[biswaroop]

Well that's a long reply, and I agree with you by and large. RH has a bright future if they communicate better with their users.

Re: Fidelity, by excellent I mean: it does what I want it to do, and the UI is clear enough. To be fair, I'm an infrequent trader who mainly uses Fidelity for banking, so I don't spend much time on the app. I'm also willing to sacrifice UI flashiness for a functional service that doesn't block me from trading when I do.

[ETA: I believe there's a lot to be said, and has been said, for ugly functional UIs that outlast fancier competition. The archetype is craigslist]

[gonehome]

It sounds like we probably agree on most things and use fidelity in roughly the same way.

I’d argue Craigslist’s design is ugly, but quite good - it’s dense/high bandwidth, does exactly what people want without fluff. It’s fast. They also benefit a lot from network effects, but even ignoring that I think the website does a pretty good job doing what it's supposed to and is easy to use.

Fidelity is ugly and bad. Hundreds of hidden menus. Many things can’t be done via the app. Some actions require a phone call. Options trading sucks.

For an example, I wanted to wire my rent. The place to do this is via transfers.

Specifically: Transfer -> to bank account -> that I do not own.

That’s the flow to wire money to an external person. It’s not obvious and buried and it can only be done on a desktop.

Automated deposits are similarly cumbersome.

The app is also quite slow and the login flow is painful.