From my reading and clicking and reading and clicking and ... (and someone else's might lead to a different conclusion) I get the feeling that sporting events are in particular need of time-saving devices. The rather obvious explanation for this is that when we attend a game we want to watch that game rather than wait in line to buy something. That makes sense, though perhaps not as much as it might seem. If what we really want to do, however, is watch the game, apps can definitely help keep us in our seats. But they're so slow! And it turns out there's a solution to that.

Ted Livingston is one of the developers of Kik, a bot platform, and he sees a problem with apps that let you order a beer from your seat at a sporting event - the whole process is too complicated. Writing in Medium, Livingston explains just how exasperating an experience that can be:

Imagine I had sat down and found that there was a sticker on the back of the chair in front of me that said, “Want a beer? Download our app!” Sounds great! I’d unlock my phone, go to the App Store, search for the app, put in my password, wait for it to download, create an account, enter my credit card details, figure out where in the app I actually order from, figure out how to input how many beers I want and of what type, enter my seat number, and then finally my beer would be on its way.
Actually, I would have been better off just waiting in line.

But imagine the stadium one more time, except now instead of spending millions to develop an app, the stadium had spent thousands to develop a simple, text-based bot. I’d sit down and see a similar sticker: “Want a beer? Chat with us!” with a chat code beside it. I’d unlock my phone, open my chat app, and scan the code. Instantly, I’d be chatting with the stadium bot, and it’d ask me how many beers I wanted: “1, 2, 3, or 4.” It’d ask me what type: “Bud, Coors, or Corona.” And then it’d ask me how I wanted to pay: Credit card already on file (**** 0345), or a new card.