Your App Sucks!

Last week, I was dreading doing the reviews of my classmates' websites.  I knew it was going to take forever... and it did.  I spend a lot of time researching random shit on the internet, so while I was watching the presentations, I kept thinking, oh, they should read that article I found about ____.  Since I HAD to do the reviews, (What? I have to give my opinion on something?! Fine, twist my arm.) I figured I might as well make them as helpful as possible by including links to resources I felt were applicable.  I was also one of the only people in the class that put my name on all of the reviews I did!  :) I am not talented at writing for copy, so I end up typing exactly like I talk.  I figured it would be pretty obvious which reviews I wrote.  If you've ever gotten an email from me, you can probably read it and picture my facial expressions and hand gestures as you read it.    

I'm glad our professor allowed anonymous reviews though because I feel like it helped some people to be more honest.  A lot of the reviews I got made me laugh.  This one might have been my favorite:

What is it with women and greeting cards? I’ve never personally seen a guy who cares about them and almost every woman I know has to send one for every little thing. Maybe it’s sampling bias on my part, but this seems like a thing. At any rate this IS innovative, I can see something like this getting used a lot. The layout/design is very modern (apparently flat page styles are big these days, I guess they display well on mobile devices)

Overall, a lot of the guys did not get the purpose of my app.  I am confident that once I get done, the guys will all understand what I'm doing and will find a use for it.  At first I thought, eh - whatever - but it did occur to me, that I would have to figure out how to market this to males.  This comment gave me an idea of how to do that:

“Wishes” is a greeting card maker of sorts. I also see it as a meme generator. You type in a phrase or wish and click make card. This generates some randomized card with what you typed on it for you to send to a friend.

Exactly. Guys like Memes.  Taking the male/female use aspect into consideration, along with these next comments, I have a better idea of how I need to remake my landing page.

Maybe have a stream on the front page of the recent cards people made. So you can hear the cute things people say to each other and that would give you an idea of what you might want to say to someone. Or if you like the card someone generated you can just steal theirs. Im a lazy guy and that would be nice for us males to have… We can look romantic and still be driven by other goals.

If you are wanting to keep the card creation page clean, maybe consider a landing page with samples and information about how to use the cards. 

Here were some other comments that I found helpful and will be thinking about as I continue to work on the app:

Right now, the “make card” button only makes a card in one format at a time. It would be nice if the button would create multiple card options with one click. It would also be nice if users could select the card look before entering the text.  

The worst feature is probably the flat white background; while white goes with just about everything it lacks character.

Site has a slightly clunky feel to it – maybe it's the look needs to be more flashy or the speed of the plugin. I'm not sure.

Thank you everyone for taking the time to give me your thoughts.  I'm really motivated now to get this application up and running!