One thing at a time
Introducing a new fortnightly series — One thing at a time (OTAT).
Think of ‘one thing at a time’ as a bite-sized modification to a platform, to heighten the user experience. We at Sparklin shall sincerely try to share OTAT one Thursday a fortnight.
There will not be a major change to the platforms but possibly a single element that can be introduced, changed, moved or altered, to improve the overall UX.
We’ll keep updating this post with more OTATs as they go live. You might also want to check the UX tips we share every Tuesday.
FYI, we have multiple OTATs out already, discussed in detail further below👇🏼
1. Uber 🚕
2. Swiggy 🍳
3. Apple Music 🎧
4. Whatsapp 💬
5. Twitter 🐦
6. YouTube 👀
7. Google Sheets 🧮
8. Zomato 🍳
9. Slack 💬
10. Flipkart 🛍
11. Instagram 📸
12. Linkedin 💼
13. Apple Dialer 🤙🏼
14. Spotify 🎧
15. Airbnb 🧳
16. Facebook 👭
17. Tinder 🔥
18. Prime Video (Amazon) 🍿
19. Gmail 📮
20. Netflix 🍿
21. Google Play Store 📱
22. Google Pay 💸
23. WhatsApp🧹
24. YouTube 🎧
25. Figma 🧑🎨
26. Amazon 🛒
27. Apple Photos 🤳
28. Zoom 🧑💻
28. Zoom — Share screen with confidence
23 December 2021
When Eric Yuan left Cisco to create a new web conferencing product, he didn’t foresee two too-grand-to-believe kinds of things.
- A pandemic almost choking the world of its possibilities in 2020, will make a product launched in 2013, to skyrocket and become a critical part of every workplace, educational institution and friend circle.
- People will live in eternal dread, not just of this pandemic, but of exposing too much of their personal lives on this newly introduced video conferencing product.
The Covid-19 pandemic has made remote working a rather common and acceptable possibility than earlier. And Eric Yuan’s brainchild, Zoom, has made it normal to be in a meeting with the CEO of the company, right from your bed, while rubbing your eyes and wearing clothes that you might never wear outside the unseen comfort of your house 🏠
You may now carry your work anywhere — to your kitchen, living room, balcony, friend’s place, your hometown, a beach shack, or a hill-stationed villa,
But work from home (read: anywhere) has taught the remote workforce to put their best foot forward. Zoom calls are now automatically set up in the prettiest corner of our house. All necessary arrangements are made in advance to make sure that parents don’t pass through in the background or scream their heart out, while the call is on 🧑💻
Everything is perfect! Except, of course, that dreadful screen-share button on Zoom.
https://twitter.com/joeyabanks/status/1457768128583192578
A usual day at work can lead to some 27 different applications open on your desktop. A click on the green share screen button pulls up a modal window with tiny thumbnails of 15 of those 27, which look indistinguishable from each other.
This makes the process of sharing screens extremely strenuous and overwhelming.
Not anyone’s ideal situation.
We do not have a solution for the 27 open application windows (we might have the reason though) but we might have found a nifty little trick to make your Zoom screen-share experience more ‘live, laugh, love’ and less ‘fighting for your life’.
Icon do it
The biggest challenge with the screen-share model of Zoom is that it presents you with miniature, non-recognisable versions of individual screens. These thumbnails often end up looking similar to each other, as a lot of commonly-used softwares have similar-looking interfaces, making it difficult to separate one screen from another.
But one thing that is distinct to each and every software, is that all of them have different and unique icons. Hence, if these screens are accompanied with the icons of their respective softwares, they will become much more distinguishable and easier on the eyes of the user.
To discover these applications, you may also use another possibility, your old friend — a search bar. You can type the name of the application that you need to present on Zoom, and the search bar filters it out for you, amongst all the other open application screens.
This micro-addition decreases the amount of time it takes to find an app screen while reducing the cognitive load on the user.
We hope in its run to create the future and introduce AI, Zoom can make this tiny change and give us a future of smoother screen-sharing experience.
27. Apple Photos — The best tag you never had
2 November 2021
Humans are reminiscent of their past — their favourite vacation, trip, trek, date and conversation. We take pictures of everything, just so we can revisit them sometime in the future. No meal is complete without a picture, no trip is successful without a sunset shot, and your gym visit doesn’t count unless you click a picture and post it on social media 👀
With the advent of smartphones and the incessant need to take pictures of everything — Rise Above Research predicts that by the time this year ends — which is in 58 days — the global number of images taken in 2021 should be at 1.4 trillion 🤯
So it’s official — we have way too many pictures on our phones. And this isn’t without challenges of its own. Try searching for that aesthetically pleasing photo you took with your best friends on a boat at Niagara Falls. The task in itself is extremely daunting.
Fortunately, Apple Photos is intuitive. Looking for specific photos is easier than ever with the search feature.
From letting you search for specific people or objects in pictures to presenting you with relevant memories when the time is right, Apple Photos does it all.
Try searching for ‘waterfall’, ‘scenery’ or ‘your best friend’s name’, and you will find what you were looking for.
Apple Photos uses on-device machine learning to scan all your pictures & videos, identify people, and tag them. This helps you to find specific people, places and events.
Moreover, the Memories feature in Apple Photos intelligently curates your photos, thus allowing you to relive and rediscover the best moments 🙌
Although, what happens when AI fails to tag a person for you? Will the picture ever show up in your memory? We think not.
You see, AI can only do so much. There are multiple occasions where AI fails to recognise a person. Even the smartest of technologies can’t recognise a distorted face.
No matter how intelligent, expensive or intuitive your phone is — it’s not magic! The light, rain, poor quality or photo-bombers are bound to ruin most of your pictures when you are having a good time 🥺
If you like it, then you should’ve put a ̶r̶i̶n̶g̶ tag on it
To enhance the process of rediscovery, we want to make a simple addition — a ‘+’ button that manually lets you tag people in Apple Photos.
All you have to do once you open a picture is click on the ‘+’ button in the bottom left corner of your photo. When you do that, it’ll show you all the recognised faces.
Your task is to select the unrecognised face and click on ‘Tag with Name’ — this will further take you to your contact list. Select a contact, and voila!
This system will aid discovery, along with helping the machine/AI learn who a face belongs to. Hence, the next time it will automatically tag the ‘unrecognised face’ in pictures it earlier couldn’t.
