
Show HN: Never ask someone more than once to do something - iPrompted - relaunched
http://www.iprompted.com
======
greenyoda
\- Hopefully, the app provides the recipient of the message a way to opt out
of all future messages (and deletes their personal information immediately
upon receipt of such a request).

\- I'd consider it to be a violation of my privacy if someone who wanted to
remind me of something shared my contact details with a third party service
without getting my permission first.

\- I'd consider it to be insulting if someone asked me to do something by
sending me automatically generated messages. If it's important enough to
remind me about, it's important enough for them to spend the time to send me a
personal message. I'd only ever use an app like this to send reminders to
myself, and there are already dozens of ways for me to do that (e.g., calendar
reminders).

~~~
relaunched
There's a mechanism to permanently opt out of messages, but I think we should
call that out on the privacy page. It's done at the twilio level,
[https://support.twilio.com/hc/en-
us/articles/223134027-Twili...](https://support.twilio.com/hc/en-
us/articles/223134027-Twilio-support-for-opt-out-keywords-SMS-STOP-
filtering-), but we should reinforce that.

We've thought a lot about how, in the future, we create the ability to accept
a prompt, so not just anyone can assign one.

The tool's sweet spot seems to be for people that need to be reminded. We had
some interesting anecdotal research that said that the more I have to remind
<person that I care about> to do something, the more frustrated I got. By the
time the task was completed, it was hard to be appreciative or grateful.

Thanks for your feedback!

------
ddingus
This is literally nagware!

:D

No judgement here, I just chuckled and had to say it. (I have had similar
thoughts)

Good luck.

Aw shit, I should not say this, but... I once thought up a service where
people would sign up to make calls and or send texts. Use cases were:

Get the word out. Politics, fund raisers, events, that sort of thing.

Public service. Warnings, availability of resources.

Deliver short message. Advertising. Think 5 seconds, or a very targeted
"tweet" in the form of SMS.

Bounty, info request. Get contact info for X. Or, what system do you use? Who
does hiring? Whatever. (Controversial, I know)

The distributed nature of it made blocks hard.

Users, in a short alpha simulation, liked some use cases, hated others. It was
difficult to arrive at what activities were worth it.

Since you are entering this space, I will just leave it all here. (Was not for
me, for personal reasons)

~~~
jaquers
At least we put a smile on one person's face, jk :)

We want users to view the tool as a virtual assistant, and not as the enemy.
Over time we hope to add features like daily summaries, more conversational /
nlp understanding and, eventually, the ability to understand what the tasks
are about so we can offer positive feedback/encouragement.

~~~
ddingus
Good luck. I think it is valid and all that. No worries, and yeah, I grinned.

------
O1111OOO
Have not tested it but curious as to the target audience. The home page feels
like a "Mom reminding kids to take out the garbage" front-end (ie, very
personal: nothing wrong with that).

As you look ahead and folks request more features it could eventually look
like (searching... searching... Ok. Found something):

[https://codecanyon.net/item/activity-board-activity-
manager/...](https://codecanyon.net/item/activity-board-activity-
manager/634766) (see screenshots)

At this point, it stops feeling like "nagware" as someone mentioned but a more
polished/friendly business/GTD tool. I've used similar to the linked sample in
the years past (email notifications only) and it's been very effective for
tracking virtually everything.

A response by recipient (person responsible for the task) to the email gets
added to the database and keeping track of the progress is available to
admin(s), team members or all.

I mention the above only because in it's present state (have not kicked the
tires, basing it on the front page, do not want to provide actual cell numbers
now) it just seems much easier to directly send a SMS.

~~~
relaunched
It's truly geared more towards husband / wife, parents / kids. We think that
having a system that provides prompts at the right time, for the tasks that
matter, can be very powerful.

Personally, we're focused on a post UI world, where sms / voice + push
mechanisms manage you...as opposed to tools that you have to manage yourself.
It's really important that we build a relationship between the person
designated to do the task and iPrompted.

More to come. Thanks for the feedback!

------
stuntkite
It is potentially a human Denial of Service attack. Enough SMS nags and phone
life becomes impossible. I give it a couple days before it's abused enough for
their Twillio account to get flagged. There isn't any validation. I could just
start having two strangers screw with each other. You could make a circle of
annoyance or use your own Twillio to kind of botnet some large scale
annoyance.

I accidentally human DDoSd my boss once by submitting multiple Azure support
requests at level A and put in his cell phone number. Several support people
started responding but they put them all on the same Exchange list so they
kept responding to each other and it sent him an email and text. It took hours
to clear it up, his phone was so buzzy he had to turn it off all afternoon
while I attempted to stop the helper train with more texts, calls, and emails.

~~~
relaunched
I'm really sorry about your previous experience. The product is for people
that otherwise get distracted and need a prompt to help them get on task.

~~~
stuntkite
I'm just trying to point out how people are going to use your product. Please
blog in a few weeks about the fun things you get to mitigate!

~~~
relaunched
Will do. We had to institute an exponential backoff, to stop from being too
annoying. However, we're seeing ~80 of the tasks assigned get completed AND
there are power task creators that create a whole lot of tasks. It seems to be
a good tool for type A personalities to manage those around them - but, it's
still early.

~~~
stuntkite
It's sort of a free, automated, harassment robot. It's also pretty useful if
you want to phish someone.

------
karmakaze
Sounds like #2 Replace Email[0]. Has any product come close to solving this
yet?

[0]
[http://www.paulgraham.com/ambitious.html](http://www.paulgraham.com/ambitious.html)

~~~
quickthrower2
I don't think this replaces email in the way PG intends. In a way it's the
opposite, this is a way of saying "I've got your number so I am going to force
my way to priority 1 in your queue over all the other email/messages you
have".

I think that is fine if you are wife/husband/mother/daughter/best friend etc.
but not something I'd expect a coworker to do to me. Maybe a boss (a bit like
a manual pagerduty scenario).

~~~
relaunched
I agree. We envision some availability for the Assigned to allow people to
prompt them.

Thanks for your feedback.

------
mcv
"Never ask someone more than once to do something" \-- that's a big promise.
Will it work on my son when I tell him to put on his shoes because it's time
to go to school?

~~~
relaunched
That's the exact type of problem we're trying to solve. For me, I can't tell
you how many times I need to remind my son to do chores, homework, take meds,
etc. Not to mention how many times my wife has to remind me to drop off
clothes for donation, take this to the post office or what have you.

~~~
dragonwriter
> > Will it work on my son when I tell him to put on his shoes because it's
> time to go to school?

> That's the exact type of problem we're trying to solve.

I can't imagine a more wrong solution to that problem.

------
quickthrower2
I’m just not brave enough to stick my number in there.

------
greypowerOz
if this was an email based service that might encourage me to test drive it...
not sure why sms was the chosen option?

~~~
relaunched
That's a great point. We picked one to demonstrate an MVP. SMS seemed more
relevant to targeting someone 'in the moment's communication' and is more
widely used among teens.

But, we'll add it to our backlog. When I look at traffic, referrals from HN
successfully complete prompts way less than through channels that target
people with children. Which, as you can see from your and other comments,
isn't at all surprising.

------
relaunched
Currently, the site only supports prompts to people with US-based, mobile
phone numbers. Sorry for the inconvenience.

