Hi HN, I just wanted to add that I'm looking for any kind of feedback on the app. I've been working on it since graduating in may and released it a couple of days ago.
- In the app, cut down the introduction texts and steps. It takes like 30 taps to get the alarm started.
- Also, I found the pulse of the focused area (the circle) annoying and distracting when reading the text just next to it.
- Use briefer descriptions of the things in the guided tour(s). Every word you can remove is often an improvement. And, again, get rid of steps. I'd recommend 3-5 steps tops (and entirely!).
- Somewhere you write "Try to tap here to do something..." => Get rid of the "Try to". As a user, I know how to tap - just write "Tap here to ..."
- Make the sound selections (radio button lists) play the selected sound on tap: by default the top entry is selected. When I tap it—as I initially don't know how it sounds–it doesn't play the sound. I have to switch to the second entry and then back to the first one.
- 42 MB is quite large for "just an alarm clock." Most people won't bother, but keep in mind that even in 2017 software should be performant and, if not necessary, not bloated.
Besides these minor points, I have to say that the idea is great! I am really looking forward to use the app tonight :-)
Hi! Thanks so much for this very detailed feedback and glad you like the testimonials :).
intro/onboarding feedback: I agree with you and will look at ways to cut it down both in length and quality
- I just removed the "Try tapping" and changed it to tap cause I agree with you (it will be pushed out next update)
- you're 100% correct on the sound previews too, I implemented the listener as an onChanged rather than onClick, but will look into fixing that in the near future.
- the 42 MB is almost entirely due to mp3 sound files (the alarm ringtones + sleep engine sounds). I used compression to strike a balance between quality and space and also used seamless looping on the sleep engine to get rid of the need for giant audio files, but there is always room for dramatic improvement on that front and I'll keep working at it. If you have any suggestions please let me know. I think that once I get a back end going what I'd eventually like to do is have users download the tracks based on what they need (this might be a very naive approach though so correct me if that's a bad idea).
I'm glad I could help and looking forward to the update :-)
IMO the sleep sound feature seems to be something you should analyze whether it's used or not. If not (<5 or 10%?), drop the feature. If it's used, you might want to extend the collection (in the premium version only?), and then the user could download the sounds he/she wants.
Yeah I think this sounds like the eventual goal. And media packs are interesting, but I'll have to provide many, high quality sleep engine sounds to justify that. Thanks for your advice :)
For smaller audio files, take a look at the Opus codec. It does way better than mp3 at lower bitrates. Android 5.0 and up can decode it natively and there's a library with NDK that should work on older devices.
Awesome, I'll take a look. My main reason for choosing mp3 was compatibility, but I didn't research it thoroughly, I just chose the cookie cutter option. My app is currently min 5.0 so this seems like a very viable option. Thanks :)
I've been using it for a week now and I'm a little disappointed in only one thing: if I wake up early and press the cancel button, I don't get my star! If there is an option to say, 'give me my star if i sleep x% of the total alarm time' I'd love that. I get woken up by kids, birds, whatever, very often and I'm afraid I'll never get a constellation at this rate.
The first screen I see on the page has a challenge that at least 8% of males (me included) can't solve. Matching colors is difficult to make accessible so it's no surprise that the example is one I couldn't solve, being partially green blind.
Hey really sorry about that, there are a variety of dismissal methods you can choose from including shake dismissal, qr scan, barcode scan and a simple stop button as well as this color tap. That dismissal method is just the one I went with for the screenshot, but there is something for everyone.
I'm also looking in to giving users the option to change the color combination because I've received this feedback from two people now. If you have any suggestions for colors that would work for you please let me know and I'll add them to my trello board
Yeah, I was less concerned about the usability of the app itself (I assumed there are other challenges available and they're configurable) but it's a bad first impression, especially when it's the only challenge shown and the screenshot is repeated multiple times throughout the landing page (which suggests it is the only challenge currently available).
If you're going with a "color blind" palette, just make sure you don't accidentally make it worse. I've seen many people mistakenly avoid e.g. red/green completely and end up with hues that are even less distinguishable.
A good low-tech approximation is to just check your palette in gray scale and make sure e.g. red/green or yellow/blue don't appear too similar. It's likely not necessary that a user knows which color each color is supposed to be but they will likely need to be able to distinguish them at a glance. Also make sure when filling in a shape with color (such as letters) that the shapes are big enough (i.e. bold enough) -- colors are easier to distinguish when they cover a larger surface (more photons, better vision).
Very fair, I picked it cause of all the dismiss methods it's the most visually appealing since the others aren't really based on interacting with the UI much.
I'm working on some alternative palettes right now, and will do my best not to make it worse. One option I'm considering is allowing users to customize the palette entirely by picking 4 colors themselves from a list.
Also while I'm not sure if this is accurate, the android developer mode settings offer the ability to simulate a color space based on various color blindnesses (Monochromacy, Deuteranomaly, Protanomaly, and Tritanomaly) so I'm working with that too.
