An App For Your Hair Journey: A Review Of the Hair Journal App On iPhone

About a month ago I was complaining about social media as I listed all of the many platforms I have signed up for on my blog. Sometimes I wonder where do we find the time to do all that we do on the internet ? I swear if they create another social media outlet I am going to scream (while I register for it and add the password to my ever growing list).

Oddly enough I do not have the same aversions to apps on my iPhone as I do social media, I will try an app at least once and if it doesn’t wow me in the moment, it will be deleted. My latest app is related to hair, its an app that actually helps you to document your hair journey, appropriately called ‘Hair journal‘ . It was my first time seeing an App related to hair that was not an interactive forum, so this piqued my interest and was worth at least a review.

When you first open the app you are greeted with an awesome graphic and then taken to the profile page. You create a profile for yourself that includes your profile name, your hair style, your big chop date, your hair type, your hair goal and measurements. You can add a picture to your profile making it unique to you and also it provides the opportunity for you to create other profiles that might track other aspects of your hair journey. For example if you wanted to track and document someone else’s journey or if you are transitioning you might have a profile just geared towards that.

What I liked

The versatility of creating profiles is pretty awesome because a journey isn’t quite as fluid as we would like sometimes and at different stages our needs are so different it would help to have an entire section dedicated to specific stages.

What I didn’t like

I did not quite understand what it meant by ‘hair style’ so for that section I just put ‘Natural’. If I had relaxed hair I probably would have written ‘relaxed’ and chosen straight for my hair type. It is plainly obvious that the app is geared towards women with natural hair based on the criteria in the profile, if I had any reservations about that section of the App I would say that it probably should have been more inclusive of other hair options such as relaxed or texturized hair.

Diary and Calender

The App also comes with a built in diary and calender for personal entries that can be added daily if you choose to use it that often. Within that section of the app you also have the option of documenting your hair stats, which means that on any given day you can do a length check and add in inches your hair length.

You also have the options to take pictures of your progress all of which are stored within the App itself as well as in your regular photo album. This is perfect for someone who does length checks at specific times either monthly or every three or so months, the date is stored so you never forget and you have a great visual of your progress.

What I liked

Drilling the journal down to a date is a great thing, because the whole point of documentation is to track time and progress. Having hair stats is awesome! How many times have you scribbled your inches down on a piece of paper only to lose it the next time you try to track your progress and have nothing to compare it to? The app simplifies this for you by giving you the ability to just punch everything in, no worries and no dislikes either.

Product Section

Loading the products that you are currently using or have used in the past is also easy because they have a button specifically geared towards that. You can load your products and rate them according to what works for you and what doesn’t using the five start system.  There are only four categories however, shampoo, conditioner, moisturizer and Other.

What I liked

I can absolutely see the value of having a section for products especially if you are a recovering product junkie, you get a chance to visually see just how many products you have purchased for only one head. Without the accountability aspect it is also great to see what products worked for you and what didn’t so rating them is very valuable.

What I did not like 

There  is no section for stylers, deep conditioners or oils*. My guess is that those can be added to the category called ‘other’ but personally I would have preferred if they had there own category because we use these products just as often as we would use any conditioner or shampoo.

Another thing I wish the section had was a space to actually say something about the product instead of just reviewing it using the ‘star’ system. For example If you load a product and you give it a low rating you might want to take another look at your entry to see why it was bad for you at the time that you reviewed it just in case you forget or just in case things changed for you. We all know that depending on your hair length some products might work one year and be useless the next year once your hair gets longer.

Growth Tracking

The final category is an awesome growth tracker that pulls all the data you have added about your hair growth within the app and charts it for you so that you can see a visual of what your hair is doing. The graph just has a line that changes direction as you fill in details about your hair length, moving up or down based on what you put in, this part of the app was a great addition keeping things interesting.

What I liked 

The visual is awesome, who doesn’t like a graph with a line that continuously goes upward. All jokes aside, if you are a visual person this will definitely be right up your alley.

What I did not like

If I had any suggestions for the growth tracker it would be for it to be able to calculate growth rates on the graph based on the measurements that are added to the app. In other words we would be able to see ‘ +2’  for a two inch gain from one month to the next or ‘-2’ if your hair happened to fall out or you trimmed.

Overall the app is great for tracking your hair journey electronically and really helps to pull things together if you are interested in tracking your progress. The full version of the App does cost 99 cents on the iPhone platform with a free taster version available as well. You may or may not think that the paid one is worth it, if you are able to live with the missing additives mentioned earlier.

In response to a comment from one of the fans on their Facebook page about wanting the app on android, the creators had this to say:

Unfortunately we don’t have an Android version yet, but we have plans to develop an Android version for 2013. We don’t have any specific timeframe yet but we’re hoping to get this out by March/April 2013. Will keep you updated..

If you do decide to purchase this app, the creators seem very open to suggestions giving ample opportunities for feedback, reporting any bugs, Facebook and support.

BHI’s verdict: 2 Stars