Build-a-Bouquet - My first ever published app

[thisma]

Build-a-Bouquet was just published to the app store.

This is my first ever published app. My friend and I have been working on it for quite some time now. I'm really excited to hear some feedback about it; let me know what you do and don't like about it, and let me know of any features you think it should have. I hope to release an update with changes based on feedback as soon as I can.

The app lets you produce arrangements of flowers and accessories. All of them are made from photos; I think they look really good. But, feel free to flame me if you think my app deserves it. Once you've made a bouquet you can take a picture of it and mail it, as a greeting card, to someone using the photos app.

I'm most excited to see what people do with this app so please post photos here of what you make. Here are a couple I made:




-Joshua E Smith

[snow_mani]

I'll be the first to admit that I wouldn't normally purchase a bouquet making app. But I owe someone a belated thanks and was going to send them an email anyway and I was feeling rather impulsive so I "broke the bank", went wild, and took the plunge (well a AUS$1.19 plunge).

Well done on your app. It's obvious to me that you have spent a long time putting this together. Overall it is very professional looking. The flowers and assorted accessories look really nice. The flowers, vases, ribbons and foliage are all sharp and bright. I think they are a good starting selection.

The instructions are clear and easy to understand. I like that you have been able to keep them simple enough and short enough to fit them all on the one screen.

It is easy to place the items and to shrink or increase them in size. It's also easy to bring a flower to the front of the arrangement or to send it to the back.

The instructions showed how to shrink and grow the flowers, but you can do this for all the accessories as well which is a nice feature.

It's easy to delete an item you don't want or to clear everything to start again.

All the functions are accessible from the one screen. For example I don't have to go through 3 or 4 different menu screens to select a vase or to change the background, etc.

Overall it was very easy to use and looks good.

Here are some suggestions for improvement:

1) Appearance of the backgrounds
I thought that the backgrounds looked amatuer in comparision to the rest of the app. The solid plain colours were too harsh for my liking. I would also like to see some pastel colours and or lighter shades.

2) Menu lost on black background
The top menu bar, except for the change background button, is not able to be seen when you use the black background.

3) Your own backgrounds
It would be great if you could use your own background images.

4) Save arrangements
It would be nice to be able to save your arrangements so you could make additional changes later on.

If you are going for long term use and interest, then you might consider introducing some seasonal items. For example bells, pine cones, holly, sprigs of ivy, etc for Christmas. Or a cross, decorated eggs, additional ribbons, soft toy bunnies, etc for Easter. Or pumpkins, turkeys, fruits, etc for Thanksgiving. And so on.

Congratulations on the app. I hope all the hard work pays off.

[snow_mani]

Hi Joshua,

I see you have released an update with a few Christmas themed additions and minor changes.

I'll have to check it out and leave a review for you in the Australian store (I saw the update and realised I hadn't left a review yet).

Is there a save option coming soon so that you can save arrangements to work on them later? I'll also email you in case you are not checking this forum.

[snow_mani]

I saw on appshopper.com that Build a Bouquet now has a free lite version.

http://itunes.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewSoftware?id=299971574&mt=8