Minuteman Mobile 4+

It takes so long to start up. What is it loading? The display is oddly cut off up at the top of the screen so that there’s a black bar and the words at the top are chopped off. The “NYT Bestsellers” list on the front page shows a bunch of generic books with “Unknown Title,” and if you click on one, the app goes to a blank screen and you have to restart it. The account button at the bottom brings up a weird side menu with caret characters (>) that usually signify topics that expand, but clicking them just opens the menu item in the main screen. Then there’s no clear indication how to get out of that screen, no back button or X to close it. You have to click a different thing at the bottom or, it turns out, you can swipe right to open the Account menu, which apparently you can do from anywhere in the app but there’s no indication of that.

Anyway, I appreciate that they’re trying to provide an interface to the new catalog, but this app could have been built much better and needs a lot more debugging.

I want this app to succeed. I was content with the old app. I would appreciate being able to disable the title recommendations and have account info as my home page. Too many extra clicks added to the slower app response and loading time. Having to clicking to a less clear and visible titles holding page is a big step backwards. Is this app from the same developer? The old app was clear enough to be used on the go, this requires me to stop and fumble around. 1.5 stars for new app version but still 5 stars to the Minuteman library system!

As usual with municipal projects, this “improved” app is worse in almost every way. The old app was simple, straightforward, easy to use, and well laid out for a mobile app with big easy buttons and menu screens.
This new abomination is like a bastard stepchild of a website and an app and not enjoyable to use. It’s slow and buggy, everything is tiny and hidden behind meaningless corporate buzzword tabs like “discover”. Do you need a degree to be this bad at menu design? Like from the same feeder school Netflix hires its designers? Why is the main screen pushing new titles at me? If I wanted to browse, I would WALK INTO THE LIBRARY. There’s a “hide” button, but it isn’t working for me.

Remember when Butterfinger changed its recipe and no longer tasted the same but tried to advertise as better? That’s what you’re getting here: icky crumbly imitation Butterfinger; killed the simple app that works for an ugly one that doesn’t. It saddens me this change is being forced on patrons. Remember the old adage, folks: if it ain’t broke…