The next time you try and look for not-so-specific pictures of a specific someone, Apple Photos has you covered!
This really is the OTATiest of all OTATs, huh? One thing. One button. One addition. One solution 😬
26. Amazon—The prime of gifting
22 October 2021
Finding the perfect gift is no easy task.
You spend countless hours and days looking for that one perfect gift. A gift you know will bring immeasurable joy to your loved ones and make their day a thousand times better.
After what seemed like years of finding it, Amazon came to your rescue! You’ve found it, and you’ve decided, ‘this is it.’
Once you’ve selected the right gift — the next natural step in this process is to place the order ASAP.
You’re all set to place the order, and everything is sunshine and rainbows until you have to enter the receiver’s address…and the address is nowhere to be found.
Don’t look at us funnily right now; these things happen 😢
Sending gifts is not contained to just your family and friends — who you can quickly ring up and ask for the address. You’d want to give gifts to a friend you made on Instagram, a colleague you haven’t been able to meet because of the pandemic, or a care package to your love.
Let us take you through an ULTRA REAL life scenario. When it’s about gifting things to colleagues — we have a resident book gifter here at Sparklin 😋
Our chief, Himanshu, is obsessed with books — he loves reading and writing them. But most of all, he loves gifting them!
In this case, let’s say Himanshu wanted to send ‘The Perennial Seller’ to a Sparkler who has recently joined the organization. Here, he’ll have to contact HR (a third person) for the Sparkler’s address. He has to do this every time he wants to send a book to someone for the first time.
The prime solution to all your gifting problems
So, to ensure that there is smooth delivery of the gift, a smarter solution would be:
The option to send a link of the ‘pre-purchased’ product to the receiver to fill in the address 🤯
Here’s how it’ll work — Himanshu will purchase a book and then send across the link for this pre-purchased book to the receiver.
All the receiver has to do is fill in their address and then wait for the book to show up 🤷🏻♀️
The process earlier was a recipe for disaster. Sending a book to someone whose address Himanshu doesn’t have is nothing short of crossing two mountains and three rivers to get the book to the person — intact and alive.
The only two options he really has are:
- Ask the person he wants to send a book to
- Involve a third person for no reason whatsoever
When you compare the older process to the solution we’ve proposed, you’ll see that the solution we’re suggesting is just one click and one swipe!
Here’s how it’ll work — Himanshu will purchase a book and then send across the link for this pre-purchased book to the receiver.
All the receiver has to do is fill in their address and then wait for the book to show up 🤷🏻♀️
The process earlier was a recipe for disaster. Sending a book to someone whose address Himanshu doesn’t have is nothing short of crossing two mountains and three rivers to get the book to the person — intact and alive.
The only two options he really has are:
- Ask the person he wants to send a book to
- Involve a third person for no reason whatsoever
When you compare the older process to the solution we’ve proposed, you’ll see that the solution we’re suggesting is just one click and one swipe!
Now, Himanshu doesn’t have to go through an arduous process every time he wants to send a book to someone new or someone whose address he doesn’t have. He can get back to being a full-time book Santa.
And the next time you want to send your Instagram bestie a gift they’ll never forget, a pre-purchased gift is the way to go! 😌
25. Figma —Far from typos
20 September 2021
Figma has become one of the most popular intuitive design tools and every creator’s favourite. We ran a keyword search on Twitter to know what people had to say about Figma, and well:
Figma, launched in December 2015, has acquired over 4M registered users in less than six years. It is used by companies of all shapes and sizes, such as Airbnb, Twitter, Google, and Goldman Sachs and more.
Figma supports end-to-end design processes and is not only used by designers but by people from all kinds of professions. Whether you are making wireframes, animating, designing a façade, sharing what you create with the Figma community or just commenting on a visual — Figma is one powerful platform that does it all 🤯
But, with great power comes great responsibility 🕷
‘No matter how hard I try…typos…happen.’
Think of a near-perfect design. The layout is well structured, and the visuals are stunning — everything’s exactly how it should be. But wait, something can come and haunt you. 👀
Figured it out yet? No? Recheck the spelling of ‘Innovaters.’
No matter how delightful and stunning your design is — one spelling mistake, fondly called a typo, in your design and you’ve opened the floor wide open to trolls and haters ☹️
When you’re working on Figma, and you’ve lost yourself in the process, it’s more than easy to make these errors — unintentionally.
Sure, some plugins already exist to keep the ghost of typos away from your designed life, like SPELL, Spellchecker and more. But they are complicated to use — either they’re challenging to make sense of in the first place or are just dead slow. Moreover, no plugin pinpoints precisely where the spelling error is, and suggestions seem like a far-fetched dream 🥲
Your friendly neighbourhood native spell-checker 😬
What we’re proposing is to introduce a native spell-checker in Figma. Yes, that’s it!
Can you imagine how easy your life as a designer would be with this one basic addition? 🤩
A simple button activates the spell-checker, which runs through all the frames in your file, and points out EXACTLY where the spelling errors are.
Essentially a built-in spell check feature doing the job of the so-called grammar police.
When you right-click on the error line, it’ll show you the correct spellings.
Sounds easy enough, yes?
Trust us; we’re not the only ones who need it.
The day this solution is made live: Copywriters will rejoice, developers will jump in joy, users will breathe a sigh of relief, and you, our dear readers, will read error-free content 😋
P.S. all the errors in this OTAT are intentional.
We know how to spell ‘aboot’, ‘outlendish’ and ‘wo’nt’ xD.
Bonus: Here’s our writer’s favourite Ross explaining the difference between ‘You’re’ and ‘Your.’
24. YouTube — Lost in playlists
3 September 2021
On a cold winter Valentine’s Day, in 2005 — the co-founders of YouTube — Steve Chen, Chad Hurley, and Jawed Karim, incorporated YouTube as a dating site. Yep, you read it right. No, we’re not kidding. YouTube was supposed to be a dating site. To them, dating was the obvious choice, complete with the slogan: “Tune in, Hook up.” 😳
It is safe to say that the plan did not come to fruition.
Now, as a platform used by approximately 2.3 billion users worldwide, a lot of YouTube’s success can be attributed to Google. Since Google acquired the platform in 2006, it has changed its business model entirely.
