📲 Endmyopia Apps (Measuring + App #2): Feature Wishlist

[jakey]

So now that the meow-suring app is finally in the app store: https://apps.apple.com/app/meow-sure-screen-distance/id1535907595?l=en

It’s time to get on to the second phase: Endlessly spending of all of Jakey’s monies to develop all teh featurez.

(that last bit not true at all, endmyopia supporters contributions will hopefully largely suffice to keep things going)

Let me know what you think is priority and what you’d like to see.

To kick it off, here’s what’s on my short immediate list:

1. Fix the login situation - right now an account is required to measure, which is an oversight (wasn’t originally the case). Getting things rewritten so you can just download, measure, then create an account to store logs if you like.

2. Create a function to delete account and log, and update privacy policy.

3. Hide the app from users with iPhones that don’t have FaceID - since the app won’t work without that hardware.

4. Thinking, the blue / green (duochrome) measuring thing. Optionally for advanced users, with an account, showing colors to make measuring more precise (up for debate, this).

5. Get the measuring graphing back in to the app.

6. Find a way to sneak in a conversion tool. Convert cm to inches, ancient Mayan distance designation, and maybe also, oh I don’t know … diopters?

Maybe that’s unwise to do so soon, but it’s on my mind anyway.

7. A lot of the the endmyopia things I want to consolidate into the app, like recommending relevant posts from the site, access to podcast, forum, courses, etc - thinking of making a separate app, which you can log into, it takes your log data, and makes appropriate recommendations. That way if that’s too close to the sun for the apple appstore gatekeeokers, we don’t get our measuring app kicked out, and rather just a new app not approved.

UX, design, etc, not on the radar till we have a better grasp on features and user experiences. I like it all plain as is for now anyway and rather not divert time and funds into the black hole that is design.

There, just for some starting notes.

Your turn. What would you like in the measuring app?

[ljm2020]

@jakey

Hide the app from users with iPhones that don’t have FaceID - since the app won’t work without that hardware.

alternatively, maybe you can provide interface for user to input their own measuring result (e.g. result measured by old-fashion printed text with a ruler.

[halmadavid]

@jakey

Thinking, the blue / green (duochrome) measuring thing. Optionally for advanced users, with an account, showing colors to make measuring more precise (up for debate, this).

It should be red / green Anyhow, my problem with that is while it has it’s advantage, it doesn’t have real life meaning. I mean you practically measure blur to green with it. But you never watch totally green things. In this regard black text on white background measures a real life thing.

For me a great feature would be a great graph I like varakari’s tool, but if I want to compare graphs, zoom in to exact dates, check not just the diopters but the cm, etc. then it’s lacking.

Also what @ljm2020 wrote

[Lloydmom]

@ljm2020

alternatively, maybe you can provide interface for user to input their own measuring result (e.g. result measured by old-fashion printed text with a ruler.

Yes to this!! Even when I finally upgrade my phone I will still prefer my usual measuring option of actual paper. This would open the app up to those with my measuring preferences as well as those with older devices (so me twice ).

@jakey

Get the measuring graphing back in to the app.

Also is it on the table to add data from before using the app? It would be cool to be able to add in previous measurements for a more complete log.

@jakey

ancient Mayan distance designation

This would certainly keep non-endmyopians guessing, couldn’t hurt with the gatekeepers and is seriously EM stylized. I actually really like it. (albeit I am unsure if you were half joking or more than half, I think you should run with it)
Overall, yay! We are in the app store

[jakey]

@ljm2020

alternatively, maybe you can provide interface for user to input their own measuring result (e.g. result measured by old-fashion printed text with a ruler.

Yes that’s the current discussion since some app store rules says that we can’t rule out non AR devices, and the main feature of the app has to be available for “all supported devices”.

So in order to stay out of trouble, manual measuring seems to be required.

@halmadavid

It should be red / green Anyhow, my problem with that is while it has it’s advantage, it doesn’t have real life meaning. I mean you practically measure blur to green with it. But you never watch totally green things. In this regard black text on white background measures a real life thing.

For me a great feature would be a great graph I like varakari’s tool, but if I want to compare graphs, zoom in to exact dates, check not just the diopters but the cm, etc. then it’s lacking.

Sorry. Meant green. And yea… but I’m warming slightly to some level of gimmicks. People love them and while I want to keep things totally above board, it might be interesting for education sake maybe?

Yes, cool graphs is totally key.

@Lloydmom

This would certainly keep non-endmyopians guessing, couldn’t hurt with the gatekeepers and is seriously EM stylized. I actually really like it. (albeit I am unsure if you were half joking or more than half, I think you should run with it)

Yes, not joking. Seems we can get away with all kinds of “non primary” features.

