Problem: It’s hard to maintain relationships when you’re spread thin. This was kind of a scratch-your-own-itch project. My wife and I have a 9-year-old dog and a 5-year-old son, and we’re constantly meeting new people through both of them. But, it’s hard to develop new relationships (and maintain old ones) when you’re juggling a busy schedule and a full life. And nothing’s worse than when someone comes up to you with a warm smile and says “Hello, [your name]. So good to see you! How’ve you been?” and you’re smiling back at them thinking, “Shit…who the hell is this person…..?”
Goal: Help people have better relationships and be happier.
Contribution: To validate that this wasn’t just my unique problem, I prototyped and had a few people test on Usability.com.
The feedback was encouraging and confirmed that other people also had this pain. However, it also highlighted that using the product was a new behavior, which would have to be explained in order to be understood and adopted.
The next step was design revisions, focused on making onboarding and usage as intuitive as possible, and then starting development.
Results: The week Friendsome was released, it was in the top 10 on Producthunt. There are now over 2000 active users, and I’m known as “the guy who knows everyone’s name” at my son’s Kindergarten.
Currently, I’m working on creating feedback loops, getting press, and scaling.
Prototype: https://adobe.ly/2FxNzpw
iOS App: https://apple.co/2FvTFGR (No longer available.)
Website: https://friendsome.is (Expired SSL certificate)