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p/zylAI-powered photo app with a privacy by design approach
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CyrilPaglino

Zyl 3.0 - Your pics with magic, everyday

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A picture is worth a thousand words, let’s use all our forgotten photos and videos as daily icebreakers!

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CyrilPaglino
Hunter
Hi everyone 👋 Happy to hunt Zyl today! It’s a well designed photo app using AI that relives your best memories, edits them and makes it easy to share them with your friends and family as daily icebreakers. The team has been working in the photo industry for 3 years. After having discussed with hundreds of users, I believe they’re onto something useful and addictive with this new version! Give it a try! Cheers.
Mathieu Spiry
Maker
Thanks @CyrilPaglino for hunting us đŸ’Ș Hi guys, Can’t believe it’s been 3 years now since we launched here the first version of Zyl (formerly called Comet). It helped us a lot to gather feedback and insights, so here we are again. After discussing with many of our users during the past year, we are finally there, releasing the 3.0.0 of Zyl (it’s been live on App Store and Play Store for just a few hours!) ❌ Our main insight is that we struggle to keep in touch with our loved ones. In the meantime, we are all sitting on a gold mine: the thousands of photos and videos dying in our smartphones and mostly taken with our friends and families. Because after a post on IG or Snap, we don’t do anything with these photos and videos and forget about them. So we decided to use the power of deep learning to: 📾 Relive the best Memories hidden in your phone đŸ˜» Edit them to create funny, happy or hilarious GIF, videos, or slideshows We also worked a lot on the UX allowing users to easily share their best Memories with the most important people of their life or simply to nurture new relationships. One of our main challenges was that we embedded our deep learning models on-device, to protect our users privacy. Here come the troubles! đŸ€• At first, the app weighted more than 300MB (you can download apps in 4G up to 150MB on the App Store). So we developed some tricks to compress our models. Also, smartphones were burning at the beginning and batteries were quickly consummated, so we built a dispatcher that can run things as fast as possible while preserving batteries. We had a private beta during the summer and a lot of success stories. In a month, 61% of our testers reconnected with at least 5 people, thanks to the Memories we fetched in their galleries. A love story was even born 💘 So
 looking forward hearing from you all, and to all the ones I know personally, share your Memories!! Please ask us anything đŸ€˜
tonixx
@mathieuspiry Congrats! Your app looks great! I want to make couple of suggestions ... how can I get in touch with you?
Yash Bhardwaj
I might be missing something here but please educate me. 1. How is this different from Google Photos / Apple Photos / Facebook Memories. All them remind me of a memory. I can seamlessly share it with friends. 2. I can even tap on a face to find more memories together Incase I have to. 3. So to summarize my doubts, what is it that you offer that would make me quit the giants? Feedback : I think you should adopt a tagline that communicates the core value of the app. Since the name is fictitious it doesn't help much. "Your pics with magic, everyday". It's a bit too broad. I know what you're thinking, that's just me. Try the 5 second test. Take like 3-4 people who've never heard of you before, show them your landing page for exactly 5 seconds. This is no hard rule to follow but if they can't know it's a photo related app, or has something to do with memories or AI. Then it's bad!
Ophély Nhem
Maker
@yash thanks for commenting! To answer your questions: 1/ We’ve been talking to almost a thousand of our users for the past 8 months and asking them how they’re using their photo galleries (mostly Google Photos and Photos by Apple). What struck us was that most of them only used one tab in their photo app (the roll tab or the albums), and didn’t know about the Memory feature. Regarding Facebook Memories, the difference is that they only have content people shared on the network, and don’t have access to your camera roll. 2/ We also discussed what makes the value of a Memory with them and it’s the surprise. People don’t want to decide what kind of memories they’re going to see but if it’s an external trigger that makes them think about it, they’re happy with it. 3/ And finally one of our key differences is that we built the product with a privacy by design approach: all our models are embedded on-device and nothing goes through servers. Thanks for the idea about the tagline, that’s definitively something we are going to work on! Hope I’ve answered your questions properly, please ask further questions if needed 🙌
Tim Winfree
Congrats @cyrilpaglino on getting featured! I may be in the minority, but I’m still struggling to figure out what Zyl does. I couldn’t really follow the narrative in the video. I’m not sure what is happening when she’s initially browsing her photos. Is there significance to the photo being a series of photos? Is that the “magic”? Are the final pics they take in the bar demoing some Zyl feature? I'd recommend some captions to walk viewers through. Separately, what does “1 day = 1 memory never seen before” mean? What’s the AI component? What makes these “forgotten memories”? It’s clear you’ve got a lot of talent behind this. I’d just love to see some sharper communication so everyone can appreciate this for what it is.
Ophély Nhem
Maker
@timwinfree thank you for your comment and your advise about the captions in the video, we’ll definitively add them to help viewers better understand the use case! To answer your first questions, Zyl is a photo app that you use once a day when you have 5 minutes to loose. You just need to press a button and you get a surprising memory. When we say magic, this means that we’re using Machine Learning to select your best Memories. We researched what was a good memory for people and it’s a moment spent with people, smiling, laughing
 We added criterias such as the type of event that happened and here we are, we developed a model for that. Regarding the "1 day = 1 memory never seen before", this means we automatically edit your content. It can be a GIF, a video, a game
 So the format of the Memory is surprising 🙂 And finally, what makes a forgotten memory? So we talked to our users and we realized that once a photo or a video is taken and shared instantly or within a few days, we forget that we have them. Hope this is clearer now, please do not hesitate to ask further questions. Cheers
Gauthier Chan