Today, YouTube’s functionality is synonymous with Google’s.
Every time you have a doubt — you YouTube it!
Want to know how to fix a puncture? — youTube
Want to know the easiest way to make butter chicken? — YouTube to the rescue!
Want to see edits of your favourite TV show ship? — just YouTube it, ya!! 👀
Every question that you possibly have — YouTube will answer it. 🔍
Nothing is holdin’ me back — from making playlists
YouTube has a variety of features to offer. Right from a community tab that lets creators interact with their subscribers to liking or commenting on videos to making playlists of your favourite songs.
Finding a song on YouTube isn’t the problem, but we are dutifully precise about the artists and the songs we listen to when it comes to music. One search, and you’ll get at least a million options for the same. It starts getting painful when you prefer one version over the rest.
For instance, I don’t want to listen to “a song by Shawn Mendes from his self-titled album”. I want to listen to “Shawn Mendes performing ‘Fallin’ All In You’ live at the Sziget Festival in 2018.”
When you finally find something you like, your first instinct is to save it for later or add it to a playlist.
P.S. You can make playlists for every musical need — from missing your boo to wanting to really-but-not-actually murder someone. Or a playlist that is a compilation of songs by your favourite artist. Yes, that too!
And before you know it, you’ve made a dozen playlists, with 500 odd songs each.
Days pass by, your playlists await, and on an oddly bright, randomly-picked-by-the-universe day, your mood is back — to listen to Shawn Mendes performing ‘Fallin’ All In You’ live at the Sziget Festival. You smile because the playlist was freshly minted just a couple of days ago! The very next moment, though, your eyes pop. Your playlist has a random sequence of 500 songs, after all. Happy browsing the playlist!
Summer of Search
We’re essentially suggesting adding a simple & basic ‘search’ feature to YouTube playlists. Hi, Google. Yeah, search, playlist search!
So the next time you want to look for that one version of Shawn Mendes’ ‘Fallin’ All In You’ that sits comfortably amongst a swarm of songs that you handpicked to create your very own, one of its kind playlist, you won’t have to spend minutes browsing the lengths and breadths of your creative creation.
Okay, here’s how the search feature in YouTube playlists will work!
Once you’ve created a playlist (with a bizarrely high number of songs), you don’t have to worry about getting lost in this sea of songs. One quick search within the playlist, and bam — even the most obscure version of a song that you’ve saved will be available in an instant!
Here’s what your screen will look like:
That’ll help you save up on time and energy — while helping your mood stay untouched. 🤭
Happy searching, I guess?
And off I go, to my date with one of my favourite Shawn Mendes songs!
23. Whatsapp—Groups that vanish forever
19 August 2021
In the simpler times of BBM (remember, Blackberry?), WhatsApp was launched as an ‘iPhone-to-iPhone chat application’. It brought a revolution at that time, with really ‘cool’ features — broadcast, saving messages (until you are back online), automatically identifying your phone contacts which are on the app and more 😱😜
WhatsApp was introduced in 2009 when the world we lived in, was vastly different. Today, twelve years later, the app has all kinds of functionalities, from payments to making 1500 groups to disappearing pictures!
You’d wonder what this ultra-cool, multipurpose app could be missing?! 😮
Well, apart from the obvious, where you can’t send an initial text to someone unless you save their number (we’ve written about that too!) — there’s one thing that haunts us, and every introvert out there.
500 WhatsApp groups, and 500 more that I’m about to create! 👻
The most annoying habit I have, and I’m sure you do too, is this compulsive need to create WhatsApp groups for everything. LITERALLY everything.
It’s your best friend’s birthday? — Make a group.
You want to surprise someone? — Make a group ya!
You want to talk about this cute guy you saw on the flight? — Make a group!!
More often than not, when the birthday is over, or the surprise turned into a shock, because that cute guy is dating your best friend, you forget of this group’s actual existence.
How many of such defunct, unnecessary, and ancient groups are sitting in your Whatsapp right now? 🙄
Evanesco, WhatsApp Groups—Harry Potter style! 🧹😉
Do you know that you can send disappearing pictures on WhatsApp now?
After seeing that, the only question we had was…
……if disappearing pictures are a possibility on WhatsApp, why don’t disappearing groups exist?!
We’re suggesting a simple option to create a group that gets deleted the moment the group’s purpose is served.
Okay, this is how the WhatsApp vanishing group system will work!
While creating the group, you’ll get an option to choose if you want this to be a temporary group or a permanent group.
If you choose to create a temporary group, you’ll simply select the date by when the group’s purpose, or the core event for which the group is getting created, will be concluded.
And voila — it’s done! 😃
Once the date is here, WhatsApp can send a reminder to ONLY the group’s admin that the group will be vanishing on its own. Once the deed is done, the conversation will be archived to the admin’s account.
It’ll save up on time, brainpower, and most of all — defunct garbage in the phone. How cool would that be?! 😎
Happy Vanishing! 👻
22. Google Pay — Make payments faster
5 August 2021
When Google Pay was released in India in August 2018 (previously released as Tez in 2017), no one expected it to blow up as much as it did. 😮 🤯
I mean, think about it. If you haven’t spent the last two years living under a rock (it’s cool even if you have — we’re in the middle of a pandemic, you do you!), but if you haven’t — you know what Google Pay is!
You’ve heard of it, and we guarantee you’ve used it. If you haven’t, what are you waiting for? Yep, we’re singing the Nickelback song! 🤪
(you can learn more about it here — about Google Pay, not the song.)
Digital Transactions are the new normal.
We’re living in a time and age where nothing is as it was before. Many changes have happened — personally, professionally, and globally.
Everyone is trying to figure out what works and what doesn’t. There’s one thing that worked and works — digital transactions! It’s the easiest way to transfer money from one party (that’s what the banks call you) to another — and rightly so.
Google Pay is one app that helps make the process easier for you. All you’ve got to do is look for who you want to transfer the funds to (the party, remember?), enter the amount and put in your secret code — and voila, the money’s in their account. 🤭
Sounds easy? Sure it is. But it’s also quite time-consuming.
How is it time-consuming, you ask? ⏳⁉️
Today, the Google Pay interface looks like this:
Now, there are certain parties or people that you’ll be interacting with regularly on Google Pay — be it your local vendors, your network providers, or your best friend.
