Marissa Mayer, the former CEO of Yahoo, recently launched a new photo-sharing app called Shine. The app is designed to create and share photo albums for various events such as trips or meetings between friends. It has an AI-powered manual mode for selecting “share-worthy” photos, which makes it stand out from other photo-sharing apps. However, the app has received disappointing feedback from users due to its outdated and unattractive design. Users have compared it to app interfaces from the early 2010s, causing a lot of controversy on social media.
Shine is an app from Sunshine, co-founded by Ms. Mayer. The company promises a strong privacy policy, assuring users that their data will never be sold to third parties, and the app will not include advertising. This policy can be a big draw for people concerned about privacy.
Ms. Mayer responded actively to the criticism and asked experts for suggestions to improve the app. She even posted a public search for designers to improve the app’s user interface. While design improvements are still needed, the strategy of soliciting user feedback to improve the app promises to make it better in the long run, especially if feedback is managed in a timely and reasonable way.
