Uncork

I’m excited to embark on my new project!

I started talking to a close friend on an app I had in mind – an app that can let you track your bucket list, invite friends over and keep track of your life goals. It has some core features within in that make it exciting and I can’t wait to be it’s first user (hopefully soon!).

It’s been a slow path forward given the number of things going on in my life right now (did I mention that I moved to a new country 2 months ago? A country where I know NOBODY and that, in the middle of a pandemic?).

I’ll use this space to track progress of the app and all the lessons learnt along the way.

What we’ve completed so far –

1. Test the idea: Aim to understand what stops users from pursuing their interests/goals and if the app envisioned will enable the user to successfully and more easily achieve goals. Without delving into too much detail, I’m pretty happy with the feedback received! The intention behind the app is more to create a community rather than build a viral app. The app needs a habit change from users – and habit changing apps are extremely hard to get adoption for. But hey, challenge accepted!
2. High Level Tech Architecture: We will be using Flutter/FireBase/MySQL to build the app. Flutter, as it allows us to launch both an iOS and Android app with the same code base.
3. MVP Wireframes: I worked on this a couple of months ago (during my quarantine while moving to the new country!). I compiled a massive list of feature sets for the app and prioritized the most minimal list, but yet having a differentiating factor, as compared to other apps in the same category.
4. UX Design: We hired a UX Designer on Upwork who helped us design most of the screens. There is one other feature that needs design work which I may just figure out how to create in Figma (trying to keep the cost very low!)
5. Domain & Landing Page: Done! Checkout: https://www.theuncork.com Sign up to receive email updates on our progress!
6. Social Media & Marketing: I created a twitter and instagram handle. Using the fb scheduler option to post on instagram regularly. But need to buy subscriptions to have scheduling options for all social media channels – will hold off for now and focus only on instagram!
7. Started working on the build with a developer we hired from Upwork. Have some basic screens up and running in the apk, exciting!
8. Received many signups via the landing page. I reached out to a couple of users for usability tests and feedback on the screens that have been built out. Made quite a few tweaks to our design based on feedback and there’s already a backlog of future enhancements to assess.

That’s all for now! Stay tuned!