alt Hacker NewsThe wallet app UI is the peak of Apple's 'single 20y/o in sf' design.
Anyone that has multiple card from the same bank (because, say, you have a personal account and a shared account with your partner) has to do the "pick between the two identical looking top 20px of cards" dance every time they use Wallet to pay for something. It is mind-boggling that the current UI persists.
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First thing I noticed too, as I have multiple cards from the same bank. I also noticed they show you last digits of the ... CARD number, not the account number which would be tremendously more helpful. But I figured out you can put little icons on the cards. Which my bank did automatically for my business account. I added a little person icon for my personal account. Maybe bank specific though but definitely super dumb that you cannot label them yourself easily in the wallet app.
The design is skeuomorphic, modeled after a standard bifold wallet which gives your physical cards the same treatment.
My current wallet doesn't give me any affordances: https://grifiti.com/products/grifiti-band-joes-3-25-x-1-25-i...
Spot on re: App UI designed and engineered by 20y/o in SF. That is actually accurate, because that was (is?) the team that engineered it. I interviewed with them sometime ago when Apple Pay had just come out, and that entire Wallet/Passbook team seemed really toxic and ... very mediocre. Not surprising that this feature hasn't seen much improvement over time.
This has been one of my peeves for years. Apple is capable of good design, and overall is well regarded for it, but there are a number of places where they have blinders on and absolutely refuse to fix extremely obvious missteps.
I'm 39M and have ended up with a bunch of different credit cards; I get annoyed picking between them even without the additional complication of them being identical in appearance.
For me it's my daily driver, my Costco branded card, my airline's amex card, my USD denominated card, and my work-issued card. There are also two ATM/debit cards in there which I'll occasionally choose at small merchants where I know the CC fees hit them harder.
In most cases I just want the daily driver, but the airline card gets good rewards for dining so it does come out reasonably often as well. The USD card I can mostly ignore unless I'm traveling there and can temporarily set it as the default.
When I first started using it I thought something was broken
The flow for removing cards is also a fantastic exercise in slowness.
Why doesn’t the bank design a slightly different top for different cards?
There's also no way to go to the wallet from the actual shortcut screen you most commonly use (the double-click power one)
apple is a masterclass of terrible uis and hidden interactions
long hold to re-arrange your rearrange what your default card is - but to the bottom of the stack - is dumb
The same is true in a physical card wallet.
An 80 year old with early onset challenges can work this wallet, pick a card, and then hold the phone to the reader at a store. It's all co-opting "familiar" actions for them, not tech-like, which means they can do it.
The biggest UX issue Apple has for that persona isn't the wallet, it's the lack of physical home button. Everyone in their 70s and up seems to be given pause every time they aren't on the screen they expect, and even to unlock it.
Invisible affordances rely on memory rather than sight trigger: not good.