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

10 Steps to Personas

Lene Nielsen, who specializes in Personas has developed a “10 Steps to Personas” methodology. Below is an excerpt from her paper. Please follow the source link to read further, it’s worth to read.

The persona method has developed from being a method for IT system development to being used in many other contexts, including development of products, marketing, planning of communication, and service design. Despite the fact that the method has existed since the late 1990s, there is still no clear definition of what the method encompasses. Common understanding is that the persona is a description of a fictitious person, but whether this description is based on assumptions or data is not clear, and opinions also differ on what the persona description should cover. Furthermore, there is no agreement on the benefits of the method in the design process; the benefits are seen as ranging from increasing the focus on users and their needs, to being an effective communication tool, to having direct design influence, such as leading to better design decisions and defining the product’s feature set.

A persona is not the same as an archetype or a person. The special aspect of a persona description is that you do not look at the entire person, but use the area of focus or domain you are working within as a lens to highlight the relevant attitudes and the specific context associated with the area of work.source.

10stepstopersonas

Download PDF from personas.dk