Few things in this world make me as angry as bad software, particularly when it serves a crucial purpose. History is rife with examples: the Affordable Care Act portal notoriously crashed when it was first released, residents of Hawaii were incorrectly notified in 2018 of incoming ballistic missiles and Tesla’s self-driving cars routinely crash when confronted with unforeseen situations on the road.
These are extreme examples, but none of them have an impact on my daily life as a Dickinson student. GET Mobile, on the other hand, does.
Once a day or so I am struck with the desire to place an order for hot food from the SNAR. Maybe the famous “Chickinson” caught my eye, or I want some Sn-ies (the SNAR’s freshly-made french fries). Either way, my primary method of procurement is via the GET mobile app, the demon that possesses my phone under the guise of a black and white logo.
It is an understatement to say that the application is inconvenient. It’s downright terrible.
The experience of ordering a simple burger and fries is akin to getting a tooth pulled at the dentist. First, users are lucky if the app lets you start an order. It often takes several tries for me to open the SNAR order screen. Then the real fight starts. The user is lured into a false state of security by the familiar food options – mozzarella sticks, chai lattes and chicken poppers – until the fateful moment when you decide to, you know, pay for your order.
I have taken many courses at this college (30.5 credits to be exact) and in not a single one of them has there been a task as devilishly frustrating as trying to submit a SNAR order on the GET app.
I click the “View Cart” button. It thinks for a second, showing a white circle reminiscent of the “spinning wheel of death” common on aging MacBooks. No dice. I click again, same thing. Eventually, frustrated by the futility of my efforts, I turn to the small shopping cart icon on the main screen. Surely, this will be my salvation.
Finally…finally, after trying to check out of this stupid app for a minute or more, I am greeted with that wonderful checkout screen, an oasis in the desert of programming malpractice. If only that were the end of my struggles. Time itself seems to slow down as I try to select my payment method and submit the order.
Mobile food ordering is one of the great innovations of the iPhone era. Despite the obvious limitations of DoorDash and Uber Eats (poor driver pay, jacked-up prices, anti competitive policies), they make our lives easier. The same can hardly be said for the GET app.
There is really no excuse for the shoddiness of its production. This is no class-project-turned-service – the CBORD Group, who produces the app, has been in the tech services industry since 1975. CBORD itself is a unit of Roper Technologies, a behemoth that brought in nearly two BILLION dollars in revenue just last year.
Dickinson students deserve better. The College seems to have finally come to its senses about Moodle, ditching its 1990s-era feature catalogue for the (hopefully) more modern D2L Brightspace. GET is not nearly as embedded in the institution. It should be relatively painless to upgrade or switch providers.