I've been using Zyl as a beta tester for a month and now use it almost everyday to find memories to share with my friends and family. Great app!

Pros:

Great UX and UI & the Memories found are relevant

Cons:

We want more Memories everyday!

Simon FĂ©vry
Following your work since the begining, keep up the good work!
Maitrik Kataria
@ophely_n Hey OphĂ©ly! Congratulations on the launch. Loved the way you've addressed each question in the comment section. It was just the other day I’d read Matt Anderson’s blog on Onboarding Best Practices via UX Pin and while I was checking out Zyl it felt like I was reading some of my favourite parts from the it such as users can create memories without signing up. That is a big plus!! I was wondering if you plan to add a feature that could allow users to select a folder from which they’d want to create memories. Like I’d like to select my favourites (folder) to avoid creating a memory with burst images. A small feedback: As a new user I’d like to learn more about the basic functionalities of the app when I’m onboarded such as the ‘heart swipe’ on top that stores my memories separately. You guys sure have done a great job. All the best! :)
Ophély Nhem
Maker
@maitrikkataria Hi Maitrik, thanks for your kind message and your feedback! We are indeed planning on creating Memories with albums/folders. It should be released soon. Regarding enabling our users to choose the type of Memories they want to re-discover, we're not sure yet. We found out that people don't really want to choose the type of Memories they are going to think about. Anyways, that's definitively something we are going to validate with our users! Cheers 🙌
Jason McDonald
Love it - you guys have really levelled up!
Ophély Nhem
Maker
@jmcdonaldintl thanks a lot!
christelle cricrou

perfect for our everyday speed life !

Pros:

very practical !!

Cons:

great aps

F-x Sp

Try it you’ll see by yourself !

Pros:

Super friendly use + smart app

Cons:

none (rare!)

Julien Vicente
Great team, great product, great UX.
Ophély Nhem
Maker
@julien_vicente thanks! 🚀
Quentin Mittelette
Great product & UX! I'm sure this can be a big hit ;) Congratz to the team 👌
Ophély Nhem
Maker
@qmittelette thanks! 😊
Edison Espinosa
i like everything, just curious as to how you make me re-connect with someone? like from just seeing the image you mean? or is there a way you link the person's face and their phone number etc?
Ophély Nhem
Maker
@edisonjoao6871 thanks for your comment! So the use case is simple: 1/ You open the app and click the "Hit me » button 2/ You discover the Memory of the day we selected and edited 3/ You can share it with the people you spent this Memory with At the Moment, we decided to make the process as easy as possible. When opening the Memory, you have a big button « share the love », and then you just need to select your favorite communication channel and choose the people related to your Memory. In the future, when we reach a significant user base, we may be able to make it more intelligent as you suggest but right now we want the process to be as simple as possible, without any friction, which means without your friends and family having to download the app to see the Memory you share. So reconnecting with someone for us means breaking the ice with a Memory that we show you and that you decide to share, and then, you should see the conversation happen. During our beta test phase, 61% of our testers reconnected with at least 5 people and a love story was even born 😉 Hope this help, please ask us further questions if needed 🙂
Sam Sabri
Why is there a Zyl watermark on my photos when I want to "share the love"? :)
Ophély Nhem
Maker
@samsabri Let's say it's the best way we found to enable you to get love in return from your friends and family. If they know about Zyl, they'll be able to share their best memories with you. I'm sure they have tones of photos you've never seen 😉
Nathan Bannister
After a week with the Zyl app I have had to delete it from my phone. I have a iPhone 6 Plus and it take a minute or two to load the app each day, another minute to render the photo gif and another minute to share on Facebook, by text etc. Every second day it would crash during one of these steps and I would have to start again. Not sure if it is just because I have an older phone or of the app is memory intensive but I can’t spend that much time on this app any more. I loved the idea but just not a fit for me.