This app feels very IDEO. IMHO, it's minimalistic to a fault and I felt a bit confused on how to use it at first, despite the ~8 slide walkthrough in the beginning. When I first signed up, I didn't have any contacts but it listed my entire address book. I was hesitant to send a message to people not on ChitChat as I wasn't sure (1) if they would receive the message and (2) how they would get it (would get receive a text message? would they perceive it as spam from Ryan?). Nevertheless, I soldiered forward (because I'm curious and it's my job to play with this stuff... right?) and sent @abramdawson a message. But after holding on the phone and releasing to send the message, it wasn't clear to me that it was actually sent. Of course, these are FTUX issues that are easy to fix and maybe I'm one of the few that had a problem with it (anyone else?). Otherwise, the app is slick and I especially like the group messaging feature.

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Looks great. Remind me a bit of an app that we did a few years ago: http://www.joinpling.com/ . Looking forward to play with it.

I like the look & feel of the app, but I don't get what makes this better than Voxer (my current "walkie talkie" app). Voxer got pretty popular among expats, but never seemed to really take off domestically. Any IDEOers on PH to give us the scoop on what ChitChat plans to do differently?

Interesting app. It's beautiful too. I ran into issues when adding contacts. It wouldn't display last names for all of the contacts, but the icon would show initials, although there were several in my address book with same initials, I wasn't able to verify which I was potentially sending a message to.

I'm pretty excited about this. Really light-weight interactions, and a good process to onboard friends/contacts. Seems faster/easier than text messaging. (I hope they add a favorite/recent contacts page soon.) Nice job @IDEOToyLab & @IDEO.

@rrhover I think that's spot on feedback. When I tried it, I was wanting for a few things just at the beginning, but I fell into the groove pretty quickly. (All seem totally doable). - Instead of the opening tips montage, I wanted to be guided through adding 3-4 close users who I might message (I think showing the entire address book is irrelevant/overwhelming). - I wanted some sort of confirmation signal once a message was sent (and possibly received). - I wanted the ability to text sometimes (so I didn't have to switch between SMS and this app to send an emoticon). @ow - good point. I found myself liking the ephemeral/SnapChat nature. I think I would probably record a voice message here, where I wouldn't in the native iOS SMS app. @lauraschultink - no idea the product roadmap, or how it's different from Voxer.

A cool use case is when two users have each other's profile open in the app, it works like a walkie talkie. (Really really great alternative to texting while driving.)

IDEO is doing mobile apps for its own account now? Interesting.

hey folks, hello from England - thought i'd share my story. this clever new app, the premise is actually really neat and simple. back in 2009 when apps weren't really a 'thing', i came up with the concept of a web service where users import email addresses into groups. personal/family/work etc - they then call a freephone number and leave a voice message and choose which group (1 to 3) should receive it. recipients received a link in an email, they clicked it and saw a flash player with the playable message and photo of the sender. i spent around £6K on development - met with investors but the site never really took off, everyone said 'it would never work'. i still have ALL the code/site/design - of its time, there was nothing really like it. i wish someone at the time had believed in its possibilities . g/luck to @ideo.

I wonder how this will fare since this is being directly added to iOS 8 later this year. Is there something that makes this easier than that integration?