Best app I've seen in a while on HN -- targeted directly at me, lots of geeky features, very cool interface, the video leverages my enthusiasm for tea into a purchase decision, and easy to buy for my iTouch.
Congrats on the great job, siglesias. I'm buying it right now, and I'm looking forward to hearing what kind of market traction you get!
Also, at a meta level, at some point I'd like to learn more about how iPhone app developers manage so much functionality for so little real-estate. There was a lot going on in this app for only 6-10 very simple screens. Did you mock it up on paper first? Wire frame it? Use an online tool? Details here would be interesting.
The main inspiration for the interface was believe it or not Apple's Phone. Like having a list of contacts that you could simply tap to call, it made sense for Tea to have a list of teas that you could tap to brew. And like Phone, we use the detail disclosure indicator pattern on each cell to provide more information. The interface kind of grew naturally from that starting point.
For sketching I used UIStencil's iPhone stencil kit, and the designer I collaborated with, Mac Tyler, sketched his ideas in Photoshop.
I haven't used it but I like the idea. Being able to create your idea in programs your comfortable with (photoshop) and then actually clicking and feeling the design is a valuable thing.
Can you integrate and partner with a internet tea seller?
I know nothing about tea, but I know I could appreciate it. If you made it even easier for me to get good tea, I think that'd be a great feature. In addition, your app would know what I'd ordered, and you could leverage that info. Definitely not a MVP feature, but definitely one that I think could be useful and profitable.
As it stands, it's a great looking app and I think it's a great example of finding a niche and creating something compelling to serve it.
Edit: I just noticed the adagio teas coupon on your site. While this may be a simple affiliate link, maybe you've already begun trying to forge a partnership with them whereby you could offer in-app purchasing of their products (or a selected subset). Hopefully so!
Mac Tyler here, designer of Tea, thanks for all the kind words about the design! I'd be happy to answer questions about the design/process if you have any. I plan on writing some blog posts soon explaining some of the fun stuff like app icon and basic UI. Once again, glad you guys are enjoying it and please help us spread the word all you can!
(1) Re: Intro video. Way too long. Don't need to see the face of the founder. How can you use an ordinary hot water heater and discuss water temperature? At least pretend to stick in a thermometer -- or, better, use a Zojirushi or equivalent.
(2) Should probably have preset times/temperatures for different tea types that can be edited, to facilitate data entry (maybe you do, but I didn't quite pick up on this in the video).
(3) Perhaps I'm the only one, but I find data entry (including tasting notes) to be a major pain on an iPhone. I used to keep my cheese tasting notes on mine but gave up since I hated doing it that way. I suspect that people will not continue using the app if they find the most useful features require significant data entry.
(4) Key and very useful feature(brewing timer) is already included as part of the free Teavana app. Also the Teavana app has nice music while you brew.
(5) Killer feature would be tea ratings and the ability to share. You might also want to rate them based on vendor. Or, potentially very profitably, allow direct buying with the purchase automatically imported into the app. That's what my app was structured around. To get a more long-term hold you probably need to "go social" at some point.
(6) Hardcore tea snobs (this term should probably include myself) frequently brew tea in different pots, vessels. You might consider including this -- and obviously you would use different amounts of tea depending on the vessel.
Best of luck! Definitely a huge improvement over what else is out there -- and personally hope it makes it into an app not tied to iOS.
About me: I got into tea while working and studying in China and Japan and once built a (skeletal) Rails app for rating tea that I never released. I still think this could be profitable but am now instead n grad school reading about Tea -- and have also identified several favorite vendors such that I feel that I have everything I need at the moment.
1) We might try to figure out a way to shorten the video. So much new stuff to share!
2) All of the presets are editable.
3) I think that 95% of the use cases will eventually be using the timer, which will be preset perfectly for each tea.
4) We respect Teavana, but we're not a fan of their app's design. Maybe that's bias.
5) Agreed.
6) Agreed. We're working on. It was actually an original feature, but a little trickier than one would think.