When you use an app THAT frequently — and you carry out transactions with the same set of people — daily, weekly, or even quarterly, you’d expect that you could bookmark or favourite these people (or businesses) you interact with regularly — no?
Well, unfortunately, you can’t. Not yet, at least. 👎🙇
You’re one of my favourites!
We’re suggesting a simple addition that helps you bookmark or favourite the people (or businesses) you engage with repeatedly so that you can find them in a jiffy — making the process much more efficient.
Imagine what it would be like — when you’re at the head of the socially distanced queue in a store, trying to make a payment, and you’re done paying instantly! Wow! Or you mean, how? The store’s your favourite! 🥰
Essentially, this one addition will accelerate the process of regular payment via Google Pay, enhance your experience, and make life that much easier.
A minor change, a major, save — how about that?✌️💥
21. Google Play Store — Explore Faster
4 June 2020
If you own a smartphone, you spend a little over 2 hours everyday with just your phone — using the hoard of apps you’ve collected over time.
Google Play Store, the largest user base for an app store in the world, has over 2.5 billion active users 🤯
Google Play Store has around 300,000 apps with at least 10,000 downloads
The Overwhelming Store
Google Play Store throws nothing less than 100s of app choices on a generic exploration. How is a user expected to decide the best apps to download?
Of course, we are not talking about a user with a specific app in mind to download — Amazon, Zoom, Facebook, Twitter etc. We are focusing on the maximum use case — Explorers 🎖🙇
The 4 ways for an Explorer to be influenced to download an app are:
- Search a keyword (best racing game, coronavirus apps etc)
- Recommended and suggested apps based on past activities
- The categories and top lists (Grossing, Trending, Free and Paid)
- And how can we not mention — advertising
Apart from this exploration, understanding the actual usage or relevance of an app needs a considerably high effort & time. Why you ask?! 🤔
Each app requires you have to visit their showcase page to know further about the app. Naturally, the back and forth is painstaking 😰
Is there an easier way?
The smoother exploration
Let’s first understand the basics of app exploration. A few elements in the detailed section of an app, such as ‘description’ are usually ignored by the user. Visuals are the most enticing and in some cases, the most informational elements. Hence, most app developers focus mainly to communicate through screenshots.
Other decision-helping elements at this stage include ratings, number of downloads, and in some cases, size of the app.
What if a simple gesture, of touch and hold, could easily show these elements including the screenshots, in a preview?
The time spent by a user while exploring multiple apps gets reduced through this one basic change. It also facilitates an easier discovery of apps.
Why not make the experience perceivably better and smoother, and app discovery a lot faster?
This works wonders for apps, and and Google Play Store 📱🤟🏼
20. Netflix — watch with the world
12 Sep 2019
Netflix was launched on April 14, 1998, as the world’s first online DVD rental portal. It had all 925 titles — the entire collection of DVDs in print in 1998.
After delivering their billionth DVD, Netflix began to move away from its original core business model of supplying rented DVDs, by introducing video on demand via the Internet.
Clever move, wasn’t it? 😇
Netflix recommends
Netflix is not a platform with great customization options. Most of the movies and TV series they suggest are from their backend AI algorithms.
There are rows of recommendations, based on your individual watching pattern. For instance, if you recently watched 2001: A Space Odyssey and A Clockwork Orange, there is a higher likelihood of Stanley Kubrick movies to show up in multiple rows of recommendations. The Shining will be one of the recommendations! You might also be recommended to watch more of sci-fi movies by Netflix.
Basically, you will watch what Netflix recommends 🙇♂️
Unless of course, you can go outside Netflix and search for different recommendations. There are enough and more blogs about the same. There are a great deal of lists on IMDB, created and populated by the users.
Is that a hint for Netflix? 🤩
Create, share and find customised lists
Customized (user-generated) list, is a concept usually associated with music apps, also known as ‘Playlists’. Netflix may take the hint!
Allow users to create their customized list of movies and TV series. These lists, if made public, are available for everyone to browse and use.
This one addition could change the way we consume content on Netflix, drastically. You would be able to find customized lists created by your favourite celebs, reviewers, influencers, friends and of course, family. The share-worthiness, the engagement and an overall community aspect will hit an all-time high.
Essentially, this gives users a sense of control, and an opportunity to part-take in the Netflix experience, on top of the algorithms.
Let’s revolutionise content watching on Netflix and take control, shall we? 😉
19. Gmail— manage subscriptions better
29 Aug 2019
Gmail was a Skunkworks project for most of its development. It was kept a secret even from Google employees. According to Kevin Fox, Gmail interface designer, it wasn’t a guaranteed launch.
Gmail has over 1.5 billion active users today! It is a virtual storehouse for most of its users. The bank accounts, social media profiles, newsletters, e-commerce accounts etc. are all associated with your Gmail account.
An overwhelming clutter
A typical Gmail user has thousands of emails — most of them are unread. I must have missed countless important messages because of the sheer amount of emails I receive in my Gmail account. Have you?
This burdening number of emails introduce the phenomena of Overchoice 🤯
It is a cognitive process in which people find it difficult to make a decision when faced with many options. The options in this case being the emails. It’s difficult to segregate the worthy ones from the junk.
How does a Gmail account get as many emails?
Usually, it happens when you sign up for a certain email list — usually while looking for a free ebook, software trials, online shopping etc. Post the email lists sign up, their emails start piling up in your inbox with the drip email marketing campaigns.
A few months and hundreds of signups later, you have a terrifying number of emails in your inbox!
Thanks to this terror, I have almost given up on using my Gmail account. I don’t really check the mails unless absolutely necessary 🙄
Let’s end this terror
The simplest way to clean-up a Gmail account is to unsubscribe from all the unnecessary subscriptions. It stops these mails in the future for good.
Google doesn’t provide a tab of subscriptions one has opted for, to help this unsubscribe-process. But what if it did? 😎
The tab eases access to subscriptions emails and thus, unsubscribing painless. You may select multiple (subscription) emails with an option to unsubscribe.
Such a tab will not only save time but it may increase the engagement for Gmail. Happy zero-inbox, you all! 🙌
18. Prime Video (Amazon) — show what you search
15 Aug 2019
Prime Video experience is anything but amazing. It differs in style, usability and experience patterns from one device to another. The best experience of course, is with Amazon’s Fire Stick but that’s nothing great either 🤫
If you check a simple comparison online, Prime Video would succeed purely on the basis of its pricing. Good strategy! In fact, if you ask a typical user, Prime Video comes free with the Amazon Prime as a package. The perceived value would thus be not too high.
