Redeeming a code: when processes are too simple

Here’s something that recently happened to me. I realise it might be a bit of an edge case, but I think it’s worth reflecting on it.

I’m sure you’ll all be familiar with the process of redeeming a code when someone gifts you an app for your Mac or iOS device. It’s simple, fast and straightforward, no question about it. My recent experience revealed that, in certain cases, it can be too simple for its own good.

One of my clients is a software studio that makes different apps for Mac and iOS. As they wanted me and other translators to check things in their latest apps, they provided a bunch of codes so we could obtain the apps free of charge. I can’t name names or be more specific, as you’ll understand, but this doesn’t really matter for what I want to demonstrate.

Now, I had already purchased one of these apps for Mac some time ago. Let’s call it App 1. In the communication I received, the codes were given for both App 1 and App 2; since the wording wasn’t crystal clear, and I didn’t want to waste a code for an app I already had, I asked for confirmation: “Is this code for App 2? Because I already have App 1 but not App 2, so it would be quite handy to have a code for App 2”.

“Yes, this is for App 2”, was the reply. So I happily initiated the process of redeeming that code. I opened the Mac App Store app, clicked on my account, clicked on Redeem Gift Card, and I entered the code in this screen:

After hitting Return, the next window simply said something like Your app is now downloading. So I clicked back and in the app list associated with my account I watched, in horror, that what was downloading was App 1. And its code had been ‘burnt’ for nothing.

The mix-up done by the client isn’t the issue here. The first question I asked myself as I was powerlessly watching the app download, was Could all this have been avoided? And the answer I gave myself was, of course, yes. Yes, all this could have been avoided with just a sprinkle of thoughtfulness in the user interface.

The two failure points in this process, as far as I reckon, have been:

After entering the code, I should have been presented with a confirmation screen informing me about which app that code corresponded to and asking me whether I was sure I wanted to redeem it. What happens instead is that you have no idea what you’re downloading until it’s too late. Addressing this would be enough to avoid mistakes or accidental wastes of gift codes.

The second appalling thing in this process was that, despite me having already a purchased copy of the app installed on my Mac, the App Store app redeemed the code and re-downloaded the app anyway. And this, in an ideal UI world, should not happen. There should be a failsafe that interrupts the code redeeming process if the system detects that you already own the app and it’s regularly licenced.

I know that in most cases people already know which app they’ve been gifted and have no issues with the code redeeming process as it is. But I think that adding just a little confirmation screen before actually redeeming a code would certainly be an improvement. I talked about this with a couple of friends to confirm whether my remarks were making sense, and one of them told me that this would have been very useful to him when he was given a code for an app as a birthday gift, and it turns out he already owned that app.

Simplicity in user interface design is often a good thing, but it’s worth spending time evaluating the amount of simplicity you provide in an application or in a user interaction flow.