How the 10-minute try works

TL;DR:

• A new account can talk with DuckyHelper for 10 minutes, once, and it does not ask for a card.

• Spend the time on one real task from your own screen, not on a tour.

• Plans and prices are on the pricing page.

The quickest way to find out whether DuckyHelper is useful is to use it on something you actually need to do. So we made the first try small and easy: ten minutes, no card.

Ten minutes, no card

Try it for 10 minutes. No card. That is the whole offer. You download the app for Mac, Windows or Linux, open it, make an account and start asking. The ten minutes are given once per person. We do not ask for payment details first, because a first look at a tool should not depend on whether you are ready to buy it.

Ten minutes is short, and we think that suits a first look. It is long enough to ask several real questions, and short enough that you will not spend an afternoon on a trial. We would rather you find out quickly whether it fits how you work.

What to try first

Skip the tour of features. Pick one thing you are really working on, and use the app on that. A few good first tries:

• Ask about your screen. Open a page you are stuck on, press the key (fn on a Mac, Ctrl+Shift+Space on Windows and Linux) and say what you want to know. Notice that you did not have to describe anything.

• Ask for a drawing. Ask it where something is on the page and watch it draw on your screen.

• Ask for a walkthrough. Choose a problem or idea you only half understand and ask for it to be worked out on the blackboard.

• Ask for a check. After an explanation, say "quiz me on that" and see how you do.

These four cover the heart of the app: it is there when you press a key, it sees your screen, it draws, and it works things out with you.

Use it on something real

A tour answers the question "what can it do?" A real task answers the more useful one: "is it good at the thing I need?" If you have homework, bring the worksheet. If you have a messy spreadsheet, open it. The assistant's value shows up fastest when the problem is yours.

It also helps to ask the way you would ask a person. You do not need special phrases. "What does this error mean?" or "why is this step wrong?" is enough.

What the ten minutes will not show

Some of what we are building is not part of a first try. Doing jobs for you in your apps, such as working in a window with its own cursor or running jobs on a schedule, is early access, on Mac. Treat the ten minutes as a way to judge the core: asking out loud, getting answers that see your screen, drawing and the blackboard.

After the ten minutes

When the ten minutes are used, DuckyHelper asks you to pick a plan the next time you press the key. If you want to keep going, the plans are on the pricing page, and we explain how they work in how DuckyHelper pricing works. We do not want to put numbers here that could fall out of date, so please read the live page for the current prices.

If it was not for you, you have lost ten minutes and nothing else.

A sample ten minutes

If you want a plan, here is one that fits. Get set up before you start talking: install the app, allow the access your computer asks for, and find the key. Spend the first five minutes on one real question about your screen, followed by a follow-up question on the same page, because the second question shows you whether it stays on your problem.

Use the next four minutes on something that needs more than a short answer: a walkthrough on the blackboard, or a quick quiz on what you just learned. Keep the last minute for one more question of your own.

You do not have to follow this. It is only a way to make sure the ten minutes go on the things that tell you the most.

Judging it fairly

A few questions are worth asking yourself at the end. Did you have to describe what you were looking at? Did it point at the right thing? Did the answer arrive while you were still in your work? If you can answer yes to those, it is doing the core job. If you cannot, tell us at support@duckyhelper.com; that is useful to hear.

What this means for you

Download the app, pick one real task, and spend the ten minutes on that. If anything is unclear while you try it, the help center has the answers, and support@duckyhelper.com reaches us. Start from the download page.