With premium positioning, great content and an amazing user experience, Netflix has been ruling the charts. Others players like Hulu, Disney and now Apple TV+ are close runner-ups.
The perception is changing though. There are many great exclusive TV series and movies on Prime Video that people really enjoy.
I’m not a fan of the Amazon’s Prime Video interface. Are you? 🤥
It’s simple nonetheless, and with IMDB ratings for every show and movie, it has one good element for discovery. Is that enough?
Searching on Prime Video is a highly unsatisfactory experience! 😤
Tried the search on Prime?
Borrowing from Google’s search-suggestions, Prime offers suggestions as you type. Though it goes a little too far to be a Google replica. All the suggestions are textual 🤦🏼♂️
Textual response takes time. However, it takes 400–500 milliseconds (1 millisecond = 0.001 seconds) on average to respond to something visual.
What if the search suggestions had an additional visual thumbnail?
Would it affect your response and engagement?
It is believed that there are two types of users for platforms like Netflix and Prime Video — explorers and watchers.
Watchers know exactly what they want to watch and Explorers are keen to look for something new. Either way a visual thumbnail makes it an easier experience to find the content they want 😃
As an addition, we could also throw in a bonus dose of information like when was the movie/show released — the year, and perhaps, its duration as well.
This major visual addition (coupled with bonus info) not only assists with better decision-making, it also makes the app more visually appealing, increasing the engagement from both the ends 🔥
For an app that’s built around show business, showing a simple thumbnail can make a user engage better with its content. If it also helps you differentiate between a movie or a series just by looking at its poster (thumbnail), we are taking the experience way ahead.
Enough of this! What’re you watching today?! 🍿
17. Tinder — exceptional matches for you
1 Aug 2019
For something that was launched just 7 years ago, being present in 196 countries, and getting a whopping 1.6 billion swipes a day must be a marvellous feat. Rightly so, the business of love, as they say, makes everyone it touches, marvel with excitement.
The Tinder-less life
Right swipe. Left swipe. Super like. Boost. Rewind — the basic functionalities of the app have made it easier for people to discover each other for dating.
Pre-Tinder, singles would usually met through their family & friends. Just sometimes, they’d go online and use the social networks, from the Orkuts of the worlds to Facebooks. There is a good chance that without a platform like Tinder, the biggest network of Singles, some of them would have never met each other.
For an app used by over 50 million people, the best way to filter amongst a hoard of matches is just location, gender preference and age. Yeah, that’s pretty much it. And people have become a little too creative, and at the same time, absolutely selective about the kind of profiles they want to encounter. It’s not uncommon to come across profiles with…
- Scarlett Johansson photos 😍… really?
- Stating ‘Not here for hookups’ 😜
You know what, me neither but you don’t have to write that. - ‘Apple freak’ 🍎
Great! Though I like android but I’m not a freak. - Stating ‘Sapiosexual’! 🤥
Most of you don’t even know what it means, bro.
Why go for it just because it’s a trend?! - ‘I’m married’ 👪
All right then!
In some cases, your name could do the trick. Your name’s David?! Well, so was my ex-bf’s and he was the meanest jerk I ever came across. Call me an idiot but I’m biased against this name.
Can I please not see such profiles? 😤
Seeing the profiles that you want, and not seeing the profiles you would despise could be a far better experience. If only there was a way to do it.
Don’t filter in, filter out people
Give users a way to filter out profiles they don’t want to see — let the users create personalised exceptions.
This not only gives users a better control over the profiles they see, it gives them a more pleasant and fulfilling experience 😇
Essentially, allow users to add words, phrases, interests, names etc to their profile, say a maximum of 5, in the settings. If a profile matches any of the criteria saved in the settings, just remove those profiles from the queue of profiles to be shown to this user.
If you find this feature helpful, let Tinder know, and hopefully, you will find the one you want 😍
16. Facebook — the update you want
18 Jul 2019
Facebook sends about 45–60 billion notifications daily!
On an average, that is around 30–55 notifications each of its 1.49 billion active users daily. That’s enough! 😤
Sending notifications is a neat concept, to retain and hopefully reengage the app users. They are anyhow tailored to a user’s liking in most of the cases.
That’s the good part.
Let’s get to the problem!
I have a decent 500+ friends added on my Facebook account. The number of pages and groups I follow are additional, of course. In all honesty, even with the bombarding notifications, it’s difficult to follow most of the updates.
If you happen to be a Facebook power user, it must get really overwhelming to see all the notifications in just a few hours. Forget days.
Phew!😰
Most of the Facebook notifications aren’t that important. They aren’t urgent either! Think about it!
Hey Facebook, it’s not important for me to see what a random user (I might not even know them in person) has shared on a random group immediately, right?!
It can be fixed.
A simple solution💡
Please just categorise the notifications!
And from thereon, allow users to set up a time for a category of notification. Or mark favourites to the one they want categorised separately. And so on!
It’s not like Facebook doesn’t do it already.
It clubs all the likes for our individual photos in a similar fashion.
A user will be able to scan multiple categories of notifications easily.
For example, after I reach office, I usually check what a specific UX design group has shared. I don’t need to go through all the notifications to see this after the categorisation change. It, in all likelihood, has its own category.
This helps everyone — users like me, the ones with 1000s of friends, and the users handling big and/or multiple pages as well.
However, the default option would still be available for the type of user who doesn’t wish to use categorisation.
Simple and useful!
Hope you don’t need to ‘Clear all’ anymore 😜
15. Airbnb — go by your friends’ suggestions
4 Jul 2019
Home away from home — Airbnb has changed the way we manage our stays in a trip. It’s a decent alternative to hotels for half of its users. That’s huge!😱
What’s so special?
The concept itself is refreshing, and the positioning — a home! Furthermore, the experience is mostly smooth and users claim that finding the right hosts is fairly easy. Did I miss that in most cases, it’s cheaper to Airbnb than hotel?!
