First and foremost, I am a user. If it won’t load fast enough, will I not swear? (Hell, Yeah!) The fact that I live and breath UX does not automatically make me immune to poor experience or expands my tolerance threshold.

With this in mind, I would like to create a series of letters (more like notes) for the digital constants in my life (strictly as a user).

For this read, let’s go with these:

Dear Amazon,

I love you! I do. You are so kind to me. We get along well. You know what I need, and you give it to me when I need it. For instance, you remind me what I might want to purchase based on my previous orders, and you do it brilliantly. You make a distinction between refillable to one time purchases. You let me have full control, and I love it.

The only thing that I can ask of you is to please refrain from teasing me with search results that are irrelevant to me. I mean, you know me so well. You know where I”m from, yet you keep showing me products with messages like this:

Come on! Why showing me this product at all? And sending me to another search expedition. Not cool, Amazon, not cool at all.

The worst experience for me is to find out at checkout that some of my products Have issues I need to review. Then I need to go back to find out that they are not available in my region.

So Yeah, If you could fix that. I would be so grateful. Thanks!

Dear Twitter

Oh man! I gave you lots of brownie points in my latest article.

I am still in the learning stage, and the fact that I am fresh should make you listen.

So yes, I know you were the first to implement the idea of the hashtag. Way back in 2007, thanks to Chris Messina, and it’s brilliant. However, How am I supposed to know which one to use? Yes, there is autocomplete, which is excellent. But tell me which one is relevant for my tweet. Don’t make me work hard for it; Maybe something like this?

Place a tooltip icon for additional information (description, involvement, popularity). Maybe even a preview of the tweets in that hashtag. Or just do what LinkedIn does: Scanning my content and letting me choose from a list of suggested #’s accordingly.

Also, the fact that anyone can follow me without my permission bothers me. I understand the concept of public vs. private, but why not let me control and approve the followers knocking on my virtual door? It is essential, in my opinion.

Thanks!

Dear Facebook,

Well, you are my eldest digital companion. You’ve been there through it all. Usability wise you are pretty straight forward. But don’t you think its time for a facelift? Don’t get me wrong I am all about aging with grace. However, your visual layout can no longer contain it all.

I am all about minimalism when it comes to content platforms, but for you, it does not work anymore. The amount of advertising I see in my feed is insane and very, very annoying — it feels like 50% of my feed filled with commercial posts.

Mixing real content with advertising is dark UX, in my opinion. You can do better.

Also, when I say no, I mean, NO! if I block an Ad post, please listen to me and don’t show me the exact post the next day. You do understand, I am not Dory, right?

I understand that it’s all about profit. However, it is in the way of a good experience, and its time you do something about it. You can rearrange the interface accordingly.

Oh, Also, why won’t you let users share videos and content from your chat to third party apps? So weird.

Best Regards.

Dear Telegram

I love you so much! You rock! Tick on all the usability checkboxes.

I have full control over anything and everything. Not many people know, but you are more than just a chat platform. You have your own social media channels, where one can have a public conversation or private posts with followers.

The only Tiny Winey issue is with the list of users on my feed. I mean, Yes, I am a control freak. I need everything to be just the way I want it. Thank you for notifying me of my contact joining telegram, but can you please not leave it on my list? It should function as a notification. All my friends are already there, so thank you for the heads up; If needed, I will find David the plumber on telegram on my own, Ya know?

Next – Letters to Linkedin, Gmail, and WhatsApp. Stay tuned.

Originally posted by me on Medium