

Ask HN: Review My App - CareLogger (A Diabetes Tracking Tool) - dmix
http://carelogger.com

======
nathan82
Great landing page, initially I was clicking around trying to figure out why
such a slick looking tool was completely free! You really get across how and
why your service would be useful.

A few little nitpicks, hopefully they're helpful: The bottom signup button
isn't clickable. The orange 'join today' text could maybe do with a nicer font
- more handwritten, less script. There's a small white square in the top right
of your stock photo. Cutout outline visible on the woman's hair. The
screenshots might be better popping up in a lightbox. The sign-up form struck
me as generic, and didn't match the page I had just come from. The site root
doesn't show my dashboard when I'm logged in. The icons next to the different
types of entries look like youtube 'play' buttons, confused me for a moment.

~~~
dmix
Nitpicking is welcome, this is the type of feedback we don't get from our
usual users - appreciate it.

~~~
nathan82
Glad to help, a couple more before I go back to obsessing over my own
pixels...

The vertical spacing between the green headings could do with tweaking, more
space above and less below to tie them to the block of text they go with. Top
headline text "Keeping tabs..." has the dots of the i's and the left edge of
the 'g' sliced off. Your logo is nice but the wordmark looks (to me) very
corporate and squashed up; maybe incorporate some blues from the logo and use
looser kerning.

------
alexh
I like it!

Unfortunately, the fundamental problem with diabetics, and the reason that the
(now) 4 people who have commented here never created this app, is that
diabetics are lazy. This needs to be soooooo easy to use. Which it is, to the
extent that it is a webapp.

This really somehow needs to get turned into a mobile app, which will remind
you to do the checks, and prompt you for a reading. If you were to provide a
simple web API, I would probably be plugging into it tonight on Palm.

If this app texted me, and I could respond with readings, I would be in love.

Particularly for basal tests and bolus tests on an insulin pump, prompted
readings with a dead simple interface are key. When you are supposed to be
doing this 5 times a day, you are going to be as expedient as possible. This
is the primary problem with logging systems. Personally I either forget, or
don't want to run upstairs every time.

