Ted, although there’s nothing conceptually wrong with what you’ve described, I think there are multiple solutions to the problem you’ve highlighted.
The problem that you’ve ID’d is only a problem because Apple and Google haven’t yet focused their resources to solve this problem. Consider this alternative scenario
- Show up to stadium. Stadium’s app is automatically downloaded to your phone in the background.
- A sticker on the seat in front of you has a screenshot that shows you where the icon is on the bottom-left of the iOS home screen (not sure what equivalent is on Android). You swipe up from bottom left right into app.
- It asks you to create an account with Facebook/Twitter/Google. Those are all 1-line API calls.
- You select your beers/food from the pre-populated lists.
- You select or type in your seat number
- You pay with Apple pay and fingerprint.
That UX should take lay people 30–45 seconds. And it’s no faster than interacting with a chat bot.
The good thing about “command line” UIs that you’ve described is that they require virtually no bandwidth, and the vast majority of the population can figure out how to use them without training. But command line UIs are a major step backwards. There is a valid reason for them — if a visual UI involves too much technical or UX overhead — but you haven’t really made a case that those aren’t easily solve-able problems. People prefer visual UIs to command lines.
I would argue that Apple and Google are slowly rolling out the pieces of infrastructure necessary to enable this future. They have a few puzzle pieces still to go, but I think they’ll get there in the next 1–2 years.
