I took a stroll around the Hive today and I'm glad I did. Whilst strolling, I stumbled on a post about PeakD. I have been seeing several posts about the platform on my feed, but I didn't pay attention. Today, out of curiosity, I decided to check it out, and I was totally sold.
It's been a long time since I wrote app reviews and stuff, but I felt I should write something about PeakD. Especially because I was super impressed by it.
My first impressions review of PeakD
Disclaimer:
This review/post isn't in anyway sponsored by the developer. These are my honest thoughts and opinions of the platform. And it is not in anyway to cajole anyone into using the platform.
Outstanding User Interface(UI).
For every app I use, I'm first attracted by it's aesthetics. Basically how the app looks. This ranges from colors, to fonts, to placement/arrangements of icons.
From the landing page, I knew the app was going to be a beauty, and boy! Was I right? UI designers don't always get the credit they deserve, but I hope this particular one does.
The UI of the website is so clean. I loved the font choice, the icon placements, everything. I did more browsing on the site and I discovered other interface options. I fancy the night-mode option so much that it could be a deal breaker for me. Fortunately, PeakD has darkmode.
Aside from darkmode, I found the view-mode options interesting. I switched to grid mode immediately, although it didn't look grid-dy. I couldn't find tangible difference between the grid mode, and the "list" mode(I think). But it's all good.
If I had to rate the UI of PeakD on a scale of 1-10, I'll rate it at 9/10. And that's because everything can't be perfect. 😁😁😁.
User-friendly features/options.
So I talked how I'm easily attracted to apps/websites with good interface/UI, but that gets me as far as checking the app/website out. A good UI won't cajole me into using something that wouldn't serve me. I mean, what's the use of a beautiful container without content?
Fortunately, alongside an amazing UI, PeakD is packing a whole lot of amazing user-friendly features. I just used it today, so I haven't explored everything, but here are the ones I find more interesting;
The portfolio feature.
I can't remember if this feature was suggested to me by a pop-up, or I find it myself in the settings. Anyway, it's one of my favorite features of the app so far.
According to the supporting caption under the option; the portfolio would be useful to photography and art blogs. As a photographer, I didn't hesitate to enable the option.
I checked out what enabling the option does, and I indeed found it useful. It organizes all the photos I've uploaded in sort of gallery. So another user can see all the photos I've shared without necessarily having to read the post. Although, it'll be cool if the post bearing a photo can be accessed from there.
Easy multi-account switching.
I find this feature appealing, although I won't use it. That's because I won't be running dual accounts on the Hive. Or maybe I could join a team in future where I have curating or posting privileges. Until then though, this feature would be redundant. It's still a cool addition anyway.
Multi-functional wallet.
The wallet on PeakD is the last feature I'll talk about. And there isn't much to talk about really, except for the added abilities that the wallet on hive.blog doesn't possess. I think these extra features would come in handy for me very soon.
That is; the delegation feature. I'm not big enough to start delegating funds, but I know a time would come pretty soon. But then, this is not just about me, but about other people too. The ease of delegating Hive power through PeakD would be beneficial to them.
Aside from the delegation feature, I found out that I could redeem Hive Engine tokens from the wallet without having to be on those sites. That's amazing to be honest. In fact, I never knew I had some unredeemed hive engine tokens until today.
So far, based on my level of exploration on PeakD, these were the things I liked about it. I'm pretty sure it'll be my daily driver for accessing Hive's front-end.
I have few suggestions which I hope the developer would consider if he reads this post;
- For the portfolio feature, it'll be great if people checking out a photo on my portfolio to be able to access the post from it.
- It'll be better if I can manually add the photos in my portfolio. Basically, from what I observed, my portfolio is built based on the first photos I share in my post. However, some of those photos wouldn't ideally be a part of my portfolio. Even though they are published in photography related posts. The ability to manually organise my portfolio would nice. That's if it's possible.
There you have it. My first impressions review of PeakD.