I am an edge case

After much anger, frustration, rage and ranting I had the opportunity to engage with Sam Brown, Foursquare’s lead UI designer and front-end developer. He was receptive and open to critical feedback, which I think is great.

They’ve looked at the data, made difficult decisions and upset a lot of users but ultimately have done what is better for the majority.

I have come to understand their approach and motives leading to the release of Swarm, even though I don’t fully agree with them.

Only 1 in 20 people used Foursquare for checking in and searching for places, therefore 19 out of 20 were either checking in or searching. Splitting the feature sets off into two distinct apps will improve the experience for these 19 out of 20 people.

I personally still want one app with one simple user experience.

Instead of hating on them for doing something I don’t agree with, I now accept that I am just not part of the majority. Foursquare is not to blame, it’s my personal preference.

I’ll keep Swarm on my secondary device for now, to see how it evolves, but it’s defintely not part of my daily routine the way Foursquare used to be.

Originally published at nathanjeffery.co on 23 August 2014.