Personal Zen 4+

Reduce anxiousness and negativity only after 12 mins

I have only been using this for 12 minutes - it already helped bring my mind out of a rut. I look forward to using it routinely as suggested and see what longer term changes it can produce to see if it is worth a paid subscription. (So 4 stars for now, will update this review then).

I recommend reading the instructions on the app’s page though, because when I first started playing I just thought I can leisurely trace the line and didn’t feel much difference and I kept getting the purple medallions (I did notice that my brain seemed drawn to the angry face).

But as I continued playing/and after I read the instructions, I realized there is a “trick” behind it to make it more “effective”: Loosely focus the gaze, that helped me notice the happy face more quickly and trace quickly, a medallion will appear - again loosely focus the attention on that spot where the medallion appear, and repeat. When I did that - I got more gold medallions which I believe is “better” than the purple. After I started doing that for the duration of the recommended session, I definitely noticed my attention more drawn to the happy face, and I also felt less anxious.

To the app developer: I would recommend giving clearer instructions to the users on the first gameplay. Not everyone would read the instructions in the game description page and may miss out on the ability to benefit.

Suggestions

Hello, I saw your app mentioned on a tv show this week. I downloaded your app and tried it and have a few suggestions. The first set of written words at the bottom did not fit the screen so I couldn’t read it all. (I am using an IPad in portrait position).

Thereafter, every text screen that appeared at the bottom never stayed long enough to read the whole message. That, in itself, was frustrating.

After the first set of swiping flowers, the app asked me to register. Unfortunately, I don’t know enough about this app to feel comfortable sharing my personal information, so I ended up deleting the app. I’m sorry, because I was looking forward to using this app.

Developer Response ,

We are sorry that you had this experience with Personal Zen. Our team is currently updating the on-boarding experience based on user feedback, including yours, in our new release coming shortly. Once that release is live, it should be much easier to read and understand the goals of the app and how it works. We are thankful to you for reaching out with your feedback and could potentially offer you a code that will give you free access to Personal Zen if you don’t mind providing additional feedback. Alternatively, if you would like to participate in our virtual trials, feel free to email virtualtrials@wisedtx.com.

Too many Tech flaws

Too many tech flaws. I have had this app for almost a week and still cannot successfully register because it always throws me to something else. The problem is with the lines overlapping. The font doesn’t fit the frame. I love the little game but our tax money shouldn’t be supporting funding of a project that may work beautifully if you could only get the tech right. You must start with the tech right or you’re wsending in a person already frustrated and that throws research. When you are conducting and touting research, you must provide an unbiased and workable environment. Like so many apps I see in this space, you have deeply flawed user tools. The difference is you are being funded by the NIH. In other words, me. Please fix the app or refund the NIH, in other words, me, the taxpayer. I hope to see you fix it. I know this stuff works. People need it. But yours won’t work so that it can work. If we can land a drone in an exact spot on Mars, surely we can fix simple user tools on an app. It’s not that hard. Thank you.

Developer Response ,

Sorry to hear that you’re having this issue! To clarify, while the underlying scientific research was, in fact, NIH-funded, Personal Zen is not funded by the NIH. We do make fairly regular updates to fix bugs. It's possible that an update we plan to make soon might help you with the problem you describe, or you might help us uncover an issue we haven't seen before in our testing process. We have reached out to you via email to help troubleshoot, so please look for a response from feedback@personalzen.com.