Dec 2017 - Jan 2018
After finishing my Bachelor's, I was able to come home and spend some quality time with my parents in Minnesota. As being home has its perks (delicious food and free time), it also comes with some chores and errands to run. And my parents and I soon realized, there was no efficient way to keep track of errands other than through text or post-it notes. The problem was that text-message lists were not easily modified, and post-its were not easily shareable to everyone in the house.
I quickly realized that the solution to the problem of finding a lightweight, fast, sharable, and persistent to-do list was to simply make one. This solution could be used not only in households for purposes such as grocery lists, but also in small business teams for daily goals, to-do's, and more.
The goal of this project was to design an app to hold a lightweight, persistent list that could also be made shareable to people in a group. The target user group was primarily individuals in busy households who needed to make lists on-the-go, so the need for simplicity and minimalism was apparent.
In order to start with this, finding a good data storage tool was key. I opted to use Google Firebase as the backend and storage, with iOS Swift for the front end. These technologies are very easy to integrate and use for rapid development, so they were easy choices for me.
After some quick mockups, I began coding out a prototype in XCode. The result was P O S T, a cloud-based list making app that allows users to create personal accounts and log in to use the collaborative list. Features include viewing and adding new Posts. All Posts are stored on a cloud server, so all users may view and add to the Post list.
The look I was going for with the login screen is something very simple and minimalist. The app logo is front and center, along with email and password entry input fields. A simple Login button and a Sign Up button are provided, which provide functionality through simplicity. The combination of blue and white is familiar to many people, and is commonly associated with popular apps such as Facebook and Twitter, and it is psychologically a calming color.
The Main view of the app shows the to-do list itself, with a "write" icon shown in the top right of the navbar and a "Log Out" option shown in the top left. Selecting an item from the list allows the user to modify or remove the item. One of the goals of the app was to keep it as minimalist as possible, and so having a limited number of app pages was key.
As a user decides to add to the to-do list, they can tap the "write" icon which brings them to the New Item view. Here, the user can write their item, with no word limits. Removing word limits allows them to be as specific about the item as needed