If you go to “Help” then “Making Monzo” (it’s quite near the bottom), you can opt to be notified when certain upcoming features become available.
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Surely that defeats the purpose then? If its now ready to be rolled out then why not give it to testflight/beta users when it was in final stage of employee testing
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Because there isn’t a case for implementing through TestFlight at any point?
If it is just an iteration of a feature (and something as small as changing the image of a locked pot) why would you push it through TestFlight?
Im not refuting that at all im just pointing out theres a bit of an identification issue going on and same could be said for labs of whats the use in it?
What should go into beta/testflight version testing?
To me id use it as a last sanity check before a rollout
- Its gone through employee testing
- Its all gone ok in beta/tf
- Then do phase/full rollout
The accounts tab rollout as well could go through a similar process.
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I do agree that both Labs and Testflight have been a little under-used (recently).
However, IMO:
Labs should be used for completely new and innovative features that you should (and currently do) Opt-In to experience and provide feedback, that way some tweaks can be made before full roll-out. (@simonb has hinted that the AMEX feature will be coming to Labs)
Testflight on the other hand I think should be used for large-scale and possibly breaking coding changes to the app, where these things will be looked at for the next month at least. Think of it like when a new iOS comes out and you can get the BETA for it - you could literally lose everything but you take that risk. Whereas, things were it is just a case of rolling-out I don’t think should be put through TF as this just exacerbates the time in rolling it out. If its ready and not a major change under the hood of the app, why TF it?
I don’t think people who use TF should be “rewarded” (the complete wrong word but hard to articulate) just for using TF if there is no need to, if that makes any sense?
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If you dont resize it at all and you leave the black banner at the top and the bottom, it automatically fits the image as best it can 
Completely.
Feedback is provided and bugs reported and in return the users get there hands on new features first.
Even if these features are small or large i still think they need to be utilized better rather than rolling out being able to see card number or the custom pot images and things like that to 20% of the customer base these things should be available for all beta users beforehand otherwise whats the point.
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Yea I did that now, just confusing when you have that box to try and fit it in.
I think this may be where we disagree - even if it had been tested on TF, there would still need to be a roll-out it wouldn’t just splash onto everyone’s device at the same time.
I do agree that there are more use cases for labs and TF though and I hope they are utilised more!
Why not put this in Labs, iron out bugs/issues and then bring out of Labs when happy?
Because there are no more bugs/issues and it is ready to be implemented?
Follow up: Just because it is ready to be implemented doesn’t mean it’s possible to roll-out to 1.5million users.
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Do you think this would cause a load issue?
Testflight users would get it a week before?
Android and ios app releases dont happen on the same day so slightly staggered access.
Not everyone updates apps straight away.
If the systems fragile enough to crumble on that then i belive thats just poor design to be honest 
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But in this example what benefit does providing it to TF a week early actually do? They already know it works it’s just a case of staggering the roll-out which I believe they do with the vast majority of updates whether through TF or not.
I don’t think it’s about the system crumbling but what makes the most sense for the user experience.
Has anyone got this on android yet?
Perhaps adding to Labs would make die hard fans feel good plus allow a staged roll out (not everyone uses Labs) than Monzo prefers, rather than 20% or thereabouts of all accounts.
So how does a tiered release make for a better user experience? If anything id suggest it lessens it to know a feature is ready… you’re just unlucky enough not to have it just now
In this example simply another form of rollout that should have been released in “last weeks” beta app version to ensure with a larger group there was no last minute stupid things missed.
I feel like were going round in circles a bit with this now. My point on this was I think the flow of feature releases could be a bit more formalised to make use of the different programs for such cases.
- Beta/TF get earlier access to smaller features that are perhaps buggy perhaps not
- Labs used for v1 launchs where iteration/feedback is encouraged on stable products/features
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Oh yeah, Labs. I forgot about that, it’s dried up maybe Monzo have too 
But that isn’t what Labs does, does it? - as when the feature is ready for full roll-out, being subscribed to it through Labs doesn’t mean that you won’t get the full roll out.
The feature will be removed from Labs and added through the full roll out so there is no “benefit” in having had it in Labs because Monzo already knew they wanted a full roll out.
EDIT:
Why does Monzo need to make die hard fans feel good with a Labs roll-out when they could just release it? (This sounds quite harsh but I’m more curious about the proposition)
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I’m not disagreeing with your point, I think we may have different ideas as to what should go through TF and what shouldn’t.
In my opinion, if they are ready to roll out, (and for something as small as adding a picture to pots) the employee test is enough and doesn’t require a run through TF. Although I can see a use case for TF.
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Cos it would be a nice thing to do