Tag: Product

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Facilities for disabled guests

Booking.com tried making the experience of finding accessible hotels better, unfortunately they made it worse, and I was part of this.

Facilities for disabled guests

I am planning a trip to Dortmund and noticed that they changed their “Facilities for disabled guests” filter – which allowed filtering for accessible properties on the site – to a more granular set of filters such as “Wheelchair accessible”, “Toilet with grab rails”…etc.

You can see the filters on the left

The problem with “Facilities for disabled guests” was that it didn’t mean anything. I still have to call each hotel, ask if they have wheelchair accessible rooms of the type I am looking for, and if the rooms are available for the dates I choose. After sometimes few, sometimes many calls, I would find a hotel that meets the criteria and book it. It is a tedious process, but it is the best available option that I am aware of.

More details ≠ better experience

Back in 2015 – when I was working there – I complained about how hard it is to find accessible rooms on the website. The best thing about working for Booking is that you can quickly ramp up an idea and run an experiment. That’s what we did back then. We ran a few experiments.

The experiments were no success. We thought the problem might be in the data we had. We only had this “Facilities for disabled guests” which is self reported by the hotel and subject to their interpretation of understanding what it means. That’s when I did a lot of research of what makes a hotel accessible and came up with a list of data points that we should collect from hotels. We collected them, and finally it is now live as you saw in the previous screenshot.

The problem with the new more granular filters is that they show less properties. I did the same search on the mobile website, which still has the “Facilities for disabled guests” filter. I was able to filter for more properties (26 properties) than the one on desktop (8 properties in the best case).

Mobile site
Desktop

Finding really accessible rooms

In retrospect, I think my approach back then was wrong as I didn’t travel a lot and didn’t understand the problem from both sides, the “disabled” traveler and the hotel. Now that I did my homework contacting 300+ hotels in Berlin, I realized it is not a problem of collecting more data, well, it is about information but not the way I tackled it earlier.

My hypothesis (it is always a hypothesis until the data punches you in the face) is that there is no way to make a wheelchair user find and directly book accessible rooms online unless they are their own room category just like Twin and Double. There should be Accessible Twin or Accessible Single.

Some hotels already do that on their own website (I have a few examples but I am too lazy to dig into my data to find them), and some already do this on Booking.com but they are like unicorns. It is almost impossible to find them as it is only mentioned in the room title which you can’t search for.

Bavarian Inn
Queen Room with Mobility Access – DoubleTree Amsterdam

I hope this post triggers some change for better. Booking is full smart people, and they can definitely make this better. Until then, please return the “Facilities for disabled guests” filter, because I can’t plan my trip to Dortmund.

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App Store 30%

I recently read about the backlash on Apple and Google’s 30% cut on every transaction on their stores.

Fortnite game will no longer be supported on Android. Players are asked to disable the security features and install the application outside of Google play store. I wonder if others will start doing this, or if there will be a new Android store with better economics at least for games.

This is not possible on iOS. Today I was on YouTube app on my iPhone and it prompted me to try YouTube premium free for one month. As usual I like to check those funnels and noticed something weird. It costed 16 Euro per month after the trial even though I saw it before on the web version costing 12. I went to YouTube mobile web version and surprise surprise, it costs 12.

So Fortnite is circumventing Google, and Google can’t circumvent Apple so they are charging more, and probably Spotify have a similar dynamic with both Apple and Google since they can charge less for their music services since they both own Apple and Google music respectively.

What I like about this interesting dynamic is how it shows the strength of the big players, and that there is no single playbook for how to do things.

Fortnite will sacrifice the revenue drop from play store, because apparently they expect to make more from their fanatic users who will just do anything to download the game. And Google is charging more on iOS, expecting users to not bother and still pay.

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Unpopular Opinion: Stop Patronizing Users

I think this is fine by Facebook. It can be considered a dark pattern, but it serves its goal which is getting as many users as possible past this screen.

Facebook is a company that prioritizes growth (signups, engagement, time spent…etc) above all else. They measure everything and they know what they are doing.

I expect they tested multiple versions of that page and found this version to lead to the highest acceptance rate, without hurting engagement or leading users to leave the service.

I deleted my Facebook account two years ago. My feed became too toxic because of what’s happening in Egypt. I felt way better after doing this and I encourage everyone I know who is going through some depressive episodes to do the same.

However, this is only my perspective, and it doesn’t make the wellness argument right (the argument that spending time on Facebook makes people feel worse).

One point that didn’t get enough attention in Mark’s EU hearing is when he mentioned that Facebook researched the wellness topic. He said one of their findings is that people feel worse if they mindlessly scroll through their feed watching news and videos. They feel better and less lonely if they see content from their connections. That’s why Facebook altered the news feed algorithm to show more of this content.

I don’t like the current tone in the industry that patronizes users by considering them unable to decide for themselves. There is some truth to this argument but it is a slippery slope if we start thinking we know what’s right for people.

The internet is an open space and people are able to decide what’s good for them. If you think you can do better, do it, otherwise stop patronizing others considering them stripped of their free will.

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Bad execution: Google maps accessible routes

Google recently launched wheelchair accessible routes on Google maps. The feature is far from good.

1- The data is inaccurate: I used it today in Berlin and it took me to a station with no elevator. I verified by cross referencing with the local app. And there is no obvious feedback mechanism.

2- The routing is weird: sometimes it shows me longer route with later arrival time.

