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https://quixical.com/ https://quixical.com/ A suite of realtime chatrooms, for travellers to talk about their flights, and the airlines that run them. The ide
by dynamite-ready 6y ago
https://quixical.com/ https://quixical.com/
A suite of realtime chatrooms, for travellers to talk about their flights, and the airlines that run them.
The idea is to let the use enter their flight details into a search box, find the chatroom for their flight, and let others know what's on their mind.
Before the pandemic, me and my wife would travel to see family often enough to experience the mind numbing frustration of sitting in a cabin of a delayed flight. In some case, for hours at a time.
We were also shocked at how often airlines will change the T&C's, often to the detriment of the customer. Especially in regards to seating plans (separating friends and family), and baggage allowance.
I wanted to do something to help customers challenge airlines on such issues and, where possible, discuss solutions amongst themselves.
Techwise, while simple (Elixir, Vue, CouchDB), I think it works well. But the marketing side of it has been tough... It hard to know where to start.
Not sure if the idea is bad, if the timing is off (pandemic) or the execution needs improving in someway.
- chrisco255 6y agoAre you limited to only chatting with people by flight number? Odds of more than one user on the same flight for a new app has to be low. Seems like it would be difficult to bootstrap an audience that way. Might help to start with airport chat by airport code, or just grab user's location and place them in the closest airport's chat room automatically. Also maybe add hooks for other messaging and chat tools.
- dynamite-ready 6y agoNot by flight number. Each room has the airline and depart/destination airport as their key. A chatroom per airport would be an easy change, but would be a bit of a departure from what I intended the app to do. For example, the difference in customer service standards between British Airways flights across long haul and short haul products is huge. Almost night and day by my amateur reckoning. I want to draw this kind of info out of the customer base. As you don't need the flight number, the idea is that customers on the flight itself can make use of the realtime chat when appropriate, but prospective travellers can also peek into a room, review the chat, and ask a few questions like a regular forum. Here's an example of how I'd like to see the app used - https://quixical.com/channel/b41eb89fca20a5ca422d9c6ffac15770/messages https://quixical.com/channel/b41eb89fca20a5ca422d9c6ffac1577...
- chrisco255 6y agoI think you'd be better off trying to get a general flight chat off the ground first, before you worry about grouping people into individual chats per flight. Hard enough to bootstrap that, but if you did, I would recommend adding tags for Flight Numbers, Airlines, and Airport Codes, and attach those tags to the messages in the chat (as badges next above the message). Ask the user what their next upcoming flight details are. Let the user save those deets. Then once you've gotten enough users and the chat room gets noisy enough, introduce filters, where you can filter by airport code, flight number, airline, etc. Bootstrapping is hard, but I would promote the chat in various subreddits and facebook groups and consumer discussion forums or any interest groups about flying and travel in general.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- dynamite-ready 6y agoReally appreciate the advice, thanks. Will try to action some of this.