The only real missing feature of note is the lack of an interface for basal
and bolus testing. Though that only applies to a subset of diabetics.

~~~
dmix
The texting feature is a good idea.

Most of the tech people we talk to think a mobile app is an essential feature.
But at the moment we noticed we have an older and less tech savvy user-base.
So its not at the top of the list at the moment. But definitely in the future.

Btw, there are about 4-5 iPhone apps for tracking diabetes = in the app store
if you are looking for one. Not sure about Palm.

------
liminalist
Type 1 diabetic here. Maybe I can offer some unique insight. Or maybe, also
being a hacker, that makes me overly critical, so sorry if this is too harsh.

There are tons of tools like this out there (including software from
Medtronic, the leading maker of insulin pumps, that they've clinically proven
increases diabetes control, and integrate directly with glucose meters). I
don't use them because:

* My meter stores that stuff for me and does charts and stats. If I want those charts on my computer, I can just upload the data with the software that comes with the meter.

* Having all the information graphed in one place on the web isn't more useful than looking at my meter.

* If I did want more than the meter does in one place, I would just use a spreadsheet.

* These tools don't add any major additional insight into what I can do to manage my diabetes better, at least compared to the work in using them.

Your pitch -- and the center of your development thought process -- needs to
be "use this and you will live longer and have less stress in your life, for
X, Y and Z reasons". Don't write another line of code until you have that, is
my advice.

The most general problem is that there is no "stickiness" to the app -- no
compelling reason to keep using it day after day. (Some ideas to get you
going: make it get smarter the more I use it. Send me actionable info --
"you've only gone to the gym once this week -- on weeks when you go at least
2x, your avg. BG is 20 points lower". Make me want to show off when I'm doing
well, and indirectly apply social pressure to do better when I'm not.)

And you don't even have some basic details right. You have nothing for
exercise! That's huge! And the glycemic load, fat content, and amount of fiber
in a food is as important as how much carbohydrate is in it. Knowing how many
carbs are in a piece of pizza isn't that useful (and there are a million other
tools to do that already --including ones built directly into insulin pumps
and blood glucose meters, and mobile apps). If you don't know that you should
take very different insulin amounts and patterns when eating a serving of
Skittles, pizza or brown rice even though they have the same amount of CHO,
you don't know enough to help.

There really isn't anything in the app that shows you've even read the
wikipedia page about diabetes. Sorry if that sounds harsh but every part of
the app reflects it, and so as a diabetic it's hard not to find the whole
thing condescending. In addition to nothing on exercise, your app doesn't do
anything with A1C/fructosamine, C-peptide tests, cholesterol, T4, etc., all of
which are more useful to compare to blood glucose readings than BP, and as
important to track over time. Have you even heard of A1C? They run commercials
on TV reminding diabetics to get it checked regularly all the time.

Maybe my expectations are too high, or maybe yours are. If you're going for
super-simple, it needs to be a lot more simple, a bit more useful, and a lot
more memorable. If you're going for sophisticated, you've got a whole lot of
work to do and probably need to get diabetes and/or a medical degree first.
But you need to make a choice: are you going for power users, or casual users?
Even if you got the medical details right, there's a basic market fit problem
here, and a lack of stickyness, as mentioned above. There are way too many
competitors not to have the market fit be _solid_ and have some very unique
twist.

In general, if you're selling a specialty product, you need to know more about
the specialty than the average user. I've created some very successful
software for the specialty $foo market. But I was a $foo-ographer for 10
years, everybody in the $foo world knows my name, I've been blogging about
$foo for 5 years, etc.

As a white guy, would you start a line of hair-care products for black people?
Open up a Thai restaurant even though you've never been to Thailand, don't
even eat Thai food, and there are already 3 good Thai restaurants in the
neighborhood -- but you heard that lemongrass is somehow involved? Probably
not, so why do this? DON'T FAKE THE FUNK.

Oh, final pet peeve. For the love of Pete don't say stuff like "CareLogger
makes it possible to share your logged information with your physician simply
by printing off the desired records." No. Being able to print a web page is
not a feature. I can just take my glucose meter to the doctor and they can
pull my data directly from it into their computer! Don't mention stuff that
makes you look bad, even to downplay it. If you can't compete on a feature,
don't mention it. Sell the features you _do_ have, preferably the ones
competitors don't.

~~~
dmix
Thanks for writing that.

> Your pitch -- and the center of your development thought process -- needs to
> be "use this and you will live longer and have less stress in your life, for
> X, Y and Z reasons". Don't write another line of code until you have that,
> is my advice.

We built this application in 3 days. It went from a friend saying I've been
trying to use this tools but they are hard to use and cost too much money. So
we build a tool equal in functionality to those on the market but with a
better UI, web based and free.

We didn't go through an extensive product planning process where we could get
to the root of our customers problems and needs.

Instead the plan was to launch a dead simple, minimum viable product. Part of
this process is being able to get access to a community of diabetics and
finding out exactly what diabetics want in a tracking tool. This is much much
easier now that we've launched and put ourselves out there.

> You have nothing for exercise! That's huge!

Yes, this is on the todo list. We decided to focus on the other four as they
seemed to be in the most demand.

------
dmix
This was an app I built over the winter break in about 3 days. Its just a
simple tool for people with diabetes to log their blood glucose levels, meals,
etc. I explained the story here in a blog post:
[http://dmix.ca/2010/02/announcing-carelogger-a-diabetes-
trac...](http://dmix.ca/2010/02/announcing-carelogger-a-diabetes-tracking-
tool/)

We soft-launched about a week ago and have had 80 people signup which we think
is awesome.

We'd appreciate any feedback.

------
dale-cooper
This looks great. As a diabetic i've been considering doing something like
this, now i won't need to :)

Some feedback:

Can't create new entries, get "We're sorry, but something went wrong."

