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John Mulaney gave me a great lesson in UX design.

Last night we went to see John Mulaney at the Academy of Music in Philadelphia. We arrived at 6:45 to find two lines wrapped around the block.

I expected a line, COVID screening takes time.

What I didn’t expect to find was a second line inside the theater where people were taking our phones and watches and putting them into security bags.

I was really looking forward to this evening. It was the first time I’ve seen a popular comedian in a venue like this. Having someone tell me I needed to lock up my phone and watch(!) when I walked in the door did not prime me for a night of hilarity that I thought I was paying for.

In fact, it was so far out of what I would consider normal behavior that my wife and I didn’t even think to text the kids to let them know we would be unavailable by phone.

So, rather than settle into our seats, excited for the show, we sat down pissed off that John Mulaney felt the need to treat us like children. “He’s not that funny”, I thought before the show opened. Most of the people around me were cranky about it too.

Now, some of you might say “It was on the website.”

It turns out it is, but you really have to look for it.

Take a look at the screen shot and tell me if you can spot the notice.

I bought the tickets on my phone and didn't swipe past the “Purchase” button.

This was so far out of what is normal behavior I wouldn’t even consider to look for a cell phone policy.

If you have critical information that you need to put in front of your users, make sure it’s given prominence on your page. Better still, put it into a confirmation box that someone needs to accept before continuing.

I can only think of two reasons that this policy is at the bottom. It's there to intentionally mislead the customer or it's a bad decision by the web designer.

Either way, a year from now, when the jokes are long forgotten I’m going to remember how annoyed I was about the experience.

I love to prepare recipes that I discover on the internet. There are some really great food bloggers that have made me a better cook. Unfortunately, the user experience of most food blogs is pretty terrible. They need to write long form content in order to attract search traffic. However, that long form content often buries the ingredients and instructions deep within the post.

It’s interesting to read deeper into the origins of the recipe and it helps me decide whether or not I actually want to try it. When it comes time to preparing a meal, I just want to see the recipe, in a form that is easy to read on a device that doesn’t turn off every couple of minutes.

That’s why my company built ClipDish. It’s a recipe app that saves just the recipe from food websites.

If you have an iOS device, go check out ClipDish in the App Store.

First day back to intermittent fasting I’m at 12 hours and the crankiness and hunger is hitting me. Luckily I’ve done this before and it passes it after the first couple of weeks.

Grocery stores with more self checkout lines than cashier’s don’t value their customer’s time.

Decided to stay home and watch TV by the fire with Trish. Happy New Year?