shelpful: AI for ADHD Tasks

I think this app has all the right foundations to be a great tool, but it still has some limitations. I appreciate that the app team is constantly trying to evolve the product and think future iterations will just get better and better. That being said, I have had some technical issues and have been unable to get in touch with anyone to help for at least 5 weeks. I know it is a very small team, but my emails and DMs have gone unanswered and it’s a bit frustrating when my issue is something that impacts my daily use of the app. Overall I am enjoying the app but not sure I will continue to pay for an app that is seemingly unable to provide any technical support.

I have a PhD in human behavioral research and use a variety of LLMs daily in professional and personal capacities. It has a good number of inaccuracies/hallucinations, as well as an inability to follow some instructions, such as not to use emojis. So it’s an LLM. For an LLM it’s pretty good, but not nearly as good as a human would be. I would urge the developers that while dialing in the model they provide free, sporadic, humans-in-the-loop, to ensure the model doesn’t do things like repeatedly promise that it can interact with you in ways that it’s clearly programmed to avoid, and so that it doesn’t miss things—either when you ask for something, like a complete list of tasks, or to undo something, like undo an item on list that it messed up. I don’t think the model is currently good enough to warrant charging more than a couple of bucks (at most) weekly. I think they should still be in the beta phase, and I hope they have good quant and qual UXRs working on improving the product. I’m undecided whether or not I’ll keep the app, but after using it for less than 24 hours I am disappointed.

I saw the creator of the app on TikTok promoting it and felt like her ADHD mom/tech energy matched mine pretty spot on so downloaded the app to try. I was skeptical since so many of these apps are cool at first but then you just kinda stop using them. Granted I’ve only had this for 2 days, but I’m using the heck out of it. It helped me remember I volunteered to take in donuts to my kids school this morning, which I had already forgot I was supposed to do. It’s also helping me chip away at my to do list daily setting me up for less chaos this weekend. I would love to see more integration with other apps I use like a shared calendar, my fitness pal, or places I order from. Also, NFC tag or smart home integration would be pretty sweet. I’m a software QA engineer by trade(for different company) and have been really impressed by the simplicity, intuitive functions, and largely bug free behavior. Good job finding a niche with AI and running with it in a clever yet obvious way!