Sketches and ideas

Although I was traveling yesterday, I sketched some small mockups for the Contacts app. The idea for the app had come when the genius Lucas Tieleman explained to me how he keeps a small book with notes about everyone. Yesterday he sent an email with the notes he had about me: it’s fun and only freaked me out a little bit (not as much as I expected). He’s a very early adopter of new technology, and he wanted this on his iPhone.

One of the things he suggested was adding a game element. I’m not sure if that’s a good idea: although it would be fun at first, I think game elements get annoying later. One “game-ish” option would be to have a calendar view showing how many notes you made that day, and when you see it you will want to have at least one note a day (hopefully).

Eelco also pointed out With by Path. Just like Hashable: while there is great inspiration in there, I think they both focus way too much on social networks and sharing. Especially for the purpose I had in mind (taking notes about people) this is scary. As Lucas also noted: some if this stuff is really private.

Today I’ll probably start a new XCode project and quickly implement an app that’s usable for me, and iterate upon that. For now, here’s two of the sketches I made yesterday (although they are already outdated):