Yeah, no. That works if the colors are easy to recognise but considering how many times I guessed wrong when facing two unlabeled hues I was able to distinguish but not clearly recognise (e.g. knowing one is green and the other red but guessing wrong because the green is brighter when normally the red would be brighter).
If I understand correctly though, I think that suggestion would defeat the purpose of the stroop test that this method is using to trick people, cause the whole idea is that the word ocean is supposed to mislead you and the color of the text can be green. You tap the text color, not the meaning of the word.
Congrats! This looks really interesting. One thing I would appreciate clarity on: I'd prefer not to send data to ad networks, if I pay for the ad free version, will that not only prevent the display of ads but also any associated tracking?
That's a really interesting question that I'm going to look in to. I'll get back to you as soon as I can. At the moment if you pay for the ad free version, ads are immediately destroyed and prevented from loading from there on out. The only thing that I need to look in to is if initializing AdMob in the app results in any tracking. It is not my intention to send any user data to ad networks if they have the ad-free version and I will fix it if I find out that I've overlooked something.
I've looked in to the question and I've changed it so that even the MobileAds SDK is only initialized if premium is not active when the application is first created. This way, if premium is enabled, AdMob is not touched in any way at any stage of the application's lifecycle. I asked whether or not this initialize call I was worried about actually does anything with respect to tracking and the only answer I've gotten so far is a "no", but I still need to do a little more research to make sure there aren't any other possible ways you may be tracked if ads aren't ever being loaded or requested. This additional check will go live in a day or two and I'll update you if I find any other potential issues.
Thanks so much really appreciate your support! I experimented with an ios style parallax effect on the background stars but found that the library really used a lot of memory so I removed it for the time being. It looked super cool though so I'm going to try and write it myself in the near future. I'm also really interested in animations for the stars and a swirling nebula. My animation abilities are almost non-existent right now, but it's something I want to work on asap.
That clock widget is super cool, Ive got a lot of features in the Todo list ATM but a widget is on the radar eventually too :). Really appreciate the feedback
On a OnePlus 2 with LineageOS 14.1 it gobbled 146 MB of RAM max. How much more did the parallax lib add? Possibly hiding it behind an option with a warning would be viable?
Animating everything would also be nice. You've already did an awesome job on the UI overall ;).
I've seen much worse stuff from established apps on the Play Store. Worked on one even. The designers had the displeasure of doing glorified skinning. On top of that there was a lot of bike shedding around buttons but pretty much everyone ignored the dark patterns that were dictated from the top ("Hooked" had to be our new Bible, thankfully we didn't have to read it except for a 4 page snippet explaining the addiction loop we would want to exploit).
I only ever tested the parallax library on a very early build of the app which consumed far less ram overall just cause the app wasn't finished yet, so it's hard to give an exact amount. If ever I did any serious animation work and parallax backgrounds I'd leave the option to disable it for users who don't want it or find it impacts performance. I'd also have to do extensive testing with any third party library for parallax cause it's so vital they release sensors properly and without fail when they are no longer needed to conserve battery. I'd love to work on animations in the future cause I think that's one of the areas the app needs the most improvement in and thank you for the complement on the UI.
> I'd also have to do extensive testing with any third party library for parallax cause it's so vital they release sensors properly and without fail when they are no longer needed to conserve battery.
Looking at what's available I'm not sure if it wouldn't be better to re-implement a lib for that. You could pass on extensive testing IF you find a lib that's already used in another project.
Consider introducing new features like Sleep for Android does (a popup with a change list displayed on 1st run after an update). With this you could try moving users to the "Experimental" settings section. Note that having solid issue reporting from the app would immensely help then.
Another approach would be to set up a beta program for experimental stuff. Not sure which one would be more cost-effective, needs more investigation.
Hey sorry for responding so late. Thanks for sharing those libraries, I'll take a look at both. The one i used before was actually quite tough to find and I remember it wasn't a very popular one. I have a release notes list now implemented in the app (as of about an hour ago) and I think i'm going to try the parallax thing soon cause you're really tempting me haha. I really like the idea of experimental settings and think I'm going to do it that way.
I've gotten that request from quite a few people now and am looking in to ways to add that functionality to the alarm while preserving the overall idea of setting meaningful alarms with consequences. The reason behind the single button initially is that it forces you to consciously set your alarm which I felt would increase commitment. I completely understand that it isn't for everyone so am working on the multiple alarm / repeat support options too.
Probably like this: let the user set the repeated alarms (like, Mon-Fri at 9am, Sat-Sun at 10am), yet the user is required to "confirm" the alarm each night if he/she really wants that alarm be effective. This way, the user can avoid the tedious "keep setting same alarm" each night, and the "conciously set the alarm" thing is still there.
I want to try it, looks awesome! Is it in the iphone store or only on google phone? I didn't see it in the apple app store but maybe I searched the wrong terms? Thanks.
