Analyze Your Decisions With The Feels App

Feels ($2.99) by Wyatt Gallagher is an app to help you assess how you feel about important decisions that affect your life. Sure, we can always analyze our own feelings, but it’s hard to solidify the results this way. With Feels, you don’t need to worry about doing that on your own.

Decisions are an important part of life, and we make them everyday. However, the bigger the decision, the more elements there are to it that will affect our judgment. I’ve been in several situations where I need to break down and analyze each piece of the puzzle, and I’m sure many of you have too. So when I stumbled upon this in the App Store, I was definitely intrigued and curious to see if it can actually help me in the long term with decisions I have to make eventually.

The interface for the app is gorgeous, and fits in very nicely with iOS 7 aesthetics. There is plenty of whitespace and lightweight (but legible) typography so it’s easy to read, and there is plenty of room for emphasis on the visuals when needed. The app is also very straightforward, even though the concept is pretty original, and it will guide you through each major decision that you need to make, so you’re never just thrown out there to fend for yourself.

On the first launch, you will be on the main screen, which will be a list of decisions. To create a new one, just tap on the + button. Feels will then ask you what the decision is about, which is basically the name of the decision. If you’re feeling a bit stuck, think of things like “Places to live,” “Vacation spots,” or something like that. It can be virtually anything that you need to decide on in the near or distant future.

The next step will be Options, where you will need at least two to start with — you can add more later on as well. When you enter in one option, it gets moved to the bottom and you can type in another option, and repeat this for as many as you need. Each option will end up with a camera icon next to it, so you can attach an image (import or capture) to it for reference.

The final step will be to add the influences, as in what will influence your decision for each option. There needs to be at least three for this, and examples are “price,” “stress,” “happiness,” and more, depending on what you are looking for. The influences are very important, and you can rearrange them based on importance, with the critical ones being at the top.

Once you have all of that set up, this decision gets added to your list on the main screen. Tapping on a decision will show all of the options for it, and then you can tap the option to “rate” the influences individually for each. In order to tell Feels how you feel about each influencer, just slide from the left edge on each factor. There are a total of six feelings that you can choose from, and they are all represented with a simple smiley emote: “:D,” “:),” “:(,” “:S,” “D:,” and “:|.” These are all color coded as well, so you can easily tell them apart. These aren’t set in stone either — you can always change your feeling on the influence later on.

When you start telling Feels just how you feel about your options, you can get a clearer picture when you view the option list. Each option will show the most important feelings as colored tabs on the section, and you get a color-coded overview of your overall feelings for the choice. This is done by having Feels analyze your feeling input and then laying it out for you in the open to make the final decision easier (or at least try to).

At the bottom of the option list, you can view a “Details & Trends” section, which tells you key info about influencers and options, both good and bad. This will also change if you make any edits to how you’re feeling.

Feels is definitely an interesting app, as you get a whole new perspective on decision-making. Of course, you shouldn’t rely on the app to make your decisions for you, as that’s always up to you in the end. But it’s a good way to get started on the right foot, so to speak. You can get Feels in the App Store for your iPhone for $2.99.