In 2015, I embarked on the journey of buying my first home. At that time, I wrote a blog post critiquing the UX of real estate websites through a, somewhat sarcastic, persona named ‘Kayla’ and listed out ‘her’ (my) user needs and how they weren’t being met. Discover how real estate websites have evolved from 2015 to 2024 through a personal lens. Spoiler alert – it still sucks, but it sucks a little less.
In this blog post, I evaluate how current real estate platforms address user needs such as viewing new properties, staying within budget, accessing accurate information, and managing inspection schedules. It suggests key improvements and practical recommendations for improving real estate website UX.
Sometimes it feels that UX Research has become synonymous with surveys. They’re cheap, easy & can reach large amounts of users. Sounds great, right? Wrong. Surveys are not enough
I took a pause and then answered four things I am sure they were not expecting. My tips are about how to improve the health and happiness of your work life.
After just 0.1 second users start to perceive a delay if your app isn’t doing The Thing™ that they just told it to do. We needed to buy 8.5 seconds. We had to manipulate (percieved) time.
There are predictable questions I get asked over and over again when someone finds out what I research, and that I have 2 microchips inside my body. These same questions pop up on social media every time I appear on TV or in the news.
Some people refused to believe the reality of how these chips work, and there’s no point trying to change these minds; the “the Government is secretley tracking you with a microchip you received at birth, it’s all about the New World Order and they’ll switch you off if you don’t comply” crowd.
This post is not for them. This post answers the FAQs for people genuinely interested in learning about the technology and educating themselves on the reality.
Researching into travel money cards to use while overseas I thought I'd made the best choice - no transaction fees, pretty fair exchange rate for USD, no load fees, no exit fees. I couldn't find the flaw. While the money side of things is still fine, positive UX is lacking.
I use a password manager so my password was something complicated. Upon login I was asked to enter a few random characters from the password. What is this?! This makes no sense to me, and doesn't seem any more secure to me - if someone already knows my password they too will know the values in these positions. Because there is no way to save the password in the app, and it was too difficult to figure out what the nth value was, I ended up changing my password to something simpler. BAD.
The app requires you to enter your travel card number and password every time. There is no option to save the password which is annoying and slows me down every time I want to use the app. About 90% of the time I get an error straight after logging in - making me lose faith in the app.
At first I wasn't even sure that the card even had a pin. After trawling through the website I found that there was a pin. When I tried to access it via the app I kept getting an error, and was directed to call. I was taken to an automated menu which asked me to enter a whole bunch of numbers and "press the hash or square key" (Square key?)
After listening to the automated menu, I knew I needed to press 1 which I did. But I was forced to listen to the entire automated menu before it would register what i had pressed. Making me waste time before I even get to hold? Not impressed.
One of the audio prompts asked me to enter my date of birth, and of course I didn't bother listening to the rest of the recording - I simply entered "DD-MM-YYYY" and got an error. Apparently what they actually wanted was my birthDAY (i.e. DD-MM)
I found out the birthday vs birth date issue after talking to a human on the phone to troubleshoot what I did wrong (and was blamed for it, rather than recognising the bad design of the automated system) and put back to the automated menu to re-do all the steps again. Couldn't the human have helped with my request.
The card took 3 days for funds to be loaded! Because that's what you want when you're travelling and need money, to have to wait three days for it.
The app had no visibility of money that you had transferred and was pending, or of pending transactions so you really had no idea what was going on with the state of your balance.
Maybe some fees would've been worth it to have a more enjoyable experience! Next time, I will use a different card.
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