What my 85-year-old grandpa taught me about UX
Here's how my thinking changed after ordering his medicines
I was about to enter a Zoom meeting when my thatha (grandpa) came inside my room. He asked if I was free, to which I replied that I would help once the Zoom call got over. He rarely asks for help, which meant this was important.
When I went to him after ten minutes, I found him trying to order his medicines through an app called PharmEasy. Since the doctor had prescribed a new set of diabetic tablets for thatha and avva (grandma), he had to upload the prescription to place his order successfully (see the red highlighted portion).
But, he wasn’t able to upload it. Before you assume that he’s not good with technology, I would like to stress the fact that he is the power user of smartphone in our entire household.
Whenever he’s glued to his screen for hours together or outright denies that he’s not addicted to his smartphone, he reminds me of a fascinated 18-year-old who has just discovered the world of technology.
Now that you have enough context, you will understand my mild surprise when thatha couldn’t upload that prescription.
When I took his phone and clicked the Order via Prescription button, the screen with Upload prescription appeared. Once I clicked that, I got the below options:
Thinking that my thatha might have got confused with app permissions, I tried clicking the Camera. Nothing happened. Then, Gallery. No reaction. The screen appeared the same as five seconds back.
Confused, I went to Settings to manually turn on camera permission for PharmEasy. I scrolled quickly to find it in vain. To confirm that I wasn’t making any mistake, I searched for PharmEasy in the Apps section as well.
Did I do a typo? No.
Was the search bar not working? No.
More confused than ever, I opened PharmEasy again to find my way. I clicked the menu button at the top left and scrolled through the list to see this at the end:
How could this be possible? I was already inside their app. Or could it be a website shortcut I never bothered noticing?
I went back to the home screen and checked PharmEasy's icon. It looked as normal as every other app. Had it been a website shortcut, Chrome’s icon would have been a part of it.
When I asked about this to Karthik Pasupathy, it was he who cleared my confusion. He explained that when a phone (usually Redmi) uses a UI skin on top of Vanilla Android, chances are the shortcut icon won’t be visible. That’s the reason PharmEasy’s icon looked like an app when it was actually a Progressive Web App (PWA) shortcut.
A PWA provides an app experience to the user without them having to install it. The address bar will be hidden in a PWA, which makes it look like an app to the user.
When I asked Karthik how the PWA got added as a shortcut, he sent me this:
When you visit PharmEasy’s website on a browser, there’s a small banner at the bottom of the page asking you to add it as a shortcut (view the screenshot above). Thatha would have accidentally clicked on it, creating a shortcut on the homescreen.
Even then, the camera permission pop up should have worked which didn’t, probably due to a browser issue. However, this conversation with Karthik happened a few days after the incident.
So, let’s rewind back to where I was stuck. The PharmEasy icon looked as normal as every other app with a Download App option on the menu.
Now, downloading it again would take a lot of steps. So, I clicked on Don’t have a prescription? option.
This option will cost us more time as we had to consult one of their doctors and get medicine recommendations. Thatha already had the prescriptions and all he wanted to do was to place an order.
By now, I was fed up and did what was required. I downloaded PharmEasy, entered thatha’s number, got verified and signed into his account. It was deja vu till Upload prescription.
Then, the permission pop up finally showed up, which I accepted twice gladly. I tapped on Camera, captured the prescriptions and clicked Continue.
Suggestion: Instead of having the pharmacist confirm the medicines via phone, an Optical Character Recognition (OCR) system that converts the uploaded prescriptions into machine-readable text would save a lot of time. This way, the pharmacist can access the converted text in the database and process the order.
In the next step (view the screenshot below), I was mighty impressed. There was a list of medicine recommendations based on the prescription I uploaded seconds back. Or so I assumed. When I asked thatha to select the medicines he wanted, he said those were the ones he ordered last time. That’s when I noticed the text on the upper tab. This step would confuse anyone and the text Prescription Available is misleading too.
Once I clicked Continue, entering the address was the next step. Since it was already saved from previous orders, I went ahead and clicked Select Payment Option.
I scrolled and selected the payment option my thatha wanted. As I was about to click Place Order, a strange hesitation crept in for both of us.
Will this button lead to a payment portal? If so, what amount will it deduct? There’s no medicine in the cart.
If we enter the card details now, will it auto-deduct from the bank account after the bill amount is confirmed? Is this safe?
Though these questions were swirling in my mind, I ended up clicking that button to see where it leads to. The screen displayed that our order has been successfully placed and a pharmacist will contact at a particular time.
Breathing a sigh of relief, I went back to the home screen to see this:
The top one was the PWA shortcut, whereas the bottom was what I had downloaded then.
Bonus points if you noticed the ‘e’ difference between both apps.
Explaining to thatha which app he should use the next time he orders, I went back to my room.
Thatha got his medicines. And I got a renewed perspective about UX (user experience).
When we design apps that have senior citizens as a customer base, are we taking their difficulties into account? Though the app worked without a glitch, did you notice how one browser issue and mobile UI skin messed up the purchase journey? Are we noticing those and the steps that might stop a senior citizen from ordering their essentials?
They are unable to leave their homes due to COVID-19, which has increased their reliance on smartphones. And how are we going to bridge the gap? It’s time to think.
Special thanks to Karthik Pasupathy for explaining and reviewing this article. He runs a SaaS blog, ‘The Weekend Product Manager’ featuring product teardowns of famous SaaS products. Do check that out. Thank me later.
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Author’s note: When I took screenshots from thatha’s phone for this article, I found that the PharmEasy app had vanished. Only the PWA shortcut was present. Imagine if this had happened after thatha went to his hometown and I wouldn’t be there to help.
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