Met has launched

Today is the official release of Met. I will send out a press release to all the Dutch iOS websites, and will send out an press release in English tomorrow. The last few weeks have been quite an adventure. I documented all the steps of building Met on this weblog, starting with choosing an idea and ending with submitting it to the App Store.

For those that haven’t read the story yet: Met is an application that allows you to take notes on people. If you meet a lot of people, it can be easy to forget important things about them. By writing done some quick notes after a meeting you can remember those details.

Here’s a quick summary of the last few weeks:

Week 1

I started with a blog post explain the three different app ideas I considered for this project. I then chose the idea for Met, and designed a MVP, based on all the comments I got from people. The next day, Isketched some ideas and wrote up my thoughts at the end of week 1, and also included some first screenshots (man, that looks so different from the current state Met is in).

Week 2

At the start of week 2, I did some code cleanup, and tried to define the next steps: get the basic functionality done and thought of a better way to select people (which is an action you perform a lot, so it has to be fast).

The end of week 2 was strange: working on other projects, not feeling productive, thinking and designing. After a day of designing, I threw all the designs away and stayed with Apple’s default design.

Week 3

Week 3 started with releasing a beta version and thinking about the branding. After reading that post, Jurriaan sent me an awesome name suggestion. I defined the next actions and set to work. I implement support for device rotations, which is essential for fast typing (as the landscape layout gives you a bigger keyboard). I posted some screenshots and wrote about my experiences so far.

Week 4

The last week was a bit chaotic, as I was doing some personal projects. I didresearch on app websites, and picked a few I really liked. I tried to identify the important things they have in common. I wrote about my press plans and finallysubmitted Met to the App Store

Closing thoughts

My goal was to help other people by documenting the process of building an app. Additionally, I expected to get some attention by doing it, which would hopefully increase sales a bit. However, I didn’t expect that people would be so helpful, giving me lots of suggestions, ideas and tips. Just awesome.

Half of the beta testers gave me really useful comments. This helped improve the app a lot. The other half said “I guess it’s not for me”, which is only fair.

I am really excited to see how the launch goes. I’m a bit afraid that I might have built something that nobody wants to use, but on the other hand: I use Met myself, daily, and I really like it. It’s already proven to be very useful!

If you want to use Met yourself, please buy it in the App Store.