Designing for the door, not the desk

Software used standing up, in the dark, on a cracked phone, with a queue outside. Some notes on designing for that.

Every screen we build for the door assumes one hand, poor light and no patience. That rules out most of what looks good in a demo.

Big targets, one action per row, and a state that survives losing signal halfway through a scan.

When the interface is calm, the queue is calm, and that is the only metric that matters at nine on a Friday.