[jakey]

My current updated list:

Separately will start development of an app that will serve to consolidate all of our many disparate platforms. We’ve got videos, we have courses, we have the podcast, we have the forum, blog posts, how to guides, the Wiki, guests on other podcasts, long list of non-connected content.

I’m thinking here that we will use your current diopters (and maybe when you started measuring, etc) as a starting point on what content to recommend. Log in with your user name, it’ll pull from the same log database as the meow-suring app.

That app, based on experience now, first super bare bones, just to see if we can get that into the app store.

First round brainstorm of features for unnamed second app:

[Salt]

@jakey

unnamed second app

Seems like the purrfect opportunity to use “EndMeowpia”.

This one sounds amazing! I think it’d be great to have the 7-days free course on there too, either with the courses or a “Start Here” screen that introduces the newcomer to the science of myopia. Putting a free course with the paid ones is often a good strategy. Motivating to start and finish a short course, for one. And it’s good for everyone to have something to do in a certain tab.

[jakey]

@Salt

Seems like the purrfect opportunity to use “EndMeowpia”.

Hehe. Genius!

Yea true, 7 day course. Need to app-ify everything!

[halmadavid]

Instead of excel maybe check some apps directly for software development / project management For example: Trello is really simple to use, but can scale a lot if needed.

[halmadavid]

@jakey

People love them and while I want to keep things totally above board, it might be interesting for education sake maybe?

Yeah, totally, it’s interesting. What’s really interesting is that you can check with it that your full prescription gives you overcorrection in close-up. Or check that your differential is not too strong. So it has a lot of uses. Also you can make sure that your cm measurement is not too optimalistic. So yeah, definitely include it, just don’t make it the default and/or add extensive help texts what it is and how to is.

[jakey]

@halmadavid

Instead of excel maybe check some apps directly for software development / project management For example: Trello is really simple to use, but can scale a lot if needed.

Another thing to sign up for learn, get developer to learn, and mange. Spreadsheet, simple!

Just one developer and a simple feature list, aiming for as little complexity as possible while it suits the requirement.

[jakey]

Updated to v1.1

[anuw]

I took a little snoop around trying to find bugs in the newest update. I’ve marked each bug with a colour to indicate how serious the bug might be, with red being the most dire. However, you are of course free to take the colours with a grain of salt. Apologies in advance for the giant wall of text.

BUGS:

• Meow-sure Screen
  Ever since the update the distance always measures 0.00 regardless of actual distance

  When you go to save a measurement, you can select contradicting conditions (morning AND afternoon AND evening)

  When manually entering a measurement, there’s no way to place a decimal point

  No max number cap (can create a number so large it is no longer treated as a number, and disappears from the graph view, and replaces the mouse-over text of the most recent measurement)

  When manually entering a measurement, there are no checks in place to ensure only valid numbers are entered. It is possible to enter negative numbers, text, and emojis into the input box. Depending on how the app is programmed, this could allow code injection from malicious users.

  Entering in a manual measurement is constantly overridden by the automatic eye measurement. The only way to enter in a custom measurement is to hide your eyes from the camera

• History log
  Results are now saved as the value and measurement type (e.g: 27 cm). This means that in the log, multiple different measurement types can all coexist (measurements taken before the update don’t even have a measurement type!), resulting in a very messy page. What should be done instead, is save each measurement as one type, regardless of how the user decides to view the measurements (I recommend saving as the smallest unit, mm), and then when displaying the measurements, convert to the measurement type based on the users preference.

  The graph’s y axis labels are measured in ‘dpt’ despite the fact it’s currently displaying mm/cm/m (it actually ignores the measurement type, meaning 20 millimetres is equivalent to 20 metres on the graph)

  It’s possible to deselect all the graph options (left//right), displaying a white screen. Barely a bug though

• About Us
  Still displays “version 1.0”

​

WISHLIST:

• Instead of allowing users to select 0-3 graphs at a time, display only 1 graph at all times. Much easier to click a button instead of scrolling around in that tiny window
• A sort-by newest/oldest/highest/lowest option in history log
• Have a date at the start and end of each graph
• In the meow-sure screen, when you select just one eye, have that eye change colour, or have the other eye disappear completely

[jakey]

Super awesome. Thanks for digging through it!

I’ve noted a few of the same issues though not all. I’ll update the bug log for the developer!

[jakey]

v1.2 is up!

The big measuring not working issue is fixed.

