road test

CARO COOPER AND ELEANOR ROBERTSON GIVE SOME SO-CALLED ‘SELF-CARE’ APPS A WHIRL.

VERA I aspire to be a green thumb, but I kill everything. It was exciting, then, to try out Vera, the plant care app that lets you create ‘plant profiles’ and set digital watering reminders. I was instantly pleased with the design of the program – simple, clean, pretty. It’s like a beautiful baby book to track the birth, growth and (potentially speedy) death of your plants. You no longer have to keep all those dirty pieces of plastic that come in pot plants when you first adopt them – just enter all the details in the app, take a photo and you’re done. The only flaw? Vera will tell you it’s time to water your plant based on what you’ve entered. I wish it had that information, rather than me guessing based off a complete lack of understanding. Surely technology is at a point where it can decipher my exact address, weather conditions, plant health and position within my house to tell me when and how much to water my plants. Maybe in the next upgrade. CC

SHINE I have nothing against meditation, apart from the fact I hate doing it. But I do it anyway, because it helps me identify my desires and take responsibility for them. It can be hard to figure out what you want – different levels of your mind want different things. Some of your desires can be unconscious, or even harmful. Meditation helps me sort through them and act more in accordance with what I actually think is best. The Shine app, which intends to provide “daily support for your stress and anxiety” via push notifications and guided meditations, does not help me do this. It treats the user like a fragile little egg, and I find it very patronising. “What are you grateful for?” it asks in a weird, babyish voice. “Take a deep breath, Eleanor,” it reminds me. “Do you want to learn a new self-care strategy?” What is it going to ask me next? “Do you need your dummy, Eleanor? Do you need to be burped?” Yuck! No, thank you. ER

OFFTIME When I first opened this app, which purports to help you unplug from the digital world, I questioned whether only young white families and business people could use it. It’s like they typed the phrase ‘generic white hetero family’ into their stock image library and chose the first three photos. The opening screen tells me to “eliminate distractions and live to the fullest”, which fills me with so much anxiety that I’m struggling already. The app mutes notifications while still allowing calls, which is nifty, but any product that needs to redirect you to an explanatory video before you use it should probably reconsider its UX. The number of permissions required for OFFTIME to be functional on my phone was beyond my boundaries, as well. If you’re more cavalier sharing your data and digital shadow, then this could be a good first step on the road to eliminating digital overload. Personally, I’d suggest getting a Nokia 3310 or sticking a post-it on your screen, reminding you to get a life. CC

PAPRIKA RECIPE MANAGER How did I not know Paprika existed? I am constantly saving recipes in random places – emails, the Notes app, drawers and pockets – then forgetting about them completely. It’s why I can’t cook, I reckon. How can you cook if you can never find your recipes? But I no longer have an excuse – how inconvenient. All I have to do now is open the browser in Paprika and start searching for recipes, then click download and they’re saved into a folder on my phone. You’re not limited to random recipes in the app, either – you can browse any of your favourite foodie sites. So often, technology fails to solve a real problem – no, I don’t need to know how many steps I took today – but this time, it does. It’s really quite a shock. It’s basically an electronic version of granny’s old recipe binder with all its yellowed newspaper and magazine cuttings tucked inside, only more useful, because you can make shopping lists and pull it out in the supermarket grocery aisle. CC

PIGMENT

The first problem with Pigment, the adult colouring book app, is that it costs $7.49 per week. I was able to test it out using a free trial period, but after that it auto-renews on the reg. Per year, that means you’re forking out $389.48 to do digital colouring in. That is simply too much money. For that amount, you’d want the app to supply sexual favours or insider trading information. The second problem is that it’s just not very much fun. The easiest way to colour is to pick the fill option, which lets you tap on individual parts of your chosen template and instantly colour them in, similar to Photoshop’s paint bucket tool. I was not relaxed by this, nor was I relaxed by the large selection of extremely naff pictures available to colour on Pigment. Do you like weird, ugly birds? What about using your phone for something that’s specifically intended to be a break from using your phone? If any of this appeals, and you also enjoy being ripped off, give Pigment a try. ER

CLUE

I already use a period-tracking app called Period Tracker, and credit where it’s due: Period Tracker certainly tracks periods. The main reason I use it is so I don’t start free-bleeding when I’m at the supermarket. Unfortunately, its design is pretty unpleasant, featuring lots of cartoony flowers and butterflies. That would be fine if children were the target market, but they’re not, unless I’ve really got my wires crossed. Clue, on the other hand, does not use visual codes associated with the under-fives while helping you track things like PMS, cramps and your ‘fertile window’. It looks good: the little icons are minimalist and modern, there are no smiling flowers, and it calls your period THE PERIOD in all caps, which treats menstruation with the respect it deserves. Clue is the ’80s power suit of menstrual apps. It tracks your cycle, but it also wears shoulder pads and yells, “BUY, SELL, BUY,” into a big chunky desk phone. Very suitable for an adult period-haver, especially if they’re fond of the film Working Girl. ER

SLEEP CYCLE

My partner is a regular user of the Sleep Cycle app. The process of collecting many individual informational points about his own life and plotting them on a graph is catnip to him. I respect his choices, but I also believe he is suffering from some kind of metaphysical sickness. The only way I’m able to cope with life is to avoid looking at the big picture as much as physically possible, and his excitement at seeing it all laid out before him in a series of pie charts and line graphs alarms me. Yes, the Sleep Cycle app does learn your sleep patterns so it can wake you up at an optimal point, when you’re likely to feel most rested. But has it considered, instead, leaving me alone? Have any of these quantifiedself products considered just leaving me the hell alone to live my inefficient life in peace? What if I like living like a drowsy, mindless little goblin? This app can optimise my sleep over my dead body. ER

STREAKS

My mobile phone looked like a streak of light when I threw it across the living room last night. Every few minutes, I was pinged with another reminder of things Streaks wanted me to do. Admittedly, it’s not the app’s fault – it is designed to track your personal goals, after all – but if I haven’t achieved my daily quota of working out, reading, meditation and healthy eating, and successfully avoided sugar, wine and excessive screen time, then chances are I’m already very aware of my failings and don’t need a series of in-my-face reminders. Sure, I could probably turn the notifications off, but I found the interface pretty confusing – there was so much happening everywhere. (I could have used the time I spent trying to translate the icons to actually achieve one of my goals, perhaps.) This app is fine if you need a technological parental figure to nag you each day. But maybe just work on some self-discipline instead. CC