Create a Minyan Now Feature Feedback

[Barry Schwartz]

So one of the features requested was the ability to ask others in our
iPhone Siddur community to create an adhoc (makeshift) minyan. So if
you are traveling or missed the only mincha minyan in town, maybe you
can pull ten people together with this feature. There should be
enough people who own the Siddur to make this worthwhile, and we hope
to expand this Siddur to the Pre and possibly other devices, so the
network will just grow.

I am trying to think up the specification to make it work. But I am
getting stuck and I know you guys have great feedback, so what do you
think? This is what I got so far:

User Set Up:
(a) Must be registered
(b) Must add a system to specify what location (address or long/lat) a
person is by day of the week and time. So it can be several locations.
(c) How far the person would go to help make a minyan in both miles
and kilos
(d) We would need their phone number so they can be txted or called by
those willing to join the minyan.

I think that is it on the registration side.

Requesting a Minyan:
Then a "Request a Minyan" button that asks the user to specify what
time, and enter in a description. Then we check if anyone is in his
area and send it out. If less than 10 people, then send back that
there is only X people currently in his area. If there are 10+ people,
then we send out a request via push to all those who fit the location
criteria. The message would say something like:

Title: Minyan Request in Your Area
Description: [Firstname] has requested to pull together a minyan at X
time at (address). Please click okay to inform [Firstname] if you can
make the minyan or not.
VIEW / CANCEL

Issue is, if they hit "Cancel" we don't know it. Why is this an
issue? Well, if we send the request out to 15 people and 7 people
click cancel, we won't know that they meant to click VIEW and then say
on the screen that they cannot make it. I assume most people who
can't make the minyan wont want to be bothered to click VIEW. Apple
doesn't send us a notification that CANCEL was clicked.

Clearly if 9 other people click VIEW and say they can make the
minyan. Then we would then send out another push notification that
the minyan is on for X and we would display a page with the names and
phone numbers of the people who said they will make it, just in case
someone is running late. But if we don't get a 9 others to join, we
push notify the person who requested the minyan that it is not
happening and those that said they could make it as well.

My issue is the "CANCEL" not telling us they clicked "CANCEL" on the
push notification.

Sorry for the long email... Thoughts?

Barry Schwartz
RustyBrick, Inc.

[Barry Schwartz]

So no feedback? :)

[Victor Grazi]

It's a wonderful idea. So there's no way to turn off the cancel button?

On Jul 13, 2009, at 7:31 AM, Barry Schwartz

[Joel Hakoune]

If this is a cancel issue, then it isn't an issue at all. Instead of
View / cancel buttons, you could put accept / deny buttons. Accept
would be the "view", deny would be "cancel". If there is a technical
issue not putting a cancel button at all, you still can add a third
button "cancel" which would close the window, just as Apple likes it.

I think basically this minyan on the fly is a great idea. It seems
you've put some thought on it. My advise, if i may, would be to make
it as simple as possible, people don't like complicated things, they
just won't use it. It's too bad, as this could be really helpful. So,
it should be straightforward with as less questions as possible.

About the user setup:
(b) i'd put 2 possibilities:
1. minyan ad hoc, right now and here (my location), should be with a
single click (request now-here).
2. deferred minyan, when you're planning ahead. For instance, you're
traveling to Timbuktu next week and want to have a minyan over there.
Then i'd suggest to do something pretty close to the iphone's alarm
clock (with repeating dates,...).

At least part of the settings should be constant, therefore defined in
the setting panel, before generating the request. For instance, the
distance (we already have something like that). In fact, more
important than distance would be how much time the people agree to
wait, because it depends how the people would arrive, by foot or car,
plane :),... Miles/km (already present). You should also add the name
and phone number of the person to be called, the email is already
present from the registration (of course this one is just for the
deferred minyan). I think the siddur app itself shouldn't bother the
user with all this info, this should usually be defined just once in
the preferences.

So, the scenario i propose for the user who wants to organize a minyan.
1. Type the button/command to place the request.
2. choose between now or deferred buttons. I think most of the time it
would be now rather than deferred.
a. if now, then it's according to the current location of the iphone.
So, siddur already has all the requested info.
b. send the request, push,...

