Awkward, clunky, counter-intuitive.

Takes what should be a simple, straightforward concept - like contacting your family aboard a ship - and makes it cumbersome.

Want to send your family member a text or call them? Open the app. The phone icon is for calls. The speech bubble is for text. BUT, in order to do either you’ll need to counter-intuitively click on the speech bubble. Smart.

When you do that, you get the menu offering phone or text messaging options. Choose the phone icon and it will open up the phone keyboard - which you will never use because everyone is assigned their own personal on-board ship number.. So, now you will have to go to the bottom of the phone and open the contacts menu where you had previously, painstakingly entered all your contacts’ information.

When you open the contacts menu you’ll instinctively touch the name of the person you want to call. Why? Because every iPhone and every other phone in the whole wide world does that. But no. Here, touching the name of the person you want to call (or text) opens the editing menu. What you actually need to do is touch the phone icon that’s over on the far right.

Would you like to send a group text to the 12 other members of your family telling them that Norwegian messed up your dinner reservation? You can’t! The app doesn’t do group texting, just because.

Will your text get through? A lot of the time, yes. Sometimes, no. Would you be furious if you had to pay for this app or the service it sometimes provides? Absolutely.

Is it better than nothing? Sure. But having a smartly designed app would be one less thing folks cruising on Norwegian would have to complain about.

Skurczysyn about Norwegian iConcierge