I am pleased to introduce Eye My Baby – an android baby monitoring app, developed by WishTree technologies. Being mother of a toddler, I can really appreciate the importance of baby monitoring. As the app testing progressed, I’ve been so amazed at its simplicity and efficiency. So, here is what I quizzed Ashish Chowdhary, the person to be thanked for this awesome app!
1. Why an app on parenting? What is the motivation? This is way different from the current way of doing things at WishTree Technologies.
You’ve hit the nail in the first question itself – what’s the problem we’re trying to solve and what’s the motivation? I’m not a father yet (not even married yet and not even engaged yet :p) and still was interested in developing a product on parenting, how and WHY?
My bhabhi (sister-in-law) is a housewife (I come from a typical Marwari family where women are MOSTLY housewives and I abhor that concept). And she has a 1.5 years old daughter. She is always concerned whether my niece is asleep in the room or awake, whether she is crying or not. And she constantly checks her room to see if my niece is asleep or awake. While cooking or while being with my brother, my bhabhi is always concerned about my niece. She avoids going out when my niece is asleep, thinking that my niece would need her if she gets up.
My partner (who is a father of 1 year old) had a similar issue. He wanted to go on walks at nights with his wife but his wife would always say who would take care of the baby if she wakes up? And they would drop their plans to go anywhere when their baby was asleep.
Imagine a few more scenarios: new parents wanting to shop for groceries at Walmart in the US but cannot go because their baby is sleeping and they don’t want to carry her around. Or a babysitter is at home in a metro city in India and both the parents are working and the babysitter ignored the cries of baby because she is busy talking to someone else over the phone. Or a large house somewhere in the UK and the kid is sleeping upstairs while mother is in the kitchen cooking food. The baby wakes up and the mother doesn’t figure out until the baby starts crying really loudly. And finally couples wanting want to spend quality time together without worrying much about the baby. Eye My Baby can help in all situations. These were the problems we wanted to solve and the same was the motivation.
Some things can’t be left unguarded – your money, your personal information, your secrets and your baby’s sleep. For everything else there are banks, lockers and secure places. Eye My Baby takes care of your baby’s sleep.
2. Why give it away for free?
We wanted to give the first version for free and test out how people responded to it. We have a few more premium features that we will launch in version 2 of Eye My Baby and then the revenue model shall be in place.
3. Three Best things about the app?
This question put me into thinking because I’ve been so attached to this app that it was difficult to tell three best things. Let me give a try:
a) The experience we’ve created:
I’ve seen many other baby monitoring apps and in most of them the User Interface was pathetic and the entire experience of using the app was bad. So we wanted to make that experience amazing. For e.g. as soon as you start Eye My Baby on your phone, we thank the users for downloading the app, explain what the app does in 1 line and then take them to one-time setup that takes just a few seconds. We’ve kept the setup screen even before the app starts so that the users can quickly test the app without delving deeper into advanced settings.
b) Understanding the needs of baby:
Every baby is unique and we want her to be so. Keeping in mind that the noise level of every child is different, Eye My Baby has provision for 3 different noise levels and subsequently three different actions that can be performed. For example if the baby’s cry is infrequent, you can choose to play Parent’s Message. If the baby cries a bit more, you can play her favourite lullaby or get an Email. And if the baby becomes uncontrollable you can receive an instant Notification or Phone Call so that you can attend your baby immediately.
c) Striving to make parenting better:
Parenting isn’t difficult.
Parenting isn’t easy either.
Parenting is just knowing what your baby wants and when (difficult) and giving them that (easy).
We understand that not all parents would remember to keep the phone on Silent mode or plug the phone into power source when Eye My Baby is monitoring your baby. We had thought about it while we were discussing the app and hence we’ve built that into the app so that parents need not worry even if their baby is making noise, or if the battery is low, or if they’ve forgotten to keep the phone near the baby on Silent mode.
4. Any things that need improvement?
I’d want our users to comment on this. They are better critiques than me. Although we will constantly work upon improving the user experience, but it would be fair if more people download the app and give their feedback so that we understand how Eye My Baby is becoming an important part in parents’ lives.
5. How did you get the app to be visible in so-many-billion apps in Google Play? Marketing Strategy?
This is just the beginning. We’ve still not started full-fledged marketing of the app. Currently we’re only doing it through Social Media and blogs. There are other marketing plans that we’re trying to implement. We still have a long way to reach to the top of Google page as well as app store and we WILL reach there.
6. Is there video recording of the baby sleeping?
This is on the cards. We want to be sure that the video recording matches the Events log that we currently show (it shows when the baby slept, when it made noise and what all events took place between the start and stop of baby monitoring). Not even a single second of mismatch can be acceptable. So let us first perfect this thing. But we surely know that this is a “must-have” feature.
7. When exactly you want parents or care takers to use this app? Because, if I would use this app on my baby when my mother in law is watching her, I would attract more flak than ever.
Good question.
This app is NOT meant to replace parental supervision of the babies. This is just a simple tool to monitor your baby when no one’s around or when you don’t want to be too worried for your baby and still be able to carry on with your chores. I’ve included almost all the situations in my response to your first question.
In fact, one of my friends even suggested that the app could be used for pet monitoring or monitoring of aged people. Funny!! Although we’ve not tested the app for those scenarios but we feel there’s a lot that can be done with this app. With our second version, we’re working on an amazing feature that would tremendously reduce the stress of nannies or care takers. Lips sealed till we actually test it and launch it.
8. When is the app coming on iPhone?
Very soon. It’s almost done and if everything goes well while submitting the app to Apple App Store, then perhaps by the first week of June we’ll be on iPhone too.
9. Best feedback you’ve got so far?
Still waiting for it :). It’s a long journey and the best is yet to come. But the reviews on Google Play Store are encouraging. Download Eye My Baby for Android here and Rate us on Google Play.
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So, what’s my review of Eye My Baby App?
The app has a first time set up which will take care of most of the things. It has very neat UI too. Lot of minute details taken care such as : Pre-recording parent’s voice, adjusting noise levels for baby’s sound, having one call only per recording session and notifying of the paired device if the battery falls low. It shows that thorough ground work has been performed while devising the app.
Also, while I tested the app, I found one minor glitch. When me and Ashish discussed over this, he told me that that problem is already fixed in the next coming update. Impressive!
I’d love to have video recording on the app, and hope that comes in the next updates. This app is already too good to be free!:) Download it now and leave your ratings in Google play.
p.s: Ashish is following this story so feel free to ask him anything or give him direct feedback here as well!
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Editor’s note: This is the second interview of our series of ‘Meet the Rodinhooders’ – where any Rodinhooder can interview another one! if you’d like to interview another Rodinhooder, or would like to be interviewed, simply send an email to asha@rodinhood.com
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