IOB Learn

I don’t normally write reviews. Ever. I normally delete an app and just forget about it. I can’t do that with IOB. Its use is enforced. When IOB send you correspondence, to read it, you have to use the app. To study, you have to use the app. Forgetting the enforced usage for a minute, and whether that is necessary, the app itself isn’t even good. It is abysmally bad. It’s the most counterintuitive and badly designed app ever. As others have pointed out, nothing is where it ought to be; it’s clunky: when you finally discover what you need and when you’ve navigated to the right ‘card’, the content is a further 5 or 6 click away; on iPhone and iPad, each screen requires you to re-enter your password. I could go on, but suffice to say, the UX is so bad that there is no UX. It’s like in the internal pitch for the app, the team used PowerPoint slides and the developers just decided to stick PowerPoint slides in web form everywhere and call it an app. Again, as others have rightly pointed out, at a time when IOB have doubled their membership fees, members are entitled to better value.

This has to be the most counterintuitive app I’ve ever used. Nothing is where you would expect to find it. For example, I’m currently studying a course with IOB. To access my support materials, is it under the section entitled ‘My Learning Plan’? This would be the most obvious out of all the options, but no. It’s under ‘Bookmarks’. Another example, I have a notification that there is an ‘announcement’. When I click on it I’m brought to a menu with 8 options. None of which show where the ‘announcement’ is. So I’m supposed to search through them all until I find it. These are just top of the iceberg examples. The website is not much better to be honest. The yearly membership fee has doubled to pay for this??

Trying to do CPD through this on an iPad or iPhone is terribly frustrating. Issues on nearly every page/section and nothing appears to properly fit on a mobile device screen, in either portrait or landscape. Constantly get stuck mid way through a course and can do nothing but exit out. This is not at all fit for purpose.