I just released a new android app called Audify in the Playstore. In short it reads your notifications and smartly skips the annoying notifications. It took 90 days for me to convert the idea into an app. I want to share the different phases that I have gone through over this period and the lessons I learned.

Idea

It all started from my Bluetooth headphones. I always wanted to enjoy music in peace. Unfortunately/Fortunately I got huge number of awesome apps (90+) in my phone and one or the other constantly posts some notifications which interrupts the music. I can put the phone in silence, But it makes me anxious about missing important notifications.

Existing Solutions

As always, Searched Playstore for apps which speak phone notifications. Found a small list of apps and tried them for few days. But either they are outdated or doesn’t have any intelligence to read just the important notifications. They just read the notifications that are posted and few of them have huge number of options which makes it very hard to use.

Proof of Concept and validation

So, I wanted to write a simple app just for me. Wrote a simple app in a weekend and used it on my long Monday morning office journey from London to Nottingham. Quickly I realised lot of practical issues. For example, Open WiFi notification. App was reading many open wifi notifications as I travel in the train. So that’s the point where I took it seriously to make an app that can smartly skip annoying notifications and also keeps the user well informed about their notifications.

Step up with constant feedback loop

Created a trello board and added a bunch of items in my to do list before I reach Nottingham. On the same day, shared the app to one of my colleague Cong.Le who uses his earphones most of the times in a day. He readily agreed to use the app.

I shared the app to few other friends and started using regularly. And then I managed to create a regular feedback loop from the closed group of users and turned the feedbacks into high level features which can eliminate the issues for my users instead of proving all the bells and whistles they asked for.

Delightful UI

Audify needs to be an almost UI less app which needs to step in when needed and step out when not needed without any user effort. So I wanted to make the home screen enjoyable and rememberable. I don’t want it to be a list of boring list of settings. So I gave life to Audify via Audify bot. The character which sits in Audify’s homescreen and explains the status of Audify as you do something. It gave me lot of freedom and opportunity to delight my users with animations.

to be continued in part II …

Meanwhile do checkout my app here and share your feedback folks..