Thanks for your feedback! If you have any more, drop me a line at sam at teaapp. com!
re: (1) Not quite sure what to say here, but it might be best to have a short promo video for those with more limited attention spans and a longer one (or multiple ones) that go into more depth related to various features.
re: (2) I look forward to using this feature.
re: (4) I don't love the Teavana app either, only noting the music.
Agree with JD here re (1). The site and app are extremely well done. As a big tea drinker I was hooked in the first 60 seconds of the video, which is also well done. But it was too long. You risked losing the shot to get me to buy the app because the video was dragging on. Once you get me excited enough, I suggest you wrap it up and offer me the link to the App Store. "Don't sell after the close" as they say. I would move the other stuff to one or more additional videos - great way for new customers to learn about the depth your product offers after they purchase. Congratulations on a great app!
This looks like a freaking awesome app and being a tea drinker it really pains me that I can't buy it because Apple doesn't want to take my money.
I want this app!
I'm assuming it comes with sane defaults, does it also allow tweaking the settings to get the steeping times and such perfectly to taste? What about sharing and cross-comparing these with friends?
I'm square in your demographic, so I'll try to give you some honest feedback.
1) Inventory tracking seems odd to me, unless its primarily to brag to other tea drinkers. I mean I see my tea every day, I know how much I have.
2) I really like the brewing tracking/suggesting. The amount of tea, length of steep, and temperature all make a big difference and it can be hard to remember which caused which flavors.
3) I'm okay with making my tea drinking schedule/habits public, but I'm not sure I really want to push each one out to facebook/twitter.
So in conclusion, my main enthusiasm for the app would be my ability to log detailed brewing trials, and to see what others have come up with. I would worry others might be taking loose or incorrect measurements though, so I'd want some assurance any public notes were somewhat carefully done.
1) Inventory tracking was a risk we took because you're right, you can just look at your teas. However, there are some really cool features in the pipeline that will take advantage of the inventory tracker better. For example, you might have several teas, but some go stale more quickly than others. Tea can suggest for you which teas to use up more quickly, but only if it has an idea of how much you have left. Etc.
2) Thanks!
3) That feature is totally optional. Let us know if you find it intrusive.
The brew suggestions that ship with Tea were very meticulously done by one expert, not an average or random statistics online. Hope you enjoy the app if you decide to use it!
I'd like to comment on the first one. I tend to have a goldfish's memory so the inventory tracker would do very well for me if I was out somewhere and felt like purchasing more to remember how much I have at home.
Green tea requires cooler water than black is that something a person new to tea will be shown or is all data the user enters via trial and error?
If it's pre-determined what about mixing different teas which is a common thing to do if the brew settings per tea type are set can other users submit new mixes 10% green, 90% black and say use X grams and brew for Y minutes?
I would replace the inventory feature with an age feature, because I think for most people tracking how many weeks/months ago you bought the tea is more important than how many cups you have left.
Also, while I conceptually like the features the UI isn't especially aesthetically pleasing. I would also recommend adding the preferred units to a preferences page and eliminating that from the brew page.
Age does seem more relevant than volume left! Although you have no way of knowing how long it sat in the supply chain before you bought it (unless they time stamped it).
While this is true, decent tea will be well packaged and should stay fresh until one cracks it open. Oolongs and other quality teas that are best fresh tend to be sold with the date of harvest (like Alishan Winter 09 (sigh!)), while pu erh can, and arguably should, be 12 years old when one drinks it.
In fact, for serious tea heads, tracking the age of tea might be most useful for aging pu erh disks that aren't quite 'there' yet.
One minor UX note: it wasn't directly obvious to me that clicking the small preview images below "Features" resulted in the preview on the right being updated.
Excellent app. I've always been a "pour boiling water into mug with prepackaged tea bag in it" kind of guy, your app might convince me to discover the finer side of tea.
Just a minor issue I noticed: in iPad's Safari the video is stretched (it extends beyond the bounds of the background book) and as it plays your site constantly flickers and reloads itself.
