2.10. Optimizing for the Primary Task

Josh: It was important that we make it as stupid-simple as possible to pull out your phone, launch the app, and check in where you are. That's the core experience we had to optimize—to make it as fast as possible. It has to be extraordinarily simple to choose your location and then actually check in. I'm a big fan of the "BFB" [Big F—kin' Button] and I think you always want to make it almost painfully obvious what people are supposed to do next. So on the detail view for a check-in spot, we've got a big orange check-in button. You can't miss it.

But before version 2, every time you launched the app, you got the Passport screen, the dashboard of where you've been instead of a view of what's going on right now. That was a problem. We wanted to put more emphasis on making it easier to help you check in, or to find where your friends are. So we made the Activity screen the first screen.