Tag Archives: Apps

Dear Grocery Store

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It’s time to enter the 21st-century and provide intelligent search in your stores.

Create an App that is a shopping list that automatically sorts products by the aisle that they are in. Have sensors that the app detects so that once in that isle, you can see right where the product can be found.

Yes, I know you make a lot of extra money selling stuff because people are searching, can’t find their products, and see other products to pick up, but here’s a better way to do it!

You have an extreme amount of data about what people buy together. Instead of relying on them accidentally stumbling upon something as they search, use the data you have:

1. Put things together that people have bought together on their past shopping experiences. There are hundreds of millions of orders you have already tracked on every receipt you’ve ever printed and stored. Yes, that might be challenging for someone who doesn’t use the app, however, you’re going to design the app so that it would be stupid not to use it.

Who knew that people who bought tacos also bought mango curry sauce… you do because the data says so. So, why not put them next to each other in the grocery store?

2. Use the bottom 1/4 of the App to a) suggest related items when an item is added to the list, and b) show related items or data-suggested items while looking for the next item on the list.

3. Personalize suggestions based on individualized purchase history. If someone adds taco shells regularly, remind them about taco shells or salsa the next time they buy ground beef.

4. Make the App features great. Make it ideal for other lists too, make it indispensable. Add features that might suggest other items if you are on a diet. Or let a vegetarian know that a sauce has meat products and suggest another one that doesn’t.

5. Don’t game this too much. We aren’t stupid. If we see that every item you suggest is by Kraft, or we see the same items again and again that your App is pushing to us for advertising kickbacks, we’ll know the App is made for you and not for us. Here’s a magical idea, don’t just say you put the customer first, actually put them first!

The days of forcing people down every isle for them to buy more products are over… or they will be for you if you competitor takes this App idea before you do.

Follow the Thread

The first social media app that I fully engaged with was Twitter. Of course, back in 2007 it wasn’t an app, it was a website. And in the early days it would often crash. I was so enamoured that I wouldn’t miss a tweet in my timeline. I’d come home from work and scroll from my last read tweet forward until I was ‘caught up’. And along the way I’d click on links, and read blog posts my friends shared, and even go to their sites to comment. Sometimes I’d end up with 12-15 tabs open and the catching up would take me over an hour.

I’d go to conferences and meet people I only knew through Twitter and I’d feel like I was meeting old friends. My connections were down to earth and very real. I loved the richness of the conversation and learning that happened on Twitter.

Then it changed.

It went from friendships to engagement, from conversation to activity, from a tool I spent time on to a tool I transmit to.

Now Meta has come out with Threads. Maybe the conversation is coming back. Maybe. But my time investment won’t be there unless I’m pulled there by others. Sure, I created an account, and yes, I’m interested to see where it could go. But it would require others drawing me in to make it something I use regularly. I’m not investing the time to making it work for me.

I’m just that much more selfish with my time now. I don’t have time for angry posts and outrage. I don’t care about building a follow-ship. I am not interested in clicking a link to see an image or video on another platform… which ironically someone on social media needs to do to fully read my Daily-Ink. In short, I’m not willing to put the time and energy into yet another social media platform, unless I see an immediate and positive engagement… and that doesn’t happen until a spend time on the platform.

So, I’m more likely to watch the threads fray than I am to stitch together a profile that I’m willing to wear. Threads is probably headed to my laundry basket of apps I never put on.

Are our apps over-sharing our data?

My guess is, yes. I know that when I google search a product, I will likely see an ad for that item on Facebook. I know that information is being shared. But I’ve been listening to The Quantum Moment on my Audible App and today on my 30 minutes of TikTok (my time limit on weekdays) I ended up seeing 4 videos on: the Space-Time continuum (x2), an Einstein thought experiment, and the physics of light and heat vs dark and cold.

Now before reading this book, I did have a few science videos as part of my algorithm, but mostly related to space and the James Webb telescope. Now, from ‘out of nowhere’, I’m getting physics videos, after I start listening to a book about physics on a totally different app.

Part of me thinks this is great, after all I did enjoy the videos and found them interesting. That’s why I like TikTok, it feeds me more interesting content than any 30 minute show I could possibly find on TV. But part of me wonders, what other data is being shared? How much do my apps know about what I do on other apps? How targeted is the advertising I see? What about when I google medication, or symptoms? What about the health apps I use?

Is anything private anymore, or when I agree to use an app, am I agreeing to share my whole life? I might have enjoyed the videos, but I don’t think TikTok should know what books I’m listening to, unless I’ve explicitly permitted it to.

External motivation

I usually use an app by Under Armour called Map My Ride to track hikes, walks, and rides, but a few days ago I went on a ride with my brother-in-law and forgot to start the app, and he shared the ride with me on the Strava app. Since my oldest daughter uses this as well, and goes in some awesome hikes, I thought I’d make the switch.

When I looked at the app afterwards I noticed that I had an Achievement given to me for the trip.

Looking further, I was 7th overall on this portion of the hike.

I love the competitive sharing aspect of apps like this. I’m totally motivated to improve my standing. While I’m pretty sure Kelsey is safe at the top, I’m gunning for a spot above Shane, Dave, and Lisa.

I’ll share my progress below over the next few days.

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Ok, so for the run above, I crushed this segment time! However, in full transparency, yesterday I did the whole trail in 23:23 and got 6th, then did the trail later with my wife and kid and figured out where this segment is. Then today I walked the 149 steps and steep incline before the segment and even with this fast pace, my total route was done in 26:01… in other words, I ‘saved myself’ just for this one section. Now that I’ve done this, the motivation to do better is gone. I’ll end my updates here and try to beat my full route time of 23:23 next time.

The death of the business card

I recently updated my business card and I ended up recycling a few hundred of the old, out-dated ones. This isn’t the first time my responsibilities or title has changed prompting me to do this, but maybe it’s the last? In a post COVID-19 world are we going to routinely take a small card out of our wallets and hand it to someone else? Are we going to sanitize our hands first? Or are we going to send a digital version via our phones, instantly and without making physical contact of a common object?

Frankly, I think it’s about time! When I get a card, I usually take a photo with it in Evernote and then either hand the card back or put the card in a small business card holder on my desk, seldom ever to be looked at again. One thing I’ve hated about the Evernote process is that when I first started using this feature (I think it’s only on the paid version), the card reader would pick up all the different parts like name, company name, title, and phone numbers, and put them in the right category, and then ask me if I wanted to connect with them on LinkedIn. But now people are so creative with their card design, I find Evernote often has trouble picking up the different categories and something as simple as the company name is wrong, or missing or miss-categorized, because the company name is embedded in a logo or uses a different font for the first letter, or is placed in an unusual place compared to the rest of the information, etc.

What we need are simple contact cards that we can digitally ‘bump’ to each other. One nice feature of this would be that the card could have several versions, appropriate for the person you are sharing it with. For example, I run two schools and sometimes it’s nice to have a simple card with just one of the schools on there. Also, my card has my cell phone on it, but I’d rather a vendor call my office line, and leave a message with secretaries, rather than interrupt me with a vibrating phone when I’m with staff or students.

Having a business card digitally sent and entered directly into our contacts makes sense. It shouldn’t need to done by a proprietary company that requires everyone to have the same app to do, it should be a feature of our phones. It should be sent via Bluetooth or via a tool like airdrop, except not limited to Apple devices. It would need to be initiated with a request, rather than just open for anyone to take/steal your information.

For example, I click an invite and it says, ‘David Truss is asking for your business card’, the other person sees this, picks a card to share and sends it. Upon receipt, I see something like ‘Peter Parker shared his contact information with you. Share back?’ The tool could also ask if you want to connect on different social media sites that were shared, like Twitter and LinkedIn, and even scrape a profile photo from one of these as your contact image. It could also set a reminder to contact the person, or ask for additional details or tags/categories to help you remember the person.

Some people will be sad to see the card stock business card go away, but I’m looking forward to having the information shared digitally, on the tool that I’ll actually use to contact the person. We don’t need the waste of hundreds of our-dated cards being recycled or put in landfills, when a digital card is superior and provides far more choice than a static card that is seldom kept or looked at again.

‪Incessant reminders are an annoyance, not a service.‬

I’m sure that I’m not the only Apple user fed up with the repeated ‘invitations’ to use iCloud for backup.

I know I’m not the only one that opens an app and gets the request to rate it, and the choices are to rate it or click ‘Not Now’ only to have to face this question again in the near future.

These ‘reminders’ and ‘invitations’ are annoying when they keep coming up. I understand an initial invitation for feedback. I’d be ok if I got another one 6 months later, after I’ve used the app for a while. But the window of time before the next time I’m asked is too short… Well here is a solution I just found after starting to write this little rant:

You can go into the iPhone settings under ‘iTunes and App Stores‘, scroll down and toggle the ‘In-App Rating and Reviews‘ radial button off.

This won’t stop the annoying iCloud reminders but it will go a long way in making my app user experience better!

If you are an app developer, or someone that is creating a service, remember that asking for feedback or selling a product are interruptions, so use these sparingly. Or, imbed these options in a way that isn’t a pop-up that forces a break in the flow of using the app. For example, 3 highlighted features/buttons to click to use features, and 2-3 more that are greyed out, but still work, taking you to a page to upgrade to use these features. (Take note Apple iCloud.)

Incessant reminders are an annoyance, not a service.‬

What’s on your home screen?

I think it is interesting to see what people put on their phone’s home screen. It is a little peek into their personality. Where do they spend their digital time? What social media do they use? What do they do for entertainment?

I think I want to start a little informal research and ask people about their home screen preferences. What will I learn from that? Will it change what I keep on my home screen?

What do you keep on your home screen, and why are those things important enough to take up that space?

World Markets and Apps

Two apps have made me realize how the world is changing. These apps are very popular, but not here in North America. Here, a very popular app for connecting with others for business (as well as socially) is Slack – a messaging app for teams.

However, pop over to India and WhatsApp is the cool tool that everyone is using. “Simple. Personal. Real Time Messaging.”

And hop over to China (as I did just recently) and WeChat is the tool that is already ‘Connecting a half billion people’… A HALF A BILLION PEOPLE!

Slack-whatsapp-wechat

One of my students, Brandon Mayhew, was invited to the Facebook F8 Developer’s conference, and he wrote about Mark Zukerberg’s opening presentation and an ongoing theme he heard, “4.1 Billion was repeated several times at the event and that’s the number of people that aren’t connected to the internet, over the next few years facebook plans on investing heavily on infrastructure to help connect these people in these remote regions of the globe.”

As an interesting aside, Facebook bought WhatsApp… for 19 Billion Dollars!

When over 1/3 of the world’s population lives in just two countries, and when those countries are on a fast track to get everyone connected… it is easy to see that if you were building an app, you’d want it to be used in other countries beyond North America, and specifically in China and India.

Soon, you are going to see some of the top apps start in other countries and the American/Canadian market will be an afterthought. In fact it has already happened… WeChat was ‘Made in China’!