Social App with Dating Functions, Beta Testing

thank you. for folks able to use apple's 'test flight' beta testing app, we will email invitations to testFlight testing for Vorail. for folks that do not install apple's 'test flight' app, it will take some weeks before the version of app with updates for non-sighted is live (app store review process is taking longer, could be due to the upcoming holidays). i will reply to each person posting, and thanks again for helping build a better app.

next week i plan to email invites to apple's test flight beta testing program for vorail. if you have not already emailed me, please email 'beta testing' to me at pixtas@gmail.com and i can paste your email address into apple's itunes connect form for external tester invitations. apple goes through this process before granting access to apps prior to their release on app store. thank you. tom

1) Vorail can be updated to work without connecting to iCloud

2) apple requires Vorail to be able to uniquely identify users and ban users who are abusive, and this is why Vorail uses iClound (CloudKit) -> the one & only piece of information provided to app developer (us) by iCloud/CloudKit is a unique id

3) i have received email from Alex and several other folks (thank you), and i will reply before the close of today, but first the app has a bigger bug to fix. during internal testing, the app worked well, but during external testing, the app has been crashing. we fixed issues discovered during the start of external testing (today) and are about to submit a new version to apple for release to external testers.

after replying to beta testers email, i will post a new comment here with the details, benefits and disadvantages around iCloud/CloudKit. based on beta testing experience, there will be a list of fixes, changes, new features. my view is after seeing the beta tester feedback, we the beta testers can choose if we want to move away from iCloud/CloudKit, and if so, should it be a high, medium, or low level issue.

thank you Alex and thank you beta testers! this process takes time, but i believe with patience we can build something special.

tom

if or when app request user to log into iCloud, i believe app should be more specific by stating that only one piece of information is sent to developers from iCloud, a unique id that can be used if a user says something abusive and needs to be banned from the service. will post this on public gdoc document for beta testin feedback (url coming later tonight in separate post). thank you @Alex Wallis for raising this issue. following is an email from vorail's lead tech person on issue raised by Alex, it explains the issue and thinking behind it in greater detail.

Hi Alex,

This is the lead tech guy of Vorail. My name is Linan Wang.

First thing first, it's the right email address to discuss anything
about Vorail App, please feel free to share any problems, concerns you
have.

Secondly, about privacy. I'm very happy that Vorail users care deep
about their privacy. I think it's one of the core advantages of
Vorail. I'm a big fan of Edward Snowden and have even written a Chrome
browser plugin to keep me updated with his news.
(https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/news-tracker/iocbocopaamkgojjefldnolabdjniolk)
The #1 thing of all my projects is to require absolutely minimal from
users about their personal info.

So, in Vorail, what's the absolute minimal? As you may know, Vorail is
a voice based dating app allow users to communicate directly with
their own voice. What if someone says abusive things? We need to be able
to take that particular account down. Therefore, we need to be able to
uniquely identify each user. That's all we need. There are lots of
options to archive the goal, but Apple's iCloud (technically, we use
CloutKit) is simply the best choice I can see, for couple of reasons:

1, it's widely available to most of the iOS users. therefore users
won't have to go through the registration process again.

2, It gives out to App developers (us) only one piece of information
about you, the user: a unique ID. No name, no email, no social
connections, absolutely nothing else. If App developers want more
information from your iCloud account, developers have to explicitly
ask for your permission, which Vorail doesn't. Further more, the
unique ID can not be cross referenced, which means, the unique ID of a
user we get through Vorail App, won't be the same from other Apps. We
have no ways to "reuse", or sell this piece of information.

The view we take about online dating, is that people really want to
interact with other people, directly. Personally, I hate "profiles" on
other dating sites. they are artificial, mostly fake, and block direct
communication. You can learn so much about a person through 1 minute
of voice chat than 1000 words of "profile" page. So our approach is to
encourage people to use voice as much as possible. This approach
renders other info secondary, even unnecessary.

Summary: iCloud/CloudKit gives us only a unique ID (which would be
different cross Apps). The sole purpose for us to have it is to take
care of abusive users. The dating model in Vorail, namely voice
communication, doesn't require other information from you.

