Ask HN: Review My App - CareLogger (A Diabetes Tracking Tool)

Great landing page, initially I was clicking around trying to figure out why such a slick looking tool was completely free! You really get across how and why your service would be useful.

A few little nitpicks, hopefully they're helpful: The bottom signup button isn't clickable. The orange 'join today' text could maybe do with a nicer font - more handwritten, less script. There's a small white square in the top right of your stock photo. Cutout outline visible on the woman's hair. The screenshots might be better popping up in a lightbox. The sign-up form struck me as generic, and didn't match the page I had just come from. The site root doesn't show my dashboard when I'm logged in. The icons next to the different types of entries look like youtube 'play' buttons, confused me for a moment.

I like it!

Unfortunately, the fundamental problem with diabetics, and the reason that the (now) 4 people who have commented here never created this app, is that diabetics are lazy. This needs to be soooooo easy to use. Which it is, to the extent that it is a webapp.

This really somehow needs to get turned into a mobile app, which will remind you to do the checks, and prompt you for a reading. If you were to provide a simple web API, I would probably be plugging into it tonight on Palm.

If this app texted me, and I could respond with readings, I would be in love.

Particularly for basal tests and bolus tests on an insulin pump, prompted readings with a dead simple interface are key. When you are supposed to be doing this 5 times a day, you are going to be as expedient as possible. This is the primary problem with logging systems. Personally I either forget, or don't want to run upstairs every time.

The only real missing feature of note is the lack of an interface for basal and bolus testing. Though that only applies to a subset of diabetics.

Type 1 diabetic here. Maybe I can offer some unique insight. Or maybe, also being a hacker, that makes me overly critical, so sorry if this is too harsh.

There are tons of tools like this out there (including software from Medtronic, the leading maker of insulin pumps, that they've clinically proven increases diabetes control, and integrate directly with glucose meters). I don't use them because:

* My meter stores that stuff for me and does charts and stats. If I want those charts on my computer, I can just upload the data with the software that comes with the meter.

* Having all the information graphed in one place on the web isn't more useful than looking at my meter.

* If I did want more than the meter does in one place, I would just use a spreadsheet.

* These tools don't add any major additional insight into what I can do to manage my diabetes better, at least compared to the work in using them.

Your pitch -- and the center of your development thought process -- needs to be "use this and you will live longer and have less stress in your life, for X, Y and Z reasons". Don't write another line of code until you have that, is my advice.

The most general problem is that there is no "stickiness" to the app -- no compelling reason to keep using it day after day. (Some ideas to get you going: make it get smarter the more I use it. Send me actionable info -- "you've only gone to the gym once this week -- on weeks when you go at least 2x, your avg. BG is 20 points lower". Make me want to show off when I'm doing well, and indirectly apply social pressure to do better when I'm not.)

And you don't even have some basic details right. You have nothing for exercise! That's huge! And the glycemic load, fat content, and amount of fiber in a food is as important as how much carbohydrate is in it. Knowing how many carbs are in a piece of pizza isn't that useful (and there are a million other tools to do that already --including ones built directly into insulin pumps and blood glucose meters, and mobile apps). If you don't know that you should take very different insulin amounts and patterns when eating a serving of Skittles, pizza or brown rice even though they have the same amount of CHO, you don't know enough to help.

There really isn't anything in the app that shows you've even read the wikipedia page about diabetes. Sorry if that sounds harsh but every part of the app reflects it, and so as a diabetic it's hard not to find the whole thing condescending. In addition to nothing on exercise, your app doesn't do anything with A1C/fructosamine, C-peptide tests, cholesterol, T4, etc., all of which are more useful to compare to blood glucose readings than BP, and as important to track over time. Have you even heard of A1C? They run commercials on TV reminding diabetics to get it checked regularly all the time.

Maybe my expectations are too high, or maybe yours are. If you're going for super-simple, it needs to be a lot more simple, a bit more useful, and a lot more memorable. If you're going for sophisticated, you've got a whole lot of work to do and probably need to get diabetes and/or a medical degree first. But you need to make a choice: are you going for power users, or casual users? Even if you got the medical details right, there's a basic market fit problem here, and a lack of stickyness, as mentioned above. There are way too many competitors not to have the market fit be solid and have some very unique twist.

In general, if you're selling a specialty product, you need to know more about the specialty than the average user. I've created some very successful software for the specialty $foo market. But I was a $foo-ographer for 10 years, everybody in the $foo world knows my name, I've been blogging about $foo for 5 years, etc.

As a white guy, would you start a line of hair-care products for black people? Open up a Thai restaurant even though you've never been to Thailand, don't even eat Thai food, and there are already 3 good Thai restaurants in the neighborhood -- but you heard that lemongrass is somehow involved? Probably not, so why do this? DON'T FAKE THE FUNK.

Oh, final pet peeve. For the love of Pete don't say stuff like "CareLogger makes it possible to share your logged information with your physician simply by printing off the desired records." No. Being able to print a web page is not a feature. I can just take my glucose meter to the doctor and they can pull my data directly from it into their computer! Don't mention stuff that makes you look bad, even to downplay it. If you can't compete on a feature, don't mention it. Sell the features you do have, preferably the ones competitors don't.

This was an app I built over the winter break in about 3 days. Its just a simple tool for people with diabetes to log their blood glucose levels, meals, etc. I explained the story here in a blog post: http://dmix.ca/2010/02/announcing-carelogger-a-diabetes-trac...

We soft-launched about a week ago and have had 80 people signup which we think is awesome.

We'd appreciate any feedback.

This looks great. As a diabetic i've been considering doing something like this, now i won't need to :)

Some feedback:

Can't create new entries, get "We're sorry, but something went wrong."

Would like to be able to enter different types of mediciation, i use humalog+lantus.

A mobile app would be awesome. I might be able to help, i have iphone experience and a little android experience..

EDIT: Prefilled time when creating an entry is off by one hour.. timezone/dst issue?

I have to agree about the signup page appearing out of place. I'd keep it in the same style as the rest of the site.

The About page has "About HumaLogger" as the header. I'm assuming you guys changed names once or twice ;)

Our company works with 2 prominent diabetes companies. I am going to let them know about this. I may be able to help get you some significant exposure on this if they find it interesting.

Very nice. I agree with most commentators that a mobile app would be a big step forward. It will also greatly help patients to share their log data with their physicians instead of mere print outs as suggested on the web site. The solution for laziness would be complete automation as one poster suggested or the patient's physician should press to see this data during all their visits which will indirectly make it a habit for the patient to enter their data. Anyways, nice app again. Good luck.

I am the father of a Type 1 who is 8 years old. The problem is the same with any of the diabetes tools: you have to manually enter the numbers. Until you can get around this fundamental problem, you will have difficulty getting people to use the app. A mobile app helps, but it really needs to be automated. Also, many people will not share sensitive health information with a random website.

Keep an eye on what Google Health and Microsoft's Health Vault are doing. Good luck.

I was about to do this. It's a great idea, it's an excellent market and most of the competition is terrible. I actually did my research on this so I know for a fact you'll be successful.

Just be sure to allow people recommend it to their family and friends. That should be a big part of your marketing - getting geeks to get their parents to use this.

Add Facebook Connect at login and signup.

While I'm not a diabetic, my sister is. I'm sending this along to her for her thoughts.

I am diabetic (type 1), and I have been meaning to make this for years. Damn you!