I was giving Airbnb a go on worldwide recommendations for Sparklin’s trip to Singapore recently. And I was amazed too! The flow was smooth indeed. And I loved the map view for easier understanding of an alien city. 🗺
In my comparison of different properties, something was amiss. There’s price to accommodate the budgets, map and location to place the property in the city, reviews and ratings too. None of these are personalised though! 🤔
For the amount of digi-social we are, I have no factors from my social circle helping me in selecting a decent place to crash.
Voila — the solution emerged
Show recommendations from your friends — places they have stayed in and recommended, or perhaps just liked. 👍
Login with Facebook comes handy, at points like these.
Most of us are nothing like our friends and yet we still ask for their suggestions, await their affirmations. Think of it as asking your friends about the city they have visited but you’ve never been to. Just that, this is virtual and on Airbnb!
Hope you enjoy your trips a lot more now! 😎
14. Spotify — personalise universal playlists
20 Jun 2019
217 million active users with 100 million paying for Spotify premium as of 29th April 2019! 😲
Listeners consider Spotify as the best platform to listen to basically anything. The thing that made Spotify spread this fast is not just the concept but also its overall user experience. Yup — UX! 🙌🏼
And we at Sparklin decided to discover if we could improve the already loved Spotify app with just one thing 🧐
Yes, we enjoy failing — there’s a lot to learn in failures
Boom — we come across playlists — the popular ones in the genre we like!
Notice the number of followers for any one of them, say 90s Rock Anthems. There are 3,244,592 followers of this playlist alone.
And all 3,244,592 listeners listen to this playlist, just as it’s been created.
Don’t get my point? Let me rephrase!
They all are going to listen to all the tracks, in the same sequence, one after another, without amiss 😲
Of course, you can choose to move to the next track if you don’t like the current one. But hey, it’s all the same. No personalisation?
What’s the solution to no personalisation?
Personalisation.
Give the listener an ability to edit the sequence of tracks as per their liking and exclude the ones they don’t like, from a universal playlist. As a listener, they end up having two versions to listen to — Original & Personal 😎
FYI, this is currently doable in the Spotify app. And as we discovered, it takes a lot many steps and deeper insights to discover this feature.
Turns out we weren’t that far with our experiment. I guess we just ended up creating an obvious version! 😃
13. Apple Dialer — search as you type, anywhere
6 Jun 2019
Apple has a reputation for creating thoughtful & minimal products. Though it’s a great strategy, it leaves an underwhelming experience with some of their products — including Music and Dialer.
We have already tried the OTAT approach once with Apple Music. And till date, we love it! Though Music could take multiple OTATs and yet seem unfinished, we thought we’d attempt one with the Dialer and see how that turns out.
How do you search for a number?
Open the ‘Phone’ app on your iPhone and review the key screens within. Let’s skip the ‘favourites’ and ‘recent’ since you cannot do anything but scroll to find a name to call. Within ‘contacts’, the only apparent way you can search for a number is by typing the name you saved it as.
Did you know that you could also type a set of digits and possibly search for a name that contains those digits?
But hey!
There’s a catch. You can only search these digits in the beginning of a set. What does that mean?
If I have a number saved like this — 981012345, my search can only begin with ‘9810’. I cannot search for ‘8101’ to find 981012345 😫
Or if I have it saved like 981-012-345 or (981) 012 345, I can search for ‘981’ or ‘012’ or ‘345’ and find the number 😲
Moreover, the default keyboard for searching within my contacts is Alphabets, not digits 🤔
One additional but occasional use case
You meet someone after long, only to get reminded that oh, how is it that we have not exchanged our numbers yet. You open the dialer to add their number as they (standing next to you) start dictating the digits. It takes a dictation of all 10 digits for the dialer to trigger its search and show you that hey, the number’s already saved with you. Oops! 😤
Keypad search is a great space!
The prominent keyboard, and quite a big one at that, is a digit-based keyboard in a dialer.
What if every digit you enter could search through contacts & recently call logs to throw suggestions, with the most relevant one being visible one as a drop-down?
Just this one addition resolves some really interesting use cases. And the search becomes a lot more fluid than mechanical, and relevant! 😃
12. Linkedin — note before connection request
23 May 2019
There must be 100s, if not 1000s, of tweets with people sending a Linkedin connection request, without sharing a relevant note that gives some context to the request.
Worse is that they intended to share a note with the request. But they couldn’t. The option to share the note is not an easy find 😢
The Linkedin Mobile App Flow
On the mobile app, a simple tap on the ‘Connect’ button will send the request, instantly.
Should you wish to attach a note, you will have to browse to the user’s profile, press ‘More…’ menu option. Another section (screen) slides open, and then you may select ‘Personalize invite’ to send a note.
It’s not an easy or intuitive discovery 🤔
The solution is readily available!
Available, you say?
On the desktop.
Simple and easy to share a note, before the request.
Go to the desktop website, try to click on ‘connect’ and you shall see the solution yourself. We are simply requesting a replication on the app 😎
Easy, right?
Hope someone savvy and phenomenal at Linkedin is reading this and introduces this simple change to heighten the experience 🤘🏼
11. Instagram — Stay private, but show off
9 May 2019
What’s your main reason to follow someone on Instagram? List as many as you can on your mobile or a paper next to you.
Amongst the many reasons shared by Insta-lovers, the most vocal reason happens to be the relatability to the content. The second-best is the number of followers the page already has.
A high number of followers is linked to a higher likelihood of the Insta page being awesome. The phenomena of Group Norms and Conformity is critical. It’s also true for other platforms including Twitter.
However, 90% of these followers could be fake.
If you were living under a rock, there are many third-party businesses providing thousands of (fake) followers to add to the conformity, for a small fee.
Essentially, it’s the content that is and should be the decision-making element!
Private accounts have a strange problem
In absence of an outrightly visible stream of content, the decision-making elements for following a private page are the name, display picture, bio and number of followers. None of them are inherently helpful!
Let’s say you again fall for the number of visibly high (fake or not) followers. You request to follow the page — only to get a stream of uninteresting or unrelated content. Unfollowed! 😫
The flip-side?
On the other hand, many accounts are knowingly going private, to avoid fake followers and comments. And also to bring a sense of exclusivity to more targeted and long term followers!
The private accounts are not able to show their content, the real magic-inducing element, to their future followers. Perhaps it reduces the likelihood of having more and engaged followers. Ouch! 🤦🏼♂️
Introducing a promo to the movie on your private Instagram!
