Why we feel the YUP(Mobile Money App) UI and UX is way below expectations.
If you don’t know yet, Yup is a mobile money service brought forth by SGC(formerly SGBC) bank, which helps you carry out transactions such as
- Money deposit
- Local money transfers
- Money withdrawal
- Bills payment
- Commercial payment
Grab more info on them, from their website. http://yup.africa/en/countries/cameroon/ .
In all sincerity, I think it’s a great service. They’ve got a lot of agents around the city to help you carry out your transactions with ease.
So out of curiosity, we decided to register with the service.We met with a Yup agent and after registration, she suggested we download the mobile app in order to stay current with our transactions and their services.
Our excitement rapidly dipped the moment we set eyes on the mobile app.
Like, is this offered by my village credit union? Or by SGC Bank.
The app UI/UX looks horrible. The most pronounced issues were
Its bizarre navigation system(No back buttons in the complete android app)
Color Usage,
Icon resolutions and dimensions
Some pages, Like the about us page makes you wonder what app you are in.
It’s rather pointless criticising, without providing what we think is a better approach. So we created a semi clone app, which we think is better, faster and most importantly, works smoothly on both platforms(android/iOS). Which takes away the idea of having two different teams, working on two different code bases with all the extra overhead and extra expenditures.
And please feel free to criticise our criticism, by showing us how to do it better. Don’t tell us, show us
Therefore, without further ado, We bring to you
THE HOME SCREEN
Here’s the first screen of the YUP app(see image below). If you notice, there are suppose to be 5 menu items on the dashboard. But due to the mis-management of screen space, the fifth menu has been pushed to an unnecessary second page.If you aren’t keen enough, you won’t notice that you have to swipe to see the next menu.You might bring forth an argument that the menu is rarely used. I’ll say why put it then ?
Secondly, the menu icons are just unnecessarily large. These aren’t icon dimensions for this screen size or resolution. The screen looks rather bulky and mediocre.
Our Suggested Improvement
- We brought all 5 menus to the main Dashboard
- Menu icons are of the appropriate dimensions
- We styled it up a lil bit
THE SETTINGS PAGE
Let’s take a look at the settings page and apply same adjustments. Let’s work on the icon dimensions and general UI of the screen.
Here’s a comparison between both apps. You be the judge.
NAVIGATION
Navigating between Home,History and settings page is visually painful in the YUP app. The navigation is just wrong. Let me give you a little sneak peak of what i’m talking about. Please Watch the video
Here’s what’s happening.When you are on the home page, then you click on History, you see that the screen moves left, and another screen comes in with a circular loading progress bar, indicating that it’s loading your transaction history from the database. This type of screen transition is very wrong when using a bottom navigation bar.(I mean the bar that has the home, history and settings menu buttons). When you leave the history screen and move to the settings page, the screen transition is also very wrong.The page moves in from below. Now here’s where it gets painful. If you navigate back to the history page, you see the same bad transition and it still queries data from the database even though no new transaction has been carried out. Let me tell you what’s wrong with the history page.
- The history page keeps connecting with the database for data, irrespective of the fact that, there’s no new transaction. If the user is in an area with low internet connectivity, then this constant database connections would be very slow, hence render the app ……..
There are better ways the yup programmers(Engineers) could handle this. I don’t know why they decided to choose the mediocre way.
Below, is our take on how the navigation and database connections had to be carried out. We actually connected the app to retrieve data from an online source, to simulate a network operation like the YUP app. The History page connects to the online source and retrieves data during it’s first screen load.It caches the data to the app. Then when the user leaves the page and returns again, it first checks if it has that same data in its cache. If it does, it loads the cached data, if not, then it does a fresh network call. As a result, the app runs faster for all types of users. Even those in the interior of Furawah or Ndop.
And Also, the navigation is done right.
Show Used Libraries
Take a look at the page below and tell us what app it belongs to. And its the only page in the android app with a back button. Prove us wrong.
I think we should stop here. I really hope the YUP team does better. Stop thinking we are inferior, when it comes to technology. With the proliferation of the internet, we are getting smart you know. We aren’t mediocre anymore. So approach our tech side with caution. Start giving us good products. We have apps from MEGA companies, installed on our phones and we see how they work. We love how they work.We enjoy using the apps daily, because these companies put in their best to make their products superb. Just imagine if WhatApp was built like YUP. Please don’t be an exception.
And let us Cameroonians learn to Tell it Like it is.
When it’s wack, say it. It helps us grow.
Make Apps that people can Use.
Absolutely no disrespect to the YUP team, remember i actually applauded you guys above, before i proceeded with roasting.
If you enjoyed the read, please destroy the like button👏 (psst..you can clap up to 50 if you want).
If you didn’t enjoy it, please show me how to do it better.
My names are Rosius Ndimofor from phAT RAbbit Apps. You can find me on instagram at @rosius where i post screenshots to most of my work
Feel free to check out some code snippets and app designs on my github profile.
