Tell your users what changed

I book a lot of travel through Chase Travel, and many of those flights end up being on United. Every once in a while, I get an an email titled –
“Urgent – Your itinerary has been updated.”

Except the message never actually tells me what changed.

So I end up comparing the old itinerary with the new one – flight numbers, timings, connections – trying to spot a difference that isn’t always obvious. In some cases, I never figure it out. Maybe it was a terms-and-conditions tweak. Maybe a backend update. Who knows.

As someone who receives a lot of harsh criticism about the products I’ve built over the years, I always remind myself it’s far easier to criticize than it is to build. I’m sure there’s some operational or technical reason things work this way.

But it’s still a good reminder for anyone building products – and especially for myself: If you notify a user that something changed, make it dead easy to find the change.

A simple visual cue or one clear line of copy can transform an experience.

Clarity is a feature.