When an app rots you're left completely helpless. When a website rots at least you can try with multiple browsers until one of them works.
In 2015 Robin Hutcheson partnered with a vendor, ParkSLC, to deploy an iOS and Android app that is the only possible way to pay for street parking in many areas of downtown SLC. She seemed awfully proud of herself in this announcement, bragging about how it hasn't really fallen over much in the first few months in the field:
But that's not the bar. For public infrastructure it needs to continue to function for the life of the system. So let's fast-forward to Kubecon 2024 in SLC. I'm staying with a friend further south, so I had to rent a car. I pull up to a restaurant where I'm meeting some business partners and park right here:
In a past life there would be a parking meter right there at the stall where I could drop in some coins and be on my way. Now let's talk about how Robin's fancy new parking system is going now that we're in the app-infested future.
It's November in the early evening, so it's not exactly warm and cozy. The first problem is that the little blue post you see in the Google Streetview back in Oct 2022 isn't there now. So I have no idea what the stall number is. Fortunately the blue post for the spot behind it is there, and I determine it's counting up going north. I guess the stall number is one higher than the one behind it, and that's all I have to go with.
I walk up to the super-advanced new fancy kiosk and hit the button to turn on the screen. Icons on the screen invite me to start tapping away to register. No response. The touchscreen functionality is completely broken.
There's a sticker with a QR code and a website, parkslc.com. Okay, maybe I'm not being phished here. Better do a quick web search to make sure. Yup, ParkSLC appears to be The Thing. So I go to parkslc.com to get the link to the app and discover that it's only distributed via Google Play. But I'm running GrapheneOS because I don't want Google spying on me. So it looks like the only way I can park on W Temple in downtown Salt Lake City is to allow Google to spy on me?
Great. Well, I do have another dummy account on the phone with a sandboxed install of Google Play with a temporary account I created just for that user on that phone, so I was able to attempt to install the app. It still "phones home" to Google but maybe without enough information for Google to determine who I am. But at that point I'm greeted with an error like, "This app was designed for an older version of Android. Go pound sand."
Great. So this app isn't even being updated, I guess. I wonder if other people with newer Android devices are getting this same error. Regardless, by then it's been about 7 minutes while I've been sitting on a concrete bench in the cold trying to pay to park so I can go to my business meeting. So far both the kiosk and the app have been dead ends.
My last option, it seems, is to browse to parkslc.com and see if there's a way to pay via Firefox. After scrolling around more than I should have had to I finally find a "Pay Online" link and follow it. It asks me for a phone number, so I punch that in. I get an SMS. I have to create a pin. It asks me for a "Zone Number." I punch in what I guess it's supposed to me. Then it prompts me for my credit card. I start punching that in, but when I get to the drop-down menu to select the year of expiration... nothing. No response to my taps. No ability to just type in the year.
Great. So the website doesn't work with Firefox. Another 3 or 4 minutes wasted on another dead end. Okay, so I launch Vanadium and restart the whole process again. This time around the drop-down menu worked, and I was finally able to complete the process, after futzing around with a broken kiosk, a broken app, and a broken website for 12-13 minutes out in the cold night air of Salt Lake City.
As the app-based system she deployed in SLC fell into ruin behind her, Robin has since flown on to be the administrator of the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration. Good for her! I'm sure there's blame to be passed around here, as it's in the current transportation administration in SLC to maintain the system in working order. I just wonder how many spare kiosk touchscreens they have lying around from a system built in 2015. And I wonder if anyone still has the source code for the app that doesn't work with newer versions of Android. Or if there's anyone around who can even push an update any more. Obviously Robin didn't seem to do enough to ensure the system she deployed would end up being robust and reliable public infrastructure just 10 short years down the road.
And not to pick on Robin too much, this is endemic in our institutions everywhere. As an industry we need to do much, much better. One lesson from my anecdote is that there should always be a website, and it should be as simple and compatible as possible, especially if it serves as public infrastructure.
