How do you feel about me? Baltimore technologist’s app has a quick way to find out

Put something out into the world, and chances are you want to know what people think of it.

But even in a connected world, being a content creator can be kind of lonely. Maybe a user just moves on, more maybe they click through or click like, but it can be tough to gauge what people really think.

In recent months, Guillermo Vazquez has noticed a couple ways that people can take interactions a bit deeper. One is distributed links, which can be left on any site but lead back to a single destination (the link in bio, if you will).

Another is QR codes, which have taken on additional use in a contactless world. He’s been seeing more around at restaurants around his neighborhood in Fells Point.

Vazquez, who is a graduate student in computer science at Johns Hopkins University, figured that both of these would be good ways to deliver a quick survey for feedback. It’s at the heart of a project he launched this week called Koali Me.

Find out how ppl feel about you…this could be dangeroushttps://t.co/VG1qSCa934 pic.twitter.com/ChjoknEoVN

— Product Hunt 😸 (@ProductHunt) December 8, 2020

It works like this: Drop a link online or a QR code in-person, and quick emoji survey poll comes up. The idea is that a user can take a few seconds to tell someone how they feel about it. It also has a dashboard to track the responses over time.

Likewise, Vazquez sees a couple uses. It could be used to get feedback from a group, like those restaurants and content creators, or a teacher asking how class went. Or, on an individual level, people can put it on their Twitter or Instagram, and just find out what others think of them.

After building through a number of maker communities where technologists build in public, like the Discord server Gen Z Mafia, Vazquez debuted the app on Product Hunt this week. It made the top 25 on Monday.

“Human interaction has been redefined recently and things are a lot more socially distant, reasonably so, and with that things do get a little less human,” Vazquez said. “Hopefully this adds a fast way for restaurants or teachers to stay in touch emotionally with customers or students. Using that extra dimension of feedback, hopefully they can expand and they can grow.”