Essentially, allow private account users to make some of their posts public. There could be a possible cap on the number of public posts a private account could have. Or may be not!
The private accounts will be able to show some of their posts to potential Followers. It also brings personality to private accounts, which are currently limited to the profile image and the bio at max. Win-win 😃
10. Flipkart — recommendations in an empty cart
25 Apr 2019
Flipkart has a projected 44% e-commerce market share in India, with over 8 million shipments per month as reported on 23 Apr, 2019.
And yet, other e-commerce players, including Amazon & Paytm, seem to be winning the game.
The empty screen — in this case, the cart!
Very recently as part of our year-long series, we shared a design tip related to an empty state screen; to provide the users with a suggestive action on an empty screen to get attention and drive engagement.
The tip is applicable to most of the consumer apps, specially e-commerce.
A single suggestive action is great to engage say, a music app. The primary use of a music app is not to make a direct purchase. It’s mostly run on advertising & membership model. E-commerce apps, on the other hand, are quite different. Each product engagement could mean direct sales 💰
New source of revenue for Flipkart?
Most of the Flipkart users must have used the product for a while now. And more so often, they might encounter the mighty empty cart screen. What if the cart, even though empty, was personalised? 💯
Flipkart can add recommendations to the empty cart screen — of various products, deals, offers, previously looked-at or wish-listed items. This will not only drive more attention and engagement, but boost sales from a screen that served no real purpose before.
With millions of products at disposal, that’s a huge opportunity to tap! 😃
09. Slack — acknowledge the message
11 Apr 2019
Should you search on Twitter — ‘slack read receipts’, you’ll find an amazing bunch of people who are for and against this particular feature.
Is the read receipt needed?
Think of this as a Whatsapp-copy, where the sender is able to check if their message has been read or not. It helps in understanding if the message has been communicated to the recipient.
It sure can improve the discipline in an organisation! However, it may also have not-so-great effects on the organisation’s culture.
That is precisely the reason why Whatsapp introduced the option of turning the read-receipt off.
What’s the need?
We are a small team at Sparklin, and we don’t usually communicate within the team on emails. We prefer ‘quick’ Slack messages.
It is mildly irritating at times when you send a message to a channel, or even to an individual, and you are constantly worried if they have read your message or not. Once the message is Slack-ed, and there is no response within 2 or 3 mins, one either tends to seek a physical acknowledgement or move to other intruding platforms like Whatsapp 😎
Overall, this is one feature that Slack really needs!
Introducing Acknowledgement as a feature 💃
It’s a simple, basic icon-ish button in the form of an eye. A gentle tap on the eye icon shall share an acknowledgement with your colleagues (and seniors) that you have read the message.
The best bit about this feature is that it’s not an automated acknowledgement, unlike Whatsapp. It’s not a read notification! It’s a deliberate acknowledgement. Ease of communication 🙌🏼
P.S. Users on Twitter have already figured a hack for this. Some of us use the ❤ symbol (favourite) in Twitter to share acknowledgement.
08. Zomato — Order for anyone, easily
28 Mar 2019
There are over 21 million orders placed a month through the Zomato app every month as per their official blog post of Oct 2018.
In a survey we conducted in 2018 for another food related platform, most users claimed to have ordered food for someone else other than themselves at least once in 11 orders.
It’s a truly hectic process to handle that one order for someone else!
When the delivery person calls you to ask for direction (another big issue anyhow) when you are not even at the location, you are clueless in most cases. You try to coordinate with the rider as well the person you have ordered for, endlessly till it’s finally delivered. Phew!
Interestingly, many users we surveyed didn’t know that you can manually change the name and phone number (of the person to receive the delivery), other than just the address. If you input a different name and number for say, your friend, they receive an OTP on their phone number to verify (and reduce spamming?!) the number. On placing the order now, the delivery person is able to directly call your friend, instead of calling you.
Ain’t this a little tedious? Too much work? 😢
The feature is great — it solves a lot of back & forth. But needs a better flow & interaction IMHO.
What if we combined the address and your friend’s details?
The app should allow users to create a profile with address, name and phone number. Additionally, you might want to add a nice picture to that profile to make it interesting. And why not?! To order, you may select one of these profiles and voila! 😎
We strongly recommend that Zomato, Swiggy and other similar platforms implement this profile system. This would save a lot of time and frustration!
07. Google Sheets — Highlight for better context
14 Mar 2019
One of the biggest drawback of any spreadsheet is making sense of the content — scanning it takes forever, unless your eyes are like Superman’s.
Most of the time, typical sheets are filled with thousands of rows and columns worth of data. You are either scrolling through the sheet or highlighting the rows/columns by changing their background colour permanently to figure out whether a cell is in the same row/column or not.
Another way to make the scanning easy, without permanently changing the background colour of a row/column, is to select the entire row/column itself.
However, both these methods (permanent background colour change and force-selecting row/column) are slow and tedious. One cannot just move around the cursor or use keyboard up-down-left-right keys to quickly browse through the data for better scanning.
Highlight the cell and respective row & column
The simplest solution is to highlight the row & column of the selected cell. This allows one to easily scan the selected row or column and set the right context because of temporary background colour change, thanks to the additional highlight.
06. YouTube — discover similar channels easily
28 Feb 2019
YouTube is the most downloaded app on the Google Play App store in the world with over 5 billion downloads. Yes, a lot more than Facebook!
And like you, even I was surprised when I read it for the first time.
If you think about it, the app caters to almost all digital citizens of the world. You may type any word and find a video related to it.
The app, design wise, has a lot of room for improvement to heighten its UX to the next level. Since the app already caters to a global audience, the eventual improvements may only make sense for a smaller percentage of their overall audience. And yet, they will be huge!
To tell you the truth, I am not a fan of the YouTube filters.
Channels are one of the best ways to find entertaining content. In most cases, you can find great channels and look for similar ones.
The YouTube desktop platform shows related channels for every channel you visit. You can of course search through a set of good keywords and find some interesting channels but then that’s slow discovery for a worldwide audience.
What if, you could do it from your subscribed channel?!
Show users similar channels…
Once they subscribe to a channel.
And add an icon to discover similar channels when you visit your subscribed channel the next time.
