remove all their permissions if I haven't opened it in a month or so. I just toss travel apps into a folder in my launcher and they are there if I need them but become just a consumer of drive space on their own.

Re: “It works better in the app”

#316

Post by mrec »

GJim wrote: post #290
mrec wrote: post #239

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A small assortment of people that I found interesting/insightful/amusing at some point, plus a few local orgs occasionally announcing things. Why does anything need to be "so important"?

Without wishing to sound trite, what interesting/insightful/amusing people are still on that platform? Ditto local organisations announcing things: are there any respectable originations (such as local government and sports groups) that still wish to be associated with the cesspool Xitter has become?

Aside from the stupid rename, I haven't noticed it become any more of a cesspool than it was before the takeover, and in some ways it's arguably healthier (less echo-chamber-ey, and community notes can be useful). Again, this is purely talking about desktop web and avoiding the algorithmic feed.

I think you're taking a very particular partisan US view and projecting it onto the rest of the world.

Re: “It works better in the app”

#317

Post by neverkn0wsb357 »

Something I didn’t see in the comments is highlighting the actual, very real, fact that the user was incensed by the app.

This is one instance, with one vendor, but our day is made up of thousands of interactions across multiple vendors. And all big (major) vendors seem to have these kinds of issues.

That's a problem because these interactions add up. To the point where I’ve personally been accused of “[liking] being angry”

I’m not sure what the answer is. But for me, I’ve been trying to find and use tools that don’t piss me off, paid or otherwise. So for mail and calendar, for example, I tried out https://www.hey.com/ and it not only does it not piss me off, but I like it for how I use calendar and mail.

I don’t know if anyone here has read Tools for Conviviality by Ivan Illich, but the book comes to mind every time I run into these kinds of frustrating interactions.

Re: “It works better in the app”

#318

Post by gpvos »

brk wrote: post #9

At this point the barrier for me to install an app is pretty high. If you're going to needlessly gate certain functions behind an app that work on a desktop browser (or could work in-browser), then I just won't use those functions. If by extension that degrades the value I get from your site, then I just won't use the site, and I won't be contributing to ADU stats you promote to advertisers. Every single company has…

The problem is that my bank is starting to do this, and for things I actually use. I am considering changing banks because of this, but it's a big step.

Re: “It works better in the app”

#319

Post by vel0city »

goosejuice wrote: post #282
vel0city wrote: post #248

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> owners get analytics They'll get analytics from digital menus regardless of if a QR code is scanned or not. The QR code isn't really making a difference here, other than maybe adding in a specific table ID. > built in table identified ordering...attack vector Oh no, they're going to know table 36 ordered the appetizer sampler and a few beers. The horror. They couldn't have possibly known that before. They're going…

The analytics are very different when you have locality built in. You know exactly how many times your menu was scanned in house.. how long they spent on the page etc has much more meaning. An open website mixes traffic. I'm not promoting QR codes here. When I can avoid them I do. It's just that the incentives for owners and consumers are better with them and that's the challenge. > Oh no, they're going to know table…

Do people actually pay through a QR code through a sticker on the table though? I've never seen that nor would I ever do such a thing, because yeah that's obvious.

I will scan a QR code on a check the waiter printed for me and pay through that.

> You know exactly how many times your menu was scanned in house

The vast majority of the time I've seen a QR code stuck to a table its just goosejuicerestaurant.com/menu or https://taplist.io/demo-brewery on the QR code. About the only real time I've seen otherwise has been McDonalds, but they have raised metallic emblems glued to the table, it would be pretty obvious if it was messed with. And I'm not sure if they're even useful outside of the app.

Re: “It works better in the app”

#320

Post by munificent »

virtyaluk wrote: post #106

I noticed a long time ago that Google apps are designed by people who never actually use them. Here's one example. I'm a big fan of reading, and it happened that I stack dozens and dozens of books on my GDrive, so naturally I use mobile Google Drive to download and send those books to the reader app on my iDevices. Finished books are renamed to have an exclamation mark at the beginning of the file name - that puts th…

I think this is much less about Google developers not using their apps. My experience as a Googler is that people are actually quite good about working on apps they themselves use frequently. "Dogfooding" is a common term around the office.

What I think is going on here is:

* You have some app developers working on an app and caring about its particular user experience.

* Then you have framework UX designers/developers working on new design systems and rolling them out across hundreds of apps.

Those two have limited coordination with each other. So when a new design system like Material drops into every app, unconsidered interactions between the design system and the app's specific UI go sideways and no one is in a good position to notice or address it.

Google certainly takes the blame in this case, but I don't think it's a problem unique to Google either. There is always a tension between wanting a consistent user experience across many products and features and wanting a user experience that makes the most sense for one particular product or feature.

Yes, it's annoying that you can't get to stuff under the plus button. But users really do learn that "oh, the plus button will always be on the bottom right" and that provides real value to them for that to be consistently true across many apps. It makes each app easier to be productive in.

User experience design is hard and I don't think there's a silver bullet, though obviously this case is particularly annoying.

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