Off the top, a massive thank you to my helper. I know the technical issues kind of messed with their stroke, so, I appreciate their patience and all of their help, as well as their technical input after the fun part.
Okay! I'm sure you can see the run time. It's a long one. Once again, thank you, dear helper.
I could have done it without them, but it wouldn't have been nearly as dramatic.
Visually: The app looks nice, I guess? The User Interface leaves a lot to be desired, but that is more usability, so I'm just going to jump into that bit of things.
Usability: So, personally, I find this app really frustrating. There are elements of the app that are designed similar to the Lovense app, and that generates a false sense of security as I started clicking around. But nothing has really worked how I expect it to work, so far. It's all been a learning process and like... I've used an app once or twice and even studied UI a bit. Something feels off on this design.
To start, all the social elements of this app are super confusing. Right off the top, I was trying to invite my helper to run the machine, but the app sent them a link that opened in a browser, despite us being friends in the app, where I was trying to invite them to play.
I can have friends and fans but I have to be fans of the other person another to play in the app, but I thought we were friends and fans are just people who follow me and its all terribly confusing? Like... It shouldn't be. But it is.
We had a lot of connectivity issues over the process of recording this, which you can hear. It was easy enough to reconnect everything, but after the third orgasm that's been ruined unintentionally.... I lose my patience with that kind of stuff.
And it was hard to figure out what was causing the issue. So that was really frustrating.
My helper's feedback, that the input screen was really confusing and not at all intuitive, is also super founded, I think.
So, the Lovense app has a bubble that the operator can shift up and down, as well as a visual, to show the operator that as they move the bubble up, the vibration gets more intense, with a wave form. Seems pretty straightforward, right?
In the Hismith app, the operator is presented with a screen of sparkly stars. When they touch the screen, they leave a color trail across the stars and it twinkles out. If the operator swipes up on the screen, they speed the machine up. If the operator swipes down on the screen, they slow the machine down. NOTHING gives this indication outside of the speed tracker in the top left of the screen.
The speed tracker looks like a thermometer, with a number that rises and lowers as a person swipes between 0 and 100.
The machine goes from 0 to 250 strokes. The number isn't even an accurate representation of the speed. Without something to explain what those numbers mean, they are useless.
The sparkly stars and color trails are equally vague and confusing and a sense of control doesn't really exist when I use that system. The machine doesn't really respond to the movements on the app in any kind of sensical way when it comes to if, say, the operator wanted to speed up suddenly vs gradually.
In my own experiments with the app, it's tracking of the finger speed can stutter at times and while the colored line might still be following my finger, the effect on the machine's speed has stopped.
No bueno. Do not like.
Overall: I think the app itself needs some work. The discussion toward the end of the audio kind of touches on why it might be this annoyingly poorly designed and I think I have to agree with the ultimate assessment of, perhaps there is just not a lot of people using this level of Bluetooth sex toy tech.
So the system works well enough and if there isn't a demand for something better, cause the market is simply so small or they havent had a lot of feedback (again, cause the market is small), they will put their effort into other elements of their products that have higher priority.
This all being said, the machine still SLAPS and I love it so fucking much, I honestly think it is worth the cost, just for personal use. I'm a bit of a hedonist, so take that with a grain of salt, but, I think, taking the anxiety out of your sexual release can be empowering and a machine like this can help a person figure all that out, at their own pace and their own comfort.
Adding in partner play is super exciting as well, and for that reason, I think this machine offers a lot of possibilities and its hard for me not to gush on it. In all the ways.
But gosh dang it, how fucking hard is it to make the app a bit more sensical. I beg, Hismith. Lovense is coming for your market share, and their app makes more sense. I'm worried for you, baby.
Anyway. That's how I feel about this whole situation. It was a lot of fun otherwise and it was kind of funny the first time I had my shit ruined. It's fine. We pushed through and made it happen.
Great job, Team. Pizza is on me!