Anygood

My own take on a gesture based to-do app that I've designed and shipped to the App Store. Ever get a recommendation for a movie or a book or a podcast and don’t know where to save it? Anygood is that place: an app for personal recommendations. It throws in some of its own suggestions, too; curated by me.

You can download the app from here →

iOS App
Project Management
Product Design
Art Direction
Editorial Content

2020

The idea has started from my own need and search for a dead-simple to-do app. The usecase was clear; I wanted to be able to quickly write down either all the cool sounding recommendations I might stumble upon or when I hear one upon a conversation I’m having with a friend. This later got unified with the intent of me finding a platform to be able to share what I think are nice as recommendations.

From its inception, I knew I wanted to keep everything gesture-based and not rely on awkwardly reaching to the top corners of your screen for anything especially in an age where our phones still keep growing in their size. This thinking defined the whole user experience and gave me a good cornered design thinking to be as creative as possible.

Anygood aims to be a handly little tool with a curated set of functionality; hence why you'll be greeted with a list of predefined categories. The aim is not to replace the to-do/reminder app of your choice, but rather create a new cosy extra little spot; so that the things you want to get on to next, don't get lost in the way in an already crowded/complex to-do you use daily.

Read ︎︎︎ Books ︎ Magazines ︎ Web articles
Watch ︎︎︎ Movies ︎ Tv shows ︎ Video content on web
Eat & Drink ︎︎︎ Food and drinks you can enjoy either locally or order online
Listen ︎︎︎ Albums ︎ Podcasts
Buy ︎︎︎ Physical items that can be bought

Anygood, while being a handly little tool; doesnt shy away from having a personality. This manifests itself by its distinct green palette and bespoke illustrations and a logotype.

Logotype by Sasikarn Vongin
Illustrations by Aziz Kocanogullari

During the time this presentation was being prepared, Anygood 2.0 was still being worked on with many new features like “Cloud Backups” or “App Themes” where you’ll be able to customise