For the deferred, ahead-planned minyan:
1. Set date/time (with this above-mentioned alarm method).
2. Set location (current or other place, maybe using google maps,...).
Maybe you could also have the user build a list of addresses,
sometimes it's a regular shull, just that they don't have enough
people. So, he could fetch the address from the shull's list...
3. send request,...

Receiving the request:
1. Siddur should check if the location is in the max agreed area, then
give a notice about the request, showing the name/place.
The most important is to mention the max allowed time, so the user can
decide if he'll make it or not.
If it's deferred, the user should see the alarm-style window, showing
the date(s)/time.

2. The user should press just one button (as we said before, but a bit
more enhanced), accept (ok, i'm coming, count on me), trying (i'll do
my best, but i'm not sure i'll make it in this time, maybe then you
could ask the user how much time he needs to make it, maybe they'll
agree to wait some more time), deny (won't do) or cancel (don't bother
me).
a. In fact, it becomes a bit more complicated, because if it's
deferred, the user might want to come for part of the dates, but not
all of them, so you should have some kind of calendar showing the
dates and the user would check the dates he'll come...:)
b. Also, the user might not know right now if he'll be able to make it
at a later date, so you might want the user to send his response
another time.
Well, i'm trying to imagine all the possibilities and it becomes quite
complicated, so i'm not sure how "perfect" if at all you want to do
this :)

3. According to this, the request generator should get some feedback.
With the count or people sure/maybe (and agreed dates, if deferred).

4. At last, the generator should send some kind of feedback/
acknowledgement to the other users, to tell them if there are enough
people for this minyan or not, or maybe it has been cancelled.

A complete other approach: Maybe, you could do something like the
public misheberach list management, a public list of all those
generated minyanim, sorted by date (or distance), of course according
to the maximum distance/time limit and by removing automatically the
due dates. The generator could also mention the maximum waiting time
limit,...
So, everyone could see this list live and add/remove himself to the
list. No need for any interaction between the users! Every interaction
would be against this minyan management server. Would you ever think a
piece of dumb electronic device would be able to organize a minyan on
the fly, so effectively?!
You mind put some kind of reminder, so the users won't forget to get
there on time...

This is about the ideas i got on this right now.

Hope it helps, a bit.

Sorry for the long long long email... Thoughts?

Thanks a lot.

[Joel Hakoune]

Just got an idea as reminder, s specific time (user-defined) before
the minyan due time, the iphone should shout "A Tsenter!!!" :)

__________
Regards,
Joel-H.

[Barry Schwartz]

Major issue with your proposal. We can't pull an iPhones user location
dynamically if they don't have the app open. So we really need to ask
people their primary locations by day, otherwise we wouldn't know who
to push out requests to.

I agree about keeping it as simple as possible. As I thought about the
cancel/view thing, it became less of an issue for me.

I am not sure we should do a deferred minyan. That adds a whole new
level of complexity. Let's see if the 'right now' (ie. Within an hour
or so) is used first.

Great feedback. Thanks so much.

Barry Schwartz
Sent from my iPhone 3GS

[Simcha]

It sounds great but I wonder how realistic it is judging by how much
trouble some synagogues have in getting a minyan at a regular time.
How many men are going to come out to a minyan at 9 or 10 pm.

You have the demographics. How many centres have enough iSiddur users
to even have a hope that a minyan could be gathered? How many
potential minyan iSiddur users do you think would be needed in order
to get 10.

I think that enhancing the Minyanim section might be more productive;
along with the adding and updating of the data. I don't want to fill
out a long form to add; I'll email someone the name and web site and
then they can contact them and obtain the information that they want
to show.

Simcha

PS. whenever I look at the map I always see only one other user using
iSiddur in my general area; do you know

1. how many licensed app owners you have in the Toronto GTA?
2. How many actual users would be in the Toronto GTA?

On Jul 10, 4:22 pm, Barry Schwartz <ba...@rustybrick.com> wrote:

[Barry Schwartz]

To answer your question. We do not ask for user location.

Barry Schwartz
Sent from my iPhone 3GS