I hope above clarifies your concern. Thank you.

Best regards,
Linan

created a google doc for feedback, ideas on next steps, that we can all add comments to (and pasted today's version below) . three ways to post feedback: Pixtas@gmail.com, this Applevis forum, the google document at following url:

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1axnEsigSgX_YY5yIE76ZPETZ9KI5_FHbBSsG-5OzyKQ/edit?usp=sharing

8 dec 2015 vorail beta testing current status.

.. 30 beta testers
.. 24 installations
.. Olz has just woken up (joke. that happens to be what the first person in my search results says)

app design ideas (please comment):
.. during beta testing, should we change three minute calls to thirty second calls (that can be extended to eight minutes if both sides tap ‘extend’ button)? at this early stage of testing, i suggest we (a) search for any gender, any age, any location and (b) tap like on multiple people. then the app will auto connect us with people we liked, and start a thirty second real time call when we and the folks we like are both online. reminder: when it is not convenient to receive a call, close app (double tap home button, then slide up is one way to close an app). after this round of beta testing, we can clear, reset everybody's likes.

.. should there be a voice like button? sometimes we hear a voice, maybe we are not interested in dating that person (liking and doing three minute real time voice chat), but we would like to leave a comment, give encouragement, or ask a question. adding a like button would make the user interface more complex, and take some coding time, and perhaps change the nature, usage of the app. lets only add it if enough of the beta testers feel it is good idea.

.. “there should be a way to update our profile information” (Earle). the thinking behind not including button to edit profile information is to encourage more honest information. if we can edit the data, could be less likely to enter in the data truthly first time. i do this on other sites, until i am comfortable with their service. current setup is email us to change your profile information, perhaps will make it more likely that we provide truthful data.

.. how does everybody feel about push notifications? in general, our team is not a fan of them. but i would like a way to contact users that may be struggling with the app. for example, the following beta testers have not been able to record their voice: Tiffany, Leena, Ocean girl, Lupita, Cat. Cat has emailed me about recording issue, but the app does not have email address, for privacy. if folks are ok with push notifications, we could send a unique message to a unique user, with only knowing that user’s chosen name.

open issues from feedback (please comment):
.. app should be more specific by stating that only one piece of information is sent to developers from iCloud, a unique id that can be used if a user says something abusive and needs to be banned from the service.

current bug list (please add comments if you also experience the following):
.. recording voice: “I was able to record my voice but it is stuck on saving your voice and in progress.” (Cat)

.. recording voice: “everything was going well until I had to record a voice. VoiceOver said to hold and press then release to listen, in my case because of VoiceOver I double tapped and held, finished recording and released. Nothing was recorded. I also turned VoiceOver off to see if it would record something then and still it did not.
I did not record anything and continued. I tried double-tapping the search button to see what was on there and it did not do anything. Double tapped and held and nothing. I repeated the same process for the other buttons, liked and connected, and nothing happened.
I don't know if the app has a bug in general or if this is just because of VoiceOver.” (Guadalupe)

.. picker for age: “not all the ages in the picker were visible to VoiceOver. For example I heard "18 years old", "24 years old". What I did to see all the years numbered correctly was to double tap and hold the picker, then drag my finger slowly up and down the screen until I heard the right number, in my case 19, then carefully released. Is there a way to redesign the picker so that all ages can be accessed by flicking up and down the picker without double tapping and holding?” (Guadalupe)

.. search results: When going through search results, the "next" button frequently disappears. (Randy)

.. overall performance: There is a significant delay between when a button is activated with VoiceOver and when the actions actually occur. (Randy)

fixed:
.. people without voices were showing in search results. now only folks with voice show in results.
.. object to pick age did not work well with voiceover, changed to a different way to choose age

hi,
This is Linan Wang, the tech guy from Vorail. Could you help me with the accessibility issue regarding the "done" button.

There should be a gesture or convention, under VoiceOver to access the right button in the navigation bar directly, but I couldn't find any info about it. Do you guys prefer to have an equivalent button at the bottom of a screen?