What is the Color of the tech bubble?
I wasn’t a believer in the idea of the buzz-phrase ‘tech bubble’ being thrown around… until Color revealed its $41 million funding and unpolished application. Being disappointed with what I think would be a pretty neat idea, I decided to fire back the following email to the address hidden within the app for feedback on the service.
SUBJ: I want to like Color… but it’s horrible.
Well, it’s not that horrible, but it is confusing as fuck.
I really want to like Color because of the proximity-based photo sharing. I think that the potential for an app that doesn’t really have a I can’t convince myself to seriously use it because I don’t understand how to use your confusing app.
Maybe if you used a few standard Apple controls or implement some sort of labels for the buttons in your app, I wouldn’t feel so lost. But I can understand the need to have your app feel unique and not Apple-like. That desire is fine, but we’re not all mind-readers.
Also, how the fuck do Groups/Albums/[insert interchangeable term here] work? Nothing is explained anywhere in the app, nor could I find any answers on the web. This isn’t Minecraft, you can’t hide features in your app and expect everyone to go batshit about it so that it goes viral.
What caused me some pause about further promoting your app to my co-workers, friends and followers was what the time-limit was on groups and how we couldn’t continue to contribute to the same album—we had to make another one. We can’t keep one album alive even though we are in the same location over some ambiguous amount of time and every time I open the app up, it creates an unnecessary group that only contains me and no one else.
I didn’t even know there were settings that I could change in the app until I mis-tapped my screen and hit my profile picture. Between that and the tap-and-hold camera button to bring up the camera roll, the hiding of application function is a frustrating sign for an awesome concept.
Good luck with the next version!
