Announcing Project Dolly
May 2, 2021 · Comments ProjectsProject DollyI’m excited to announce the development of a new mobile app project, codenamed “Project Dolly.” The app offers a simple way to keep in touch with friends and family via automated reminders.
Join me in making “It’s been too long” a thing of the past. Sign up to try the upcoming free iOS and Android beta.
Listen to the audio version of this post via this voice tweet:
I’m back to developing a new mobile app side project!
— Matt Netkow (Ionic Team) (@dotNetkow) May 4, 2021
Read the announcement or listen:https://t.co/VeSHhckTOt pic.twitter.com/tI7mT7tOYf
Why create a new app?
We all want to maintain healthy, vibrant relationships with our friends, family, and occasionally get in touch in old acquaintances. However, the realities of life make this challenging: work, immediate family, and recently, the global COVID-19 pandemic. Before we know it, it’s been months since we’ve kept in touch, and we feel those relationships suffering/fading away.
Enter Dolly. It makes it easy to stay in touch with friends and family by tracking the last time you contacted someone and notifying you when it’s time to get in touch again.
Like my two previous apps, Fitwatchr (converting FitBit activity to WeightWatchers points) and BeerSwift (offline beer check-ins for Untappd), this one solves a personal need. I’m admittedly terrible at keeping in touch, so in a way, this is an experiment - can I personally improve my relationships?
Why build yet another app? There are many apps offering different, fun approaches to communication and messaging features, but for some reason, I never stick with them (though I’ll admit I’m a fan of the Marco Polo app which offers asynchronous video messages). Perhaps they offer too much, ironically distracting from their goal of encouraging human connection? That’s my theory anyway, so Dolly will bring users back to basics with a focus on text messaging and phone calls.
Why the name “Project Dolly”?
The app and its name are inspired by my grandmother Lorraine. Unlike me, she was not into technology at all. No internet, no smartphone, and she didn’t know how to send a text message. So, we always connected the “old school” way - phone calls. Looking back, I largely credit our close relationship to those many hours-long deep conversations we had. So, when thinking through “stay in touch with friends” app ideas, it occurred to me that I’ve always felt the best connection to friends and family after a really engaging phone call with them.
After she passed away in Fall 2020, I learned that Dolly was a nickname given by her friends. I’m using a codename for the app to start because I’m not sure that “Dolly” will be the final name, as there is already an on-demand moving company by that name. For now, I’m using it to honor her memory. ❤️
#LearnInPublic
With this project, I’m excited to do something different: documenting and sharing the app development process as I go. A few years ago, I did this with my Cordova apps by occasionally blogging Cordova tips and tricks, but this time I plan to share much more. For the past three years at my day job at Ionic, I’ve been developing Ionic app demos, working with the community as a developer advocate, and launching new products as a product marketer. So, I’m excited to put my web dev skills and marketing techniques learned at work into personal practice building and launching this app!
I’m building the app with web technology - the “Web Native” app development approach - which means I can write one codebase and ship both Android and iOS versions. 😎
The app consists of multiple Ionic products:
- Ionic React: Mobile UI components
- Capacitor: native runtime used to deploy to iOS and Android
- Appflow: mobile CI/CD service for automating iOS/Android builds
I hope you’ll follow the journey right here on my blog and on Twitter. I’ll be posting a series of “developer diary”-type posts sharing all the nitty gritty details.
What’s Next?
I originally announced the project back in January. It’s May, so you’re probably wondering what I’ve been up to. Well, back in the Fall I became a dad for the first time! I’m enjoying it, but surprising to no-one, my free time is limited these days.
Part of the challenge is finding making the time to work on the app. So far, having limited time has actually made me very productive as I’m forced to make my focus razor-sharp. We’ll see how the rest of the dev process goes!
While I may try including ads or other paid features eventually, the core app will always be free. Sign up to try the upcoming iOS and Android beta.