One App in Four Weeks: Week 1
This Monday, I started One App in Four Weeks. I started by posting a list of ideas. The third idea was the most appealling to people (although I still want to build the other two as well, but not now), and I got some great feedback from everybody.
I selected the idea and defined the Minimum Viable Product, which is quite simple: you can check in to people, add a time and note to that checkin and possibly a location as well.
Yesterday I wrote about the first sketches and ideas, and after that I started working on the very first version.
Normally I don’t show these first versions to people, but because I want to show you all the steps I’ll include the screenshots today. The app is barely functional: you see a list of Checkins, and when you press the ‘+’ button it shows the list of your contacts in Address Book. Tapping on a contact takes you to the ‘Add Checkin’ screen, where you can add a note. The time is not changeable yet, and the location isn’t implemented at all. When you then press ‘Done’ you’ll go back to the start screen, and the checkin was added. You can also edit it again by tapping on it.
For the location, I’m thinking of using the Foursquare API, which can provide you with venue information based on lat/lon. I’ll probably store the locations and try to find a previously used location when possible (about half the time I meet people it’s in the same places).
I also had some ideas about searching: I want to index all the words in the checkin database, and do autocompletion using those words. This means that searching can be a very fast experience. Search could probably be quite important: I can also imagine it’s handy if I want to find a PHP developer in my network (I always forget who knows which languages).