Now separate page for manual measuring.
Diopters can be selected instead of cm (though that’s buggy still).
Various other little bug fixes and improvements.

Current goal is still just to get the basics right.

[anuw]

Thanks for update v1.3, it’s looking really nice now! Got a few new bugs and wishes for you.

Bugs I’ve found:

• Crash upon deleting a history log entry
• Crash upon trying to save a manual distance in an unknown unit of measurement (you shouldn’t be able to paste text into the Unit of Measurement field)
  • You can also paste text into the Entry Date field, but the actual text in the field doesn’t seem to be used, so it doesn’t matter that much.
• Blank diopter result when entering in a manual value between 0cm-20.60cm. Weird value to glitch at, but I think the reason is that it seems like anything equal to or higher power than -5 dpt results in a blank diopter, and 20.60 must be when it rounds up to -5. This is true for mm and meter measurements too. For some odd reason you can actually enter in negative cms to get around this glitch, and get diopters lower or equal to -5.

Wishlist:

• Bigger increments in manual entry for cm and mm.
• Allow holding down of the - or + buttons in manual entry (currently this only works on mouse dragging)

[jakey]

@anuw

Thanks for update v1.3, it’s looking really nice now! Got a few new bugs and wishes for you.

Bugs I’ve found:

Super super appreciate the detailed dig-through.

A bit embarrassing but I’m doing so many things in short order every day that even things like the app, I go through quickly but definitely miss some of these things. Very very very helpful to get this feedback.

Forwarded to dev.

[jakey]

Heads-up on planned development:

Larger vision is for measuring to be a starting point for the user gathering data about his/her vision. But then helping making that data actionable is the real story.

I’ve talked about ideas, everything from game-ifying the process, nudging for measurements, connecting to community and relevant content, there is a lot that can be done with data. Especially if we get a lot of participants and the system can start making decent predictions and put changing distance data in a larger context for everyone.

IF we make it there.

Next step, build a separate app. Just so we don’t kill our progress by running into some Apple rule and getting the measuring app updates not approved. So one app is for measuring, and you log in to store your log data.

Then the second app will be all about being able to make use of measuring results. That means downloading a second app and logging in, but it’s either that or taking chances with the measuring one - which I’d rather not do at this stage.

Vague plan for a v1 for the second app:

Probably largely illegible.

Main first starting point, making the 7 day guide available in the app. So you have the option to not depend on e-mails and spam filters and digging around your mailbox to find this or that day of the guide. It’ll still load day by day but then once you got it all, it’s in the app.

Since I removed sales pitch to the paid program a while back, feel fine about this having no ulterior motives.

A few intro screens after first download of course, to explain what to expect.

Then based on your diopters, content from endmyopia. I already have hundreds of articles tagged with diopter values, so if your’e at -5 for example, you can just pull up all relevant content for a start.

This just a starting point for eventually being able to tailor existing content much more specifically to what you may want to be reading.

Also imagine ways to bookmark things, have your own personal library with notes, etc. Taking the currently very static Website to a much more interactible sort of scenario.

Then just app links to our videos, podcast, episodes on other podcasts.

Figure out what we can do with the Wiki in app format (@NottNott ) . And at some point, with courses also. I don’t give those enough priority even that’s what actually pays the bills - and supporters who help make all this possible really should get extra attention.

All of above, v1.0 as minimalist as possible. First just to see if King Apple is ok with it.

Sharing this for feedback. If you’ve known me long enough you know how I’m scattered and not necessarily super genius with all kinds of stuff. My goal is just to keep pushing forward, make progress in some direction, make mistakes, learn things, get better.

Really appreciate everyone who is partaking in the adventures!

[Lloydmom]

But have you thought of a properly obscure name for this second app?

[jakey]

Tricky one. I was actually thinking about calling it something like “endmyopia … something”. Just endmyopia?

I think, guessing a bit, that Apple didn’t like the measuring part of the first app attempt, like their hardware being used to something that could be construed as creating a medical diagnosis. Based on other apps I’ve looked into, that appears to potentially be the issue.

The new app (which now really needs a name) is almost ready for version 1.0.

Main thing in it will be the 7 day guide (that part I’m a bit excited about). Getting away from stupid e-mail and stupid spam filters and automatic newsletter folders in g-mail and all that. People complaining that they didn’t get this-or-that day of the e-mails. Instead of that you just install the app and it’ll for sure deliver the whole guide.

And from there you got the podcast episodes, Youtube, maybe the forum, then Website articles in some customized format, and all the various whatnots.

All that just to say … the name ideally maybe would be quite endmyopia related.