A Lesson in UX (User Experience) from My Vacations

During my trip through Ecuador, I brought my Oura ring. It's an awesome ring that tracks my sleep. I've been using it nightly for the last few weeks. It helps me evaluate how well I sleep every night.

Unfortunately, I forgot the charger. Because my battery was getting low, I decided to activate the ring's airplane mode from the app. This mode is meant to preserve battery when the charger is forgotten.

Airplane mode turns off Bluetooth, which means it disconnects from the mobile app. Before I activated airplane mode, I saw that in this mode the ring still works and stores my sleep data.

However, it turns out that with Bluetooth deactivated, I can't see my sleep score from last night. At first, I thought it's not a big deal, because all I'll need to do is turn off airplane mode.

It turns out the only way to deactivate airplane mode is with the charger. I find this hilarious because I obviously don't have the charger, the fact I don't have a charger is the only reason I activated airplane mode in the first place.

Who else would need to activate airplane mode in their ring if they hadn't forgotten their charger? So why is the charger the only way to deactivate airplane mode?

I think this is terrible UX (User Experience). Now I'm trapped, unable to use my Oura ring for the rest of my trip.

I still love my Oura ring, but as a user, it feels like they made a dumb mistake, which I think it's easy to improve even considering their technical limitations. (Oura ring team, if you read this, I have some great solution ideas so feel free to DM me).

I actually find it interesting to analyze where big companies make huge mistakes with their products.

If they make such mistakes at a large scale, I wonder how many mistakes I must have in my own business. It's always beneficial to listen to feedback and improve people's experiences as much as possible.