Would like to be able to enter different types of mediciation, i use
humalog+lantus.

A mobile app would be awesome. I might be able to help, i have iphone
experience and a little android experience..

EDIT: Prefilled time when creating an entry is off by one hour.. timezone/dst
issue?

~~~
dmix
Thanks, fixed the new entry error. (Late night releases = bad idea).

The timezone is UTC by default. I might make it detect timezones in the
future.

~~~
dale-cooper
Ah, yes that works now.

Detecting timezones would be nice.

After reading your blog entry i see that you have no plans to charge for it or
display ads. What about open sourcing it?

~~~
dmix
We may charge money for it in the future. But thats not likely for at least a
year. We want to focus on building a community around it. Plus we both have
full-time jobs already.

------
Vindexus
I have to agree about the signup page appearing out of place. I'd keep it in
the same style as the rest of the site.

The About page has "About HumaLogger" as the header. I'm assuming you guys
changed names once or twice ;)

~~~
dmix
Indeed it was called HumaLogger until a few days ago when we realized
"Humalog" was trademarked. Thanks for the heads up.

------
mattew
Our company works with 2 prominent diabetes companies. I am going to let them
know about this. I may be able to help get you some significant exposure on
this if they find it interesting.

~~~
mattew
The initial comments that I am getting back are that there are a lot of
loggers out there, but your's looks quite slick. What is that you feel
differentiates your application from the other loggers out there?

~~~
dmix
What makes us different:

\- it's free

\- our users tell us it's great having everything in one place (glucose, blood
pressure, medication + food tracking) other products often only have 1-2

\- we have a diet tracking feature that draws carbohydrate nutritional data
from thousands of different types of food

\- the UI is very easy to use

\- its web based and accessible from any browser (most loggers we found were
desktop applications that cost money)

\- we are actively improving the service and are very open to listening to our
users feedback

~~~
mattew
Thanks for the info. What are your plans to generate revenue from the site?

~~~
dmix
Right now we're taking the figure monetization out later approach to the site.

As I mentioned in other comments, we don't have any plans to charge money for
the site for at least a year. We both have full-time jobs so its not a big
priority and our focus now is to build a community around it.

------
iaman
Very nice. I agree with most commentators that a mobile app would be a big
step forward. It will also greatly help patients to share their log data with
their physicians instead of mere print outs as suggested on the web site. The
solution for laziness would be complete automation as one poster suggested or
the patient's physician should press to see this data during all their visits
which will indirectly make it a habit for the patient to enter their data.
Anyways, nice app again. Good luck.

------
peterb
I am the father of a Type 1 who is 8 years old. The problem is the same with
any of the diabetes tools: you have to manually enter the numbers. Until you
can get around this fundamental problem, you will have difficulty getting
people to use the app. A mobile app helps, but it really needs to be
automated. Also, many people will not share sensitive health information with
a random website.

Keep an eye on what Google Health and Microsoft's Health Vault are doing. Good
luck.

~~~
dale-cooper
I see the same problem. But this still makes it easier than typing it down in
a notebook, especially if there's a mobile app.

------
maxklein
I was about to do this. It's a great idea, it's an excellent market and most
of the competition is terrible. I actually did my research on this so I know
for a fact you'll be successful.

Just be sure to allow people recommend it to their family and friends. That
should be a big part of your marketing - getting geeks to get their parents to
use this.

------
pibefision
Add Facebook Connect at login and signup.

------
tibbon
While I'm not a diabetic, my sister is. I'm sending this along to her for her
thoughts.

------
simon_
I am diabetic (type 1), and I have been meaning to make this for years. Damn
you!

~~~
dale-cooper
Hmm.. we're 3 diabetics who have been meaning to this already in this thread.
I think I see a pattern, diabetics are lazy ;-)

More seriously.. Too bad it's not open source, it seems it could make a great
product that way.

