Ross Collier

Dear Snapchat,

First off, congrats. It’s rare to develop and app that gains as much traction like the one you guys created. Y’all have done an awesome job meeting demand  sever wise, which I imagine is no easy feat. I want Snapchat to continue this momentum and thrive. You have made great success so far, but have a long way to go. Make something of your virality. Your rival app, Poke, is without  a doubt better experience to use, but Snapchat can be better. Please improve your app’s design, simplicity, and features so that you can continue to thrive and offer a better experience. 

 Your yellow ghost icon is iconic and cute. However, The ux design is less than stellar. The color scheme has no consistency. There’s purple, green, blue, pink, yellow, gray and orange. Keep the colors simple and consistent. Get rid of the gradient behind the list view and make it solid yellow like the app icon. Keep 2-3 colors that you portray in good design. At first glance I feel like the app gives me a trashy impression because of the design choices. Some buttons are confusing and awkward and could be much better. Rethink how well the app experience could be to the end user. 

-Highscore-

I noticed that users are ranked by scores. I don’t think you should make users leave the app to go to a website to see this. If you want to make Snapchat more competitive with the score system, bake it in the app and make it so that your users want to improve their scores. The “open in safari” method takes me out of your app! Why can’t I tap on a name and see the stats I the app natively? 

-Multi-user selection-

The muli-user selection is better than when it was months ago, but there is still a large opportunity with this. The selection circles are too close to the index letters, and accidental presses throw off the selection process when sending snaps. I noticed that this was slightly improved in the last update (selection can occur in the middle after first checked name), but most wouldn’t realize that fix unless it was pointed out because it’s so subtle. I suggest removing all the circles, and allow user to tap anywhere on names instead, and highlight as they select. Don’t prompt the user after at first press like it does now, instead allow user to press send after the selection process, then ask for permission, to ensure no accidental sends. 

-groups-

I like sending my Snapchats to multiple people. You can vastly improve the selection process by allowing users to create groups. It would be so nice to be able to send Snapchats to a group of people instead of having to go through a long selection process each time. Think about an elegant way to implant this. 

-reply- 

It would be so nice to have a reply button in the Snapchat list. In many cases I will send a group Snapchat out, and will get many replies within a few mins. I would love to be able to easily reply to people on an individual basis, similar to Poke. 

-text- 

I like the idea of creating text only Snapchats, but I don’t think that is a feature you need to take out of Pokes book, however it would be nice if the text bar expanded to make more space.  Sometimes one line isn’t enough. 

-drawing-

The drawing feature is actually pretty decent for the most part. The color picker is easy with a slide of the finger, make that more obvious with design. I would like to see different marker sizes and a more fluid marker. (Look at iPad app paper by fiftythree, the default pen is the best drawing/writing experience I’ve seen on iOS) 

-auto save- 

Make a feature available to autosave all Snapchats sent. 

-friend finder- 

Include social network integration.(twitter/fb/tumblr) I know Facebook might be an enemy, but it doesn’t mean you can’t use their tools to your advantage. This process still feels a little buggy IMO, so work out the kinks in this area. 

— Conclusion —

 I love your app, and if just a few of these things were fixed/implemented I’m certain you would have a much happier group of users. I applaud that you are making fixes in each update, (The music thing was huge for me) but you still have a ton of opportunity to make your app a beautiful experience. 

Keep up the good work and please feel free to ask for more feedback if you wish. I’m sure you guys have had many of these feature requests previously, and thank you to the person that actually read this whole email. I have a ton of feedback and I’m glad you care enough to read it. I think Snapchat has the opportunity to be much better than it is currently is, and I hope to see that I the future. 

Thank you for your attention. 

-Ross