3- The UX sucks: someone using the wheelchair accessible option is less likely to not use it the next time. I have to go to the options menu and choose wheelchair accessible with every search query. Why can’t this be a default option?

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MarcoPolo App

I am surprised I didn’t blog about it although I am using it for close to a year. I heard of it from a press release that Benchmark Capital, the backers of Uber, Snap, and StichFix invested in it.

It is an asynchronous video messaging app. This solves a huge problem for me since currently my family, and all my friends live in different countries, with different time zones. It is hard to setup a time with all those people to sit and talk. MarcoPolo allows us to stay in touch.

Here is how it works:

  • You start recording a video.
  • Your friend/group receives a notification that you are recording a video.
  • They can go watch you live, or watch this message later when they see the notification.
  • They can record you a reply and you will get notified.

It is different from WhatsApp

  • You don’t have to tap and hold while recording.
  • There is no limit I faced on the length of the message.
  • Here is the best part: If you have no internet, or the internet is slow, it keeps working in the background until the full message is uploaded when you have a faster connection. This solves the problem of internet speed which forces us to schedule calls in places with fast internet, leading to the call not happening.
  • It only allow text on top of the video. No text chat interface.

Give it a try. Download it and message me. I am using my Egyptian mobile number on it. If you don’t have it, message me and I will send it to you.

Note: I took permission the people on those screenshots to show them on this post.

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Blocking on YouTube

I don’t like Hussein Elgasmi. I blocked his channel on YouTube sometime ago thinking I won’t get his videos again. I was wrong.

As you see his channel is blocked, however I still got his latest video in my YouTube recommendations.

I am still getting Boshret Kheir in my autogenerated playlists. I always delete it when it is there.

It seems that blocking a channel and removing certain video/artist from your playlists aren’t strong enough signals for the YouTube recommendation algorithms.

I thought the former is a hard rule, not optional parameter for the algorithm. Maybe it is a bug, or no one thought of it.

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Walking Speed

During Easter I traveled with a group of friends. Every time we wanted to go some place, we had to make a decision between walking and taking transportation.

I use Google maps, my friends use HERE maps. HERE always shows double the ETA of Google maps when it comes to walking. We kept arguing which is more accurate with no result.

Personally I have the same problem, my speed is mostly slower than what Google tells me. I thought Google does this based on historical walking speed for every person (I have location history enabled). Apparently it is hard coded at 12 minutes per kilometer, or more accurately, 20 minutes per mile.

We are afraid of AI taking over humanity, while someone at Google maps hard coded that all humans walk at 20 minutes per mile.

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LinkedIn Closed Networker

People who add/accept anyone on LinkedIn (LION) to increase their reach might be doing it wrong. The way feed algorithms work – in principle – is they show your post to few of your connections, if they interact with it, the algorithm boosts it to more connections, and so on until it becomes viral, dies, or get replaced by other more viral content.

Unless your content is inherently viral, a big factor of people interacting with your content is them knowing you. Having a big network where you don’t really know the majority decreases the chance of your posts getting to someone who actually knows you in the initial phase, hence decreasing chances of interaction, which leads to lower virality and eventually less reach.

I am curious to see if LinkedIn data matches my argument (people with more connections, get less interaction on their posts).

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The perfect echo chamber

I used to criticize Facebook for creating an echo chamber. My argument was – as almost every one else – that Facebook should show users what is right, not what they agree with.

I overestimated the level of transparency the internet brings. When the political events were happening in Egypt and the local media was hiding the truth, I thought as soon as every one joins Facebook/twitter the truth will be revealed. I was wrong. It happened to some extent, but the echo chambers were much stronger.

One of the main drivers of hostility on the internet is people seeing their core beliefs being attacked. Regardless of the side, seeing something we disagree with triggers our survival response and hence we become hostile to the adversary.

I am recently giving this a lot of thought. I started to think Facebook shouldn’t try to avoid echo chambers, it should strive to create the perfect one.

If you have the perfect echo chamber and only see the things you agree with, you won’t feel the internet is unsafe as it is now. It sounds counterintuitive, I know, but this behavior is why people are moving more towards private conversations.

That being said, it makes me question why we don’t have this until now, this is what I could think of

  • Nobody thought of it. I highly doubt.
  • It is not technically feasible. I also doubt to some extent.
  • It drives engagement down. If we only see things we agree with, we are less likely to engage with the content. Less engagement means less time spent on site, less ads to be served, and less money to be made.

That’s my theory.

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Branding in a tech company

One of the things I learned by watching Garyvee is the difference between branding and marketing in the online world.

On the internet, you can either be a transactional marketer, or a branding guy.

You can spend money on Google/Facebook, drive a % of users to your funnel, optimize CTR & CPC, repeat. Or you can spend money on snapchat stories, fun competitions, blogs, any valuable content that may not drive direct results to your funnel but increases the volume of the conversation about your brand.

You could do both. It depends on your size & goals.

One thing I never understood when I read marketing and branding user research for an online product. What action should I take if I knew that 20% of our users shop online, spend more time on social media, or like to buy the cheapest thing?

When you read these reports, there isn’t much one can do. Online products are not sold on shelves and advertised for on TV. I don’t have to find the best retailer to put my product in. I don’t have to define upfront how the TV campaign will be perceived.

The online cycle is way shorter. You have to keep testing ideas all the time, optimize what works, and get rid of what doesn’t. It applies to branding, transactional marketing, and product features. The principle is the same, the difference is what you are optimizing for.

Maybe I am wrong, tell me what actions you could drive by reading such reports.