Learnings from Releasing the App to the Public

For SNAQ the first moment of truth was when the app was released to the public in 2019. We quickly got a few hundred users but the app was not yet what people expected. Many basic product features were missing — as is the usual case with an MVP. Additionally, we learned that we needed to work on managing our users’ expectations in a better way. Moving from an MVP to a usable product took about 100 releases. The real challenge was the positioning and expectation management as this is very closely correlated to the value proposition of the app itself.

Expectation Management

We decided to remove any claims regarding accuracy of the image based carbohydrate estimation as that created expectations no technical solution with only cameras can meet today or in the near future (or without millions of user images).

Back then we only had about 5,000 users. Our solution was to address the problem more broadly than just focusing on carb counting. We learned what people actually want is to worry less and have less uncertainty around meals. So what could be SNAQ’s role in giving back peace of mind and flexibility around meals?

Rethinking our Positioning

We decided that the SNAQ App should help people living with diabetes* to take the guesswork out of mealtime decisions. This does still includes the core feature to snap a photo of a meal and get carb, fat and protein values.

We further wanted to provide insights to understand how meals affect your blood sugar level, show the Time-In-Range for different meals and help to anticipate blood sugar response based on past meals. All of that with the goal of removing some of the uncertainty, worrying and guesswork around mealtime decisions.

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Many of these new features required to combine meal data with glucose data. We didn’t want SNAQ to be an isolated solution but are continuously working towards making SNAQ more integrated with other apps. The SNAQ App today imports glucose data from many popular devices and apps such as Dexcom, FreeStyle Libre, Medtronic, Ascensia, mySugr, Sugarmate. SNAQ then saves all nutritional values into Apple Health for use within other apps like Tidepool, mySugr, OneDrop and many more.

That’s where we are to date but the journey does not stop here and this story will continue. We would be really excited if you are part of it. We are happy to hear from you at feedback@snaq.io with any questions, inputs, or feedbacks!

*The diabetes application is currently limited to people living in the United States due to more favourable regulatory environment compared to Europe.