This will allow users to easily discover further channels that are similar to the channel they love.
05. Twitter — Error-free tweets
14 Feb 2019
Twitter might be the most influential social media platform in the market.
The things that get viral on Twitter eventually spread like wildfire.
This time I’m going to be brief because the change I’m going to mention is, if you think about it, a little too obvious. I know Twitter must have a really valid reason for this but it’s my duty to suggest a better experience!
Twitter doesn’t allow you to edit Tweets
And I don’t know why? Today most platforms — Facebook, LinkedIn, and even Slack allow you to edit your posts and comments.
And yet, in 2019, if I wrote a tweet and it has the slightest of an error, I’ve got two options, to ignore or to delete.
I delete! And I rewrite and post the tweet again.
Why can’t I simply edit it?
If Twitter could move beyond just 140 characters and still stay relevant, why not this?
Also, it could also be that Twitter doesn’t want the users to have an indefinite time to edit tweets. Sounds fair — allow users to have about 10 mins to edit the tweets. They may also include the newly introduced “edited” tag 😉
04. WhatsApp — Message Anyone
31 Jan 2019
Which is the most used mobile messenger app worldwide?
WhatsApp!
In Oct 2018, 1.5 billion users were accessing the WhatsApp messenger on a monthly basis.
Are there any problems with WhatsApp?
It’s really hard to think about any, isn’t it?
You can message, voice call, video call, share pics, voice notes and what not. You can share stories (status) without forcing it on someone. You can even create groups for social communication. Now, you can even delete messages, which was not possible earlier.
Here’s the problem — you can’t send the first message to a new number directly. As of now, the first step has to be — add new contact.
Scenario
I ordered my dinner through a food delivery app as usual, last Thursday. The delivery guy must have been new — he could not locate my address and was getting confused. Eventually, he asked me to send him my map location. I thought — sure, that’s super convenient with Whatsapp.
And hell broke loose…
Step 01: Add new contact
Step 02: Tap on the message icon
Step 03: Send WhatsApp location
I deleted his contact information right after sending the message.
I can still see the messages sent to him, in my WhatsApp. I can still send him a message. I’m sure that he didn’t save my number. And yet, he can continue to send me messages.
Solution
Since it’ll be used in exception cases, I don’t think it should be a prominent button. A simple addition of a ‘New Message’ option in the ‘New Chat’ screen will solve the problem.
Pressing the ‘New Message’ option will take you to a screen where you can simply enter a phone number to start a conversation — just as you do in other messaging apps.
03. Apple Music — search within your library
17 Jan 2019
Apple music has multiple ways for music discovery like browse — apple’s collection of music, albums, artists, radio, and the ‘for you’ recommendations.
The most used and the easiest go-to music listening is adding your favs to the music library. I have 732 songs in my library at the moment. How many songs are happily showcased in yours?
Imagine having to look for a song within my library by just browsing!
The option is to search.
But it’s a multi-step, out of context process.
- Tap on Search through the bottom nav
- Tap the search bar
- Select, if not previously selected, the library tab on top
- Type your fav song…
I do like the idea of having a separate search tab in the navigation but the option should also be present in the library itself.
My apprehension
More than the multi-step process, a separate tab in navigation is also a break in my experience. Should you try browsing all the five tabs in the nav, you’ll realise that the search page looks empty. There’s some text as suggestions but no song visuals, in continuation with the other tabs.
I don’t feel at home. I pretty much loose the context within the process.
A pull-to-search at the top of the songs library could fix the problem. Moreover if my searched song is not in my library, that’s a hint for the global search to show up.
02. Swiggy — add an address instantly
03 Jan 2019
How do you feel when you’re at a friend’s home and need to order something from a food delivery app? How much time does it take for you to navigate and find the option to add a new address and then be able to order?
Why does it feel uncomfortable to order food at a new location?
Most of the answers we noted in a recent survey read something like this…
I have been using the app for around 4 years now. I don’t order from my app when visiting my friends because the app does not allow this!
The option exists — just that the users are not as aware of the flow.
There’s another situation — when your family or friends ask you to order for them (at their place) while you are at your office.
They think it’s a hassle and adding addresses should be an important, and visible function.
Let’s fix the flow
A simple way to fix this problem is to introduce the “Add Address” button at the top of the screen. If this is one of the visible functions of the app on the home screen, a lot of people would consider using it.
01. Uber — move the search bar down
20 Dec 2018
Don’t you hate it when you have to pull down your notification tab? An outstretched finger is perhaps the greatest enemy of a good mobile user experience. It makes things even worse when other apps make everything accessible, within the reach of their users’ fingertips.
The easiest way to solve this problem is to bring the most used elements towards a more accessible area of the screen. For obvious reasons, it’s not one-size-fits-all solution. But then, most apps can easily rely on this solution and choose to improve their user experience.
Search is usually found at the top
It actually makes sense because people expect a search bar to be at the top. That’s how the websites have had them since forever, right?!
Things become familiar when used for a significant period of time. The same is the case with Search Bar and the top portion of a screen. But a desktop/laptop versus a smartphone have different dimensions. The way we operate a phone is quite different too. Then why must we move forward with a search-on-top approach on mobile?
Statistically, there are 3 basic ways people hold their phones
- 49% of the users hold their phone with single hand.
- 36% hold the phone with one hand and use the other one to operate the touch screen.
- 15% use the touch screen with both their hands.
Users using smartphones with both the hands may not have a problem reaching the top half of the screen. However, almost 50% of the smartphone users prefer using it with a single hand. And it’s easy for them to reach the bottom half of their screen.
I must have accidentally dropped my phone trying to stretch my fingers to pull down the notification tab many a times.
Let’s talk Uber
It is very easy to book a cab through the app and the overall experience is excellent as well. I have a problem with the Uber app though. I have to use my second hand to hold the phone in order to click the search bar to find the cab. Or may be, it’s just me with my small hands.
Uber is used by around 100 million users.
Objectively speaking, there is no reason for the Uber app to have the search bar at the top half of the screen. I’m ignoring the desktop comparison!
Uber can (should) easily shift the search bar to the bottom half of the screen. This easies people to use the app with one hand, without hampering any of the content or the phone itself.
That’s all folks! See you in two weeks.
And just in case you miss us, we are sharing more about UX, branding and design in general on Sparklin’s social channels.
