Creating Positive Experiences on Mobile Apps While Users Wait

No one likes to endure the frustration of waiting. Hence, we often like to find ways to beat the ticking hand of time. We go out of our way to find the quickest option or any other means to reduce our wait. One of my previous posts talked about the pain caused by long waits and how skeleton screens solved the wait problem to some extent. In this post, I take a step back to figure out what other methods could be employed to make long waits, worth enduring.

Purpose of Loading Indicator and its problem

Traditional folklore suggests that if we keep users waiting, we must let them know:

• It will take a while
• They need to be patient as they wait

Loading indicators were, hence, born. As this trend caught up, developers and designers put their blood and sweat into developing the 'Next Best Progress Bar/ Spinner Of The Year' elements. And then, we had a bunch of innovative items. Google 'Best Loading Icon' and see it for yourself. While design and functionality of these icons was good, they failed to fulfill the fundamental need of 'waiting'. Looking at these icons only made users feel that time is moving even slower than before. The purpose of ‘progress’ was lost!

Techniques to shorten long waits

1. Transitions

Consider hamburger menu on any mobile app. Tap on the menu only to see a loading icon, hinting that the next screen is loading .................... slowly. You end up waiting.

Consider  using an interactive 3D transition that slowly collapses existing screen and makes way for the new screen. Ctrip app does it really well. As soon as user taps on hamburger menu, the home screen slides animatedly to the right making way for the menu items on the left side of the screen, eventually taking up 3/4th of the mobile screen.

Hamburger Menu Transition on Ctrip app

Transition not just helps in making apps feel better, but also reduces perceived wait time.

2. Skeleton Screens

Another way to avoid loading screens and focus on progress is to use Skeleton Screens. I have covered this in good depth HERE and will not include it here, in the interest of digital real estate.

3. Offers / Ancillary Services / Advertising New Features

Long wait times can be monetized. You heard that right! You can utilize wait times by showcasing content. Relevant personalized content! This content could be: a)Lucrative deals and offers, b)Ancillary services or c)Advertisements. Airline booking apps use this extremely well by offering additional paid services, known as ancillary services, to users while users wait.

Hipmunk app uses the wait time to:

A. Educate Users

Hipmunk posts useful #Tips on specific topics. E.g., How to complete a particular task or activity, or even a random quote related to travel.

Useful Tips displayed while Hipmunk app looks for suitable flights

B. Introduce New Features

While relevant flight results are loaded, Hipmunk introduces an existing feature, ‘Fare Alerts’ wherein user is asked to subscribe to free fare alerts. An assuring statement, ‘This will not interfere with your search.’ is displayed, just in case user fears that his search operation will be abandoned. If user taps on ‘Subscribe to this alert’ button, the button is replaced by ‘Adding fare alert…', followed by ‘Fare alert added!’ message. Throughout this activity, Hipmunk’s maskot dances on the screen, hinting that flight search results are on their way. This is a classic usage of channeling frustrating wait times to positive experiences.

Hipmunk app using wait times by displaying 'Fare Alerts' to users 

Summary

The focus of loading indicators should be more on the progress rather than making wait times longer and intolerable.

To summarize, we can create better wait experience by using:

1. Transition screens
2. Skeleton screens
3. Offers / Ancillary Services / Advertising screens

When speeding-up a process is not an option, giving extra care to a customer makes the experience of waiting more tolerable. I appreciate the free cookies and other samples in line at the Whole Foods store during the Thanksgiving season as the checkout queue snakes across the entire store. Saving time is thus the trade-off between the quantitatively fast versus the qualitatively fast.

John Maeda

Waiting is what people do in this world, most of the time. As they wait, telling them how much time they have left and how they can utilize it better, is only humane!

Do you make the wait time more tolerable and engaging? How?

Minimize Errors in Mobile App Forms Using Interaction Design Patterns

Majority of errors on mobile apps occur on input forms. Users can input information with utmost ease and flexibility, if only input forms were designed better. In an old post ‘Contextual Keypad – Engaging Users via Mobile Inputs’, I highlighted the need for displaying context-sensitive keypad based on the input field type – alphabetic, numeric, email, password and so forth. A little after that, I found Luke Wroblewski’s work on design patterns that helps reduce form errors significantly. In this post, I will highlight Luke's three interaction design patterns that help reduce errors form fields:

Inline Validation

Inline Validation provides real time feedback as users enter values into corresponding fields. Let’s consider an example. On Dashlane iPhone app, if a first time user creates an account, the password field has a placeholder text, ‘Enter a strong password’. As user types the input, the app provides real time instructions on what rules the password field should comply with. This helps users to enter password without forgetting to enter a specific value or making a mistake.

Password Hints on Dashlane mobile app

Luke Wroblewski’s team ran a study by comparing forms with inline validation with those which do not have any inline validation. The forms with inline validation had 42% completion rate and a 22% decrease in errors. This shows how a small step towards good user experience helps apps succeed in the real world.

Input Types

Specifying input types helps reduce errors by many folds. One of my old posts ‘Contextual Keypad – Engaging Users via Mobile Inputs’ addresses exactly this topic. Consider ‘Reset Password’ feature on Ctrip mobile app.

Reset Password behavior on Ctrip mobile app

If user taps on ‘Email’ input field, three things can happen:

1. The keypad displayed is not email-friendly keypad. For user to search and locate ‘@’ symbol, he has to change the keypad where ‘@’ symbol is present (note that the keypad complexity increases further if many non-English languages are involved)
2. User might end up typing his first name or user name or the email id before ‘@’ symbol (i.e., if the email id is Parimala@gmail.com, user might enter just ‘Parimala’)
3. Since there is no real-time validation, user assumes that the given value is correct and taps on ‘Reset password’ button. Boom! An error, ‘Invalid Email: Please provide correct email address’ is displayed.

As you see, changing the input field type to display ‘email’ keypad could avoid user to perform 1st step mentioned above. It might be good to place place holder text 'user@example.com' inside the email field, so user becomes aware of the format. One might ask, ‘what kind of a user would enter invalid values despite knowing it’s an email field.’ It is a valid question. Yet, time and again, it has been proven that many users would do that. As Don Norman says, ‘An error that can be made will be made.’ Hence, we need to validate checkpoints in right fashion, to reduce such errors, if it’s in our control.

Input Masks

Consider a phone number field. Depending on your country, country code, changes. In such a case, phone number field would have 2 components: Country Code>Phone Number>. In below screenshot, can you guess if user needs to enter phone number with country code or not? It’s hard to tell. This could lead to errors.

If formats for input fields are such a big deal, why aren’t we taking them seriously? In ideal scenarios, it is advisable to insist users to enter input values in specific formats by implementing input masks.

Input mask is a mechanism by which one specifies the format in which the input will be accepted. For e.g. Phone number can have 2 input fields: Country code and phone number, as displayed below:

Whatsapp has clear demarcation of Country Code and Phone number

Similarly, date fields, credit card fields, social security number, bank account number and others can use input masks. 

Input masks not only help reduce errors, but also guide the user to enter input in the right format.

Input masks can be taken a step further by revealing the input pattern at the beginning itself. Consider the screenshot below. User would enter a 16 digit card number and keep checking constantly at your credit card and the field just to ensure you have not missed any numbers (Note that the credit card will have space in between every 4 digits). Instead if the below card number field could show 'XXXX-XXXX-XXXX-XXXX', it would be helpful to the user.

To summarize, reduce errors by:

1. Using Inline Validation
2. Specifying Input Types and
3. Using Input Masks for formatting and accuracy

Have you thought about reducing errors on your mobile app forms lately?