5 ms·

Watchsend (YC S13) records mobile screen interactions for user testing

75 points by zan2434 13y ago

Terpaholic 13y ago
Congrats on the launch! Sharp team and great product :)
alexschiff 13y ago
The first paragraph was all it took to convince me to send this to our design team.
gailees 13y ago
Woah. This is going to change the game. Rapid iteration on mobile is tough enough...as long as this doesn't have too big of a hit on performance, this is about to change the way we develop mobile apps.
DTE 13y ago
How can you take privacy seriously[0] when there is the option to capture full screenshots and send them back to the dev team? That is absolutely not an expected behavior of any app. Am I not understanding something here? [0] "We take privacy seriously. You can choose to hide sensitive information, only record certain sections of your app, or even pixelate out all text entirely." Edit: added source of claim Edit 2: To clarify: I don't mean to diminish the hard work of the team. I know how hard it is to put your work out there and I'm sure there was a lot of interesting technical work that went in to it. That said, I really think the premise is troubling, especially if it is intended beyond a "beta tester" group. Even with the best intentions, this is a really powerful tool that could be easily abused.
- deleted 13y ago
  [deleted]
- jvrossb 13y ago
  It's on the developer to disclose to the user that they are recording video and beaming it back up. Companies that sell call-recording software leave it up to the recording party to say something like "this call may/will be recorded". What they are saying is that assuming that you are a good dev and care about privacy, the tools they provide to preserve privacy (ie pixelating text out) show that they care too.
- igul222 13y ago
  Cofounder here. We're a service that helps app developers understand their users in order to make their apps better. Like almost any other service that collects and stores data, it's possible to intentionally misuse Watchsend in ways that grossly violate users' privacy. What we mean by "we take privacy seriously" is that we work really hard to make sure that devs who care about their users' privacy can use Watchsend to make their apps better without infringing on their users' privacy. At the end of the day, if a developer wants to spy on their users, there's very little we (or anyone else) can do about it.
abhiv 13y ago
This could be really great. Watching users interact with your product directly provides a whole different level of insight. A few things that I can think of that they may already be considering: 1. Asking the developer to specify explicitly which screens should be recorded. From the article, it seems like it's opt-out (the developer specifies which screens should not be recorded), rather than opt-in. 2. Showing long recordings at high speed, slowing down/pausing at "interesting" portions 3. Data aggregated across multiple users: for example, a report of places in the app where most users pause the longest 4. Displays of multiple users' interactions with a single screen, overlaid on top of each other 5. Dealing with user offline scenarios where data may need to be locally stored and then uploaded when a connection is available They must be doing some sort of frame delta on the videos to save bandwidth, I'm assuming. Very cool idea!
- igul222 13y ago
  1 is configurable – when you configure Watchsend you can pick whether you want to record everything or only record certain screens. 2, 3, 4, and 5 are in the works :)
- alook 13y ago
  Agreed on 2-5, the state of how we collect data on in-app activity seems to totally miss the point of context. Something where we collect visual data on live user sessions seems like it may open the door to getting a deeper understanding of what users are actually doing in our apps!
rjvir 13y ago
Can't think of a better way to understand your users than to watch them use your app in real time. Implementing this in all my apps right now.
atlex2 13y ago
Works skippingly for identifying users' reasons for app failures.
d0m 13y ago
Looks neat! I'm wondering how big is the market for this kind of service? Seems very valuable for early startups/products imho.

75 points by zan2434 13y ago

Terpaholic 13y ago

Congrats on the launch! Sharp team and great product :)

alexschiff 13y ago

The first paragraph was all it took to convince me to send this to our design team.

gailees 13y ago

Woah. This is going to change the game. Rapid iteration on mobile is tough enough...as long as this doesn't have too big of a hit on performance, this is about to change the way we develop mobile apps.

DTE 13y ago

How can you take privacy seriously[0] when there is the option to capture full screenshots and send them back to the dev team? That is absolutely not an expected behavior of any app. Am I not understanding something here? [0] "We take privacy seriously. You can choose to hide sensitive information, only record certain sections of your app, or even pixelate out all text entirely." Edit: added source of claim Edit 2: To clarify: I don't mean to diminish the hard work of the team. I know how hard it is to put your work out there and I'm sure there was a lot of interesting technical work that went in to it. That said, I really think the premise is troubling, especially if it is intended beyond a "beta tester" group. Even with the best intentions, this is a really powerful tool that could be easily abused.

deleted 13y ago
[deleted]
jvrossb 13y ago
It's on the developer to disclose to the user that they are recording video and beaming it back up. Companies that sell call-recording software leave it up to the recording party to say something like "this call may/will be recorded". What they are saying is that assuming that you are a good dev and care about privacy, the tools they provide to preserve privacy (ie pixelating text out) show that they care too.
igul222 13y ago
Cofounder here. We're a service that helps app developers understand their users in order to make their apps better. Like almost any other service that collects and stores data, it's possible to intentionally misuse Watchsend in ways that grossly violate users' privacy. What we mean by "we take privacy seriously" is that we work really hard to make sure that devs who care about their users' privacy can use Watchsend to make their apps better without infringing on their users' privacy. At the end of the day, if a developer wants to spy on their users, there's very little we (or anyone else) can do about it.

abhiv 13y ago

This could be really great. Watching users interact with your product directly provides a whole different level of insight. A few things that I can think of that they may already be considering: 1. Asking the developer to specify explicitly which screens should be recorded. From the article, it seems like it's opt-out (the developer specifies which screens should not be recorded), rather than opt-in. 2. Showing long recordings at high speed, slowing down/pausing at "interesting" portions 3. Data aggregated across multiple users: for example, a report of places in the app where most users pause the longest 4. Displays of multiple users' interactions with a single screen, overlaid on top of each other 5. Dealing with user offline scenarios where data may need to be locally stored and then uploaded when a connection is available They must be doing some sort of frame delta on the videos to save bandwidth, I'm assuming. Very cool idea!

igul222 13y ago
1 is configurable – when you configure Watchsend you can pick whether you want to record everything or only record certain screens. 2, 3, 4, and 5 are in the works :)
alook 13y ago
Agreed on 2-5, the state of how we collect data on in-app activity seems to totally miss the point of context. Something where we collect visual data on live user sessions seems like it may open the door to getting a deeper understanding of what users are actually doing in our apps!

rjvir 13y ago

Can't think of a better way to understand your users than to watch them use your app in real time. Implementing this in all my apps right now.

atlex2 13y ago

Works skippingly for identifying users' reasons for app failures.

d0m 13y ago

Looks neat! I'm wondering how big is the market for this kind of service? Seems very valuable for early startups/products imho.