In 2015 Robin Hutcheson partnered with a vendor, ParkSLC, to deploy an iOS and Android app that is the only possible way to pay for street parking in many areas of downtown SLC. She seemed awfully proud of herself in this announcement, bragging about how it hasn't really fallen over much in the first few months in the field:
https://archive.org/details/Press_Conference_-_ParkSLC_Mobil...
But that's not the bar. For public infrastructure it needs to continue to function for the life of the system. So let's fast-forward to Kubecon 2024 in SLC. I'm staying with a friend further south, so I had to rent a car. I pull up to a restaurant where I'm meeting some business partners and park right here:
https://www.google.com/maps/@40.7647761,-111.8938564,3a,75y,...
In a past life there would be a parking meter right there at the stall where I could drop in some coins and be on my way. Now let's talk about how Robin's fancy new parking system is going now that we're in the app-infested future.
It's November in the early evening, so it's not exactly warm and cozy. The first problem is that the little blue post you see in the Google Streetview back in Oct 2022 isn't there now. So I have no idea what the stall number is. Fortunately the blue post for the spot behind it is there, and I determine it's counting up going north. I guess the stall number is one higher than the one behind it, and that's all I have to go with.
I walk up to the super-advanced new fancy kiosk and hit the button to turn on the screen. Icons on the screen invite me to start tapping away to register. No response. The touchscreen functionality is completely broken.
There's a sticker with a QR code and a website, parkslc.com. Okay, maybe I'm not being phished here. Better do a quick web search to make sure. Yup, ParkSLC appears to be The Thing. So I go to parkslc.com to get the link to the app and discover that it's only distributed via Google Play. But I'm running GrapheneOS because I don't want Google spying on me. So it looks like the only way I can park on W Temple in downtown Salt Lake City is to allow Google to spy on me?
Great. Well, I do have another dummy account on the phone with a sandboxed install of Google Play with a temporary account I created just for that user on that phone, so I was able to attempt to install the app. It still "phones home" to Google but maybe without enough information for Google to determine who I am. But at that point I'm greeted with an error like, "This app was designed for an older version of Android. Go pound sand."
Great. So this app isn't even being updated, I guess. I wonder if other people with newer Android devices are getting this same error. Regardless, by then it's been about 7 minutes while I've been sitting on a concrete bench in the cold trying to pay to park so I can go to my business meeting. So far both the kiosk and the app have been dead ends.
My last option, it seems, is to browse to parkslc.com and see if there's a way to pay via Firefox. After scrolling around more than I should have had to I finally find a "Pay Online" link and follow it. It asks me for a phone number, so I punch that in. I get an SMS. I have to create a pin. It asks me for a "Zone Number." I punch in what I guess it's supposed to me. Then it prompts me for my credit card. I start punching that in, but when I get to the drop-down menu to select the year of expiration... nothing. No response to my taps. No ability to just type in the year.
Great. So the website doesn't work with Firefox. Another 3 or 4 minutes wasted on another dead end. Okay, so I launch Vanadium and restart the whole process again. This time around the drop-down menu worked, and I was finally able to complete the process, after futzing around with a broken kiosk, a broken app, and a broken website for 12-13 minutes out in the cold night air of Salt Lake City.
As the app-based system she deployed in SLC fell into ruin behind her, Robin has since flown on to be the administrator of the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration. Good for her! I'm sure there's blame to be passed around here, as it's in the current transportation administration in SLC to maintain the system in working order. I just wonder how many spare kiosk touchscreens they have lying around from a system built in 2015. And I wonder if anyone still has the source code for the app that doesn't work with newer versions of Android. Or if there's anyone around who can even push an update any more. Obviously Robin didn't seem to do enough to ensure the system she deployed would end up being robust and reliable public infrastructure just 10 short years down the road.
And not to pick on Robin too much, this is endemic in our institutions everywhere. As an industry we need to do much, much better. One lesson from my anecdote is that there should always be a website, and it should be as simple and compatible as possible, especially if it serves as public infrastructure.