Even if you don't get really into tea you might just try making a cup of tea with hot water instead of boiling water and only let it steep for 2-3 minutes (ie. don't just leave the bag sitting in the cup while you drink). I've found that it can give the tea a better flavor with less bitterness. There certainly is a whole world of loose leaf teas to explore, but at the same time, it's plenty possible to make a really good cup of tea from a standard tea bag.
"I've always been a "pour boiling water into mug with prepackaged tea bag in it" kind of guy, your app might convince me to discover the finer side of tea."
The flickering is greatly reduced on subsequent viewings (even after clearing the cache) and only occurs as the video is starting up now, not a big deal IMO. Not sure why it was so flickery the first time.
No idea what is going on with the youtube embed. I've used css media queries to use a placeholder image on mobile safari that is a thumbnail you can click and will load the youtube video.
Thanks for all the design feedback everyone! Fixed some of the site bugs you guys had mentioned. I'll probably post the blog entries about some of the design in a week or so. Follow me on twitter for those updates or if you have any other questions you want to ask me directly :) http://twitter.com/mactyler
that plugs into the headphone jack. Ideally yours would be lighter weight and would float on water, but the peripheral exists already.
This would add great functionality; it would now become 'perfect tea. anywhere. anytime.' The phone would chime when the water is ready, then simply pour, the phone chimes again, tea. Doesn't matter if you're by a campfire, in an office, in front of a stove; perfect tea.
Make it an attractive peripheral that matches the rest of the Apple way and you will sell a lot of these gizmos, at more than $1.99 - 30% profit per gizmo. Perhaps a kickstarter to pay for production, a la the Glif? I'm in for one, possibly two, in advance.
What about a bluetooth thermometer that uses the heat energy from the liquid to keep it charged? Is that even possible? If anyone knows, drop me an email at sam at teaapp. com!
Amazing app -- if I were an iPhone user, I'd buy it. I don't watch videos, so I apologize if this suggestion is already handled, but WRT to the inventory tracker, will it only work if you know how many servings you just bought?
I'd love it if my loose tea serving remaining would be estimated by my entering how much (in oz or grams) of tea I just added to the stash, and it estimating servings remaining based on stated servings/weight for that tea, then learn from my actual usage. (As a loose tea lover, I hate trying to guess how much I have of what, and store estimates aren't always accurate.)
Will buy it as soon as I get home. I started making / drinking tea thanks largely to this HN article on "A Hacker's Guide to Tea": http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1934051 and the (many!) useful comments within.
BTW, I've been getting most of that tea from the guy who originally wrote "A Hacker's Guide to Tea:" http://www.chicagoteagarden.com/ and it's been good.
Checked out the video, and it seems like a well designed app serving a niche audience.
If you find some success with it, might I suggest skinning the app to serve other niches that share similar needs? I can think of a couple just off the top of my head. You might need to make a few tweaks, but the majority of the feature set could be reused, and with the feedback you get from this app you might find ways to refine the design even further.
This is cool, but the hard part is not figuring out what temperature to brew your tea at, but rather convincing some sort of device to do that for you. I know there are fully-automatic espresso machines where you can set the temperature, pressure, brew volume, grind size, etc. Is there anything like that for tea?
Adagio sells an electric kettle with various settings for temperature. One sec while I find the link... http://bit.ly/hEO3qo There ya go. Sure there are others but that's the first one I thought of.
It seems like it only has two temperature settings, but it's very close to the right idea. I guess coffee geeks are willing to shell out $3000 for fancy machines, while tea geeks are not :)
Found this on dribbble a few days ago. Congrats on the app launch. Can you ask mactyler if he's interested in doing some design work for an app I'm working on? Chase (at) kegstool (dot) com. Thanks!
Website doesnt seem to fit on an iPad sized screen, I can briefly read the content but then the iPhone comes and overlays the right hand size. Looks slick other than that though.
Congrats on the great job, siglesias. I'm buying it right now, and I'm looking forward to hearing what kind of market traction you get!
Also, at a meta level, at some point I'd like to learn more about how iPhone app developers manage so much functionality for so little real-estate. There was a lot going on in this app for only 6-10 very simple screens. Did you mock it up on paper first? Wire frame it? Use an online tool? Details here would be interesting.