GrabPay – pay with Grab Points UX [improvement]

When you frequent a particular shop and become a regular customer, I noticed that often times cashiers start to rely on your (i.e consumer app) payment receipt rather than looking at their own merchant app for a payment confirmation.

So, typically you would scan a merchant QR code at a counter, enter the amount, slide to pay and show the receipt screen to a cashier and go on with your life. Smooth experience, right?

However, there is a slight UX problem when you pay with Grab Points, because the screen looks like this (see below). And when a cashier sees RM 0.00, s/he gets confused. Obviously, for the below transaction I had paid the equivalent of RM 2.85 with my Grab Points.  Continue reading

Waze – Favorite Route

Don’t you hate it when Waze takes you with a new route just because the new route is 1 minute faster than your preferred route?

I wish Waze had a Favorite Route feature where you could set an acceptable set of criteria for it and if the fastest route is not within the set criteria then Favorite Route would be automatically selected.

If you want this feature, please “like” and “retweet” this tweet of mine. Thanks.

GrabCar – the Closest Driver vs Traffic Conditions

I’m a heavy user of GrabCar services. I have been using GrabCar for the past 2-3 years intensively, I mostly use it for transportation purposes to and from the office.

One of the things I noticed while ordering a ride from Grab is that it prioritises your request to the closest drivers around you in distance. This algorithm probably works out fine most of the time for most of the locations, however in some edge cases this can work against a customer in a very negative way. I will give very specific location as an example.

Case Study: Berjaya Times Square

Take the Bukit Bintang area at rush hour, after work, between 6pm – 7:30pm, particularly Berjaya Times Square Mall.

Here is how the traffic conditions look during the rush hour, after office hours. Area shaded in red usually has a terrible traffic congestion during this time. It’s located right across the street, opposite of The Berjaya Times Square Mall.

Continue reading

My Fav iOS Apps (Roundup)

Over the years many apps came and went, but these apps has stood the test of time on my iPhone, some have been longer than others. I thought I would share them with you. I will save you time from the usual social network apps like Facebook and Twitter, so I won’t be including them in this post. I will also save you the long descriptions about the apps, descriptions you can find them in iTunes. Here we go:

AppShopper (free) – be notified about the latest app discounts in the appstore (iTunes)
scr_appshopper Continue reading

Efficient Way to Consume Content on the Web

For the past few months this is how I consume the content on the web and mobile, I primarily use this method to read longer blog posts and articles. I also use it to save articles so that I can read them later.

What’s the current problem?

You would ask “what’s the current problem that it requires this kind of solution?”. Well, the current problem is that there are many great blogs and websites on the web that are simply difficult to read. This could be due to many reasons. Here are some of them:

  • using small font sizes for the content
  • using dark backgrounds behind the content
  • using difficult to read font-styles
  • blog layout is not user-friendly
  • too many ads on the blog
  • etc etc.

The Solution

Solution is a product called Readability that works with your web browsers, smartphones and tablets. Here is how it works.

1. You sign up for an account with Readability and drag the browser bookmarklets to your browser’s toolbar. Bookmarklet works with all the major web browsers. (You can also install Google Chrome extensions)

2. And when you are browsing the web and come across a good blog post or an article that you would like to read..

3. You just press the bookmarklet and it will send that particular page to your Readability account. Google Chrome extension gives you few options when you press the button; Read Now, Read Later, and Send to Kindle. Continue reading

TinEye – Searching for images the other way

tineye.pngTinEye is an image search engine that employs image identification technology rather than keywords – you upload sample image (or give URL of the image) and the search engine will find for you images that has the similar shapes, concepts, characteristics.

The results can be the same image, modified version of the image or a different image altogether as seen below. Also, the naming of the images do not really matter in this case as long as they match in appearance.

tineye_results.png

If you want to see more examples of search results, see cool searches page.

Additionally they have iPhone app which allows you to search for products using your mobile phone’s camera. Just take a picture of the product to start searching for product info and reviews. Cool Stuff!

Website: http://tineye.com