

Ask HN: Review my product, Peers - tolarewaju3

I&#x27;d like to ask for some feedback on the 1st version of a product my team and I worked on
http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.peersapp.com<p>It&#x27;s a friendly planner for college students. We are trying to build a network around work and social plans students have everyday.<p>- What would make you never use this app daily?<p>- What do you currently use to plan (work, social) ?
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pedalpete
I was looking at doing something similar a while ago, but, at the same time,
(and this is weird to say after my last comment), I don't understand what
you're doing.

Ok, it's a shared calendar, that I get (or I think that's what it is).

A demo video would be great, but going from your screenshots (in order)

1) Ok, nice clean calendar, it shows me my events. Did I create all of those?
Was I invited to? Who else is going? Have I RSVP'd? I'm a bit lost here. I'm
sure the colored dots mean something, but I don't know what. Now, I'd know if
I created an event, but how about showing me if anybody else is going. That
would probably be nice.

2) I think this is a peer's profile. Cool that it shows how many friends we
have in common, and that we have friends, classes and events in common. WOAH,
classes?? What if I'm not in school? Is a class just a repeated event? Why is
that different from another type of event. This could use some work. Can I
send a message directly to my peer?

3)Comments or Feed?? I thought it was comments about a single event at first,
but now I'm thinking it's a feed, because I think it is referring to multiple
classes. Again, classes is limiting your market, but ignoring that, you could
do with some visual layout to show that the comment belongs to x event better.
Look at Facebook's nested comments.

The last two screens are OK, again, Class or Work may not make sense to
everybody, the less decisions a person needs to make the better. On the last
page "Invite friends", am I inviting them to an event or to use the app?

Hope the feedback helps. Off to a good start, keep up the good work.

~~~
tolarewaju3
1) It shows all events and assignments. So the assignments you follow and
events you accept are here. Colored dots are color coded by class. If anyone
else is attending the event it'll show their name below the event.

2) Classes are more like groups. You can't send a message to a peer yet. But
thats absolutely something we are doing for the next iteration. Communication
is key, I think.

3) Feed w/ comments. If you post to a class, it'll show up here. Comments for
events/assignments are coming.

Ahh, ok. Class is just adding a class like you would in a homework planner.
Work was "supposed" to be either a test or assignment.

Invite friends is an invite to the app. Perhaps this can be changed to "Share
Peers with a friend"

This is probably the best feedback we have received. We wanted to make things
as simple as possible so that we can see how people use it and follow to what
students use most.

I agree that a demo video would be good. And, alot of the things you pointed
out are obviously not clear. Every iteration I think we get better and better
at this. So v1.0.3 will hopefully make even more sense.

I can't thank you enough for the feedback. We're trying to pull negative
feedback from people and make a product that serves students. THANKS AGAIN!

~~~
pedalpete
Ah! So the key is that your target market is students. I didn't get that
anywhere, and I'm wondering if narrowing your market this early is a good
idea.

The thing is, this may be useful for more than just students, without changing
the app at all, just how you refer to things.

Non-students, have similar scheduling/communications needs (I suspect), and
you'll do great to target students first, but if "Class" had another label
that appealed to more than just students, you may find your app being used in
ways you didn't imagine. That may be a good thing.

Best of luck!

~~~
tolarewaju3
Wow. Good Feedback again. I guess we narrowed our target to students for a
couple of reasons. First, we pleased a lot of students with this there are a
set of services we could offer specifically to students. We just felt that
narrowing the market would help us focus better.

But, your absolutely right. Replace class and we have something that applies
to everyone.

------
kkowalczyk
It's impressive that you've build a good looking app. Good job on that.

Unfortunately, the app seems to fall into "build it but they won't come"
category i.e. lacking product-market fit.

I used to be a student and I don't remember planning activities being a
significant problem.

Another problem is that you have no monetization strategy. If your app is not
free, no-one will use it and it obviously requires massive adoption to be
useful.

Even if it gets massive adoption, then what? Will you put ads in the app?

How will you keep getting new users to offset the loss from people finishing
college?

You have a chicken-egg problem when it comes to adoption, built-in 4-year
churn and very few options to make money. It might be a useful app but a
terrible business.

~~~
tolarewaju3
Oh, we definitely lack product-market fit. We just launched a couple of days
ago. Also, we have made a point not to advertise. We'd like to see how a small
subset of students use it so we can adapt.

Our monetization strategy comes from following students to where they go to
spend money and providing them those services cheaper. The first being books.
If you're able to get a large number of students on one platform, I believe
they'll show you what services they need. But adoption comes before all of
this

And you're right, part of what we are trying to figure out with a v1.0 MVP is
exactly how the problem/solution fit the market.

Thanks so much for your feedback

------
moneyrich4
thats looking very nice sir, having done something similar i know it its a lot
harder to do that it looks. very good job.

a point on these is traction may build really slow and you might have to hang
in there for many months, but try to keep at it!

~~~
tolarewaju3
Thanks. We're really committed to serving students in some form. We will
definitely hang in there!

