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Comment by inimino | Hacker News Reader

The author totally lost me at this point:

"To get to the tip option, customers would have to click on a small arrow to the right of the service fee that doesn’t give any indication where it leads. Even if someone knew to click on that arrow (but honestly, why would they?)"

Seriously?? Has this guy never seen a mobile app before? There is a line reading "Service (10%)" with an actual dollar figure and an arrow pointing to the right. Find me a mobile user who doesn't know what that arrow means. This whole article reads the same way, like the author is just trying to stir up outrage and get page views.

Disclaimer: I have never used Instacart and have no connection with it. Not familiar with Recode either but I am less likely to read anything from them again.

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Once upon a time I made a UI where there were several things. One of them was a gigantic text box with the title "Biography" and another a 2 character wide box with a title "years of experience." We had to change that to a drop down. Why? Read on...

We got a lot of complaints. People couldn't see their resume in the "years of experience" box. Worse they kept getting error messages saying their resume was too long. It was restricted to 2 characters! These same people had glossed over the "biography" box.

So, yes, your ability to reason about a UI and the requisite UX has nothing to do with how others will reason about it. You'll get to learn the hard way like I did.

Yes, thanks, but I am already quite familiar with the idea that users will break and misunderstand any UI in creative and unexpected ways. That's why we do testing of any new UI designs. That's totally unrelated to my point.

My point is that the author writes as if something that is perfectly familiar to any mobile app user--and is literally the standard way to present a default option that can be changed--is something that has never been seen before. As I said, find me a mobile user who doesn't know what that arrow means in the screenshot in his article. He gave up all credibility with me at that point in the article. It may be that there's a story here, but either way this is just terrible journalism.

The way I read the article, the author is pointing out the sneakiness of 1. conflating service with tipping, and 2. hiding an option people assume isn't adjustable (who would think you could waive a service fee, and what normal person would want to pay a ~higher~ service fee? note that service fee vs. tipping has different connotations) behind a nav.

There certainly is a understanding problem here, even if the individual components are all familiar, because it's not at all clear what tapping a chevron on a "service fee" would do anyway, and it's certainly far from default to assume that that's how you would tip, especially if you were unfamiliar with Instacart, and didn't realize tipping is a thing.

If you have actually used the app, you'd understand that the author's point is valid. It is certainly misleading that the "Tip" section (which defaults to 0%) is hidden entirely under the "Service (10%)" line item at checkout, which used to have an arrow but now has a button which says "Edit". Why would you click on a button next to "Service 10%" to find out how to tip, or even know whether tipping is a part of this service model?

It's also unclear how the "Service" fee is distributed. There is an explanation which states that "Unlike a tip, which can only go to the shopper delivering your order, a service amount allows us to pay all shoppers (including those, for example, that also pick out ordered items at the store)".

This implies that it's a "Shared Tips" model as in some restaurants, where tips are distributed evenly amongst the staff that worked that shift. But could also be interpreted that they just collect these "optional" service fees centrally in order to pay all nationwide workers, which simply amounts to corporate revenue unless they are actually distributing 100% of the service fee to Instacart contract employees.

Instacart, as with all "sharing economy" apps, seems to be making quite a bit of corporate revenue on the backs of workers by misleading users.

> If you have actually used the app, you'd understand that the author's point is valid.

That may be true, and I'll take your word for it. However, if I have to have used the app to understand the author's point, it's a poorly written article. Catching this kind of thing is why newspapers have editors. It's bad writing and it weakened whatever point the author had.

Agreed about the ambiguous wording and whether this goes to the company or directly into worker pay is unclear.

https://www.nngroup.com/articles/computer-skill-levels/

You are not your user You are not your user You are not your user

Beyond just that, putting things behind a chevron dramatically decreases actual usage. It's why things like hamburger menus are so bad--significantly reduces discoverability, -even when users understand the pattern-. A chevron is even worse, because it generally indicates "details", "settings", or "advanced". Nobody wants to do that.

'Service (10%)' doesn't scream 'Tip' to me. Why on earth not just say 'Tip'?

Because you would then assume that the tip is going to the person that served you. In this case, the service charge is essentially a tip to the Instacart company.

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