Pretend Product: Improvements of Interfaces I’ve Encountered This Week

Pretend Product is a series of musings on a product that should exist in the world or improvements I’d offer to an already existing product

Bumble

Bumble sends you a notification as soon as you leave the app. If I check a message then close the app, I will receive a push notification to go back to the app almost immediately. A better approach would be to wait some time to reel me back in than to tell me I need to reenter an app I just left and know there’s no new messages on.

Duolingo

Duolingo doesn’t apply my settings to not include speech recognition lessons. I have it off and yet it continues to serve speech recognition activities even after several months.

Clubhouse

The default behavior for joining the stage as a speaker on Clubhouse should be to be on mute when you to decrease excessive background noise. I don’t see anyone running on stage to immediately start speaking so having people all mute themselves when they join the stage instead of having it muted by default makes less sense.

iMessage

iMessage voice notes could be improved with the ability to play at any point in the message. As of now, if the voice note playback gets interrupted by me swiping down my notification screen or opening a different app, it restarts from the beginning! Keep in mind simple things — like swiping down to see notifications and clicking an image in the same text thread while still having the message open and playing — also restart the message.

Additionally, if I want to relisten to a part, I can’t move forward or back to that part of the message but would have to relisten all over again.

Lastly, voice messages are as much a message as text or pictures but voice messages disappear after you listen to them. The only way for them to stay in the conversation is to click keep within 2 minutes. Why is that? They are a part of the conversation and should remain in the record in a similar manner.

iPhone lock screen

This screen is entirely unnecessary. Just take me straight to entering my passcode if that’s my only choice anyway.

Covid study

This modal to take a survey appears each time I come to open the app regardless of the fact that I completed the survey the first time the pop up occurred. There should be logic included in the code where the survey shows if survey_completed == false.

Google Docs

You can currently only comment with text. Being able to comment on docs with an image would serve useful.

Tik Tok

A Tik Tok sign up screen with no sign in option could be improved by adding sign in options especially when you’re already a prolific app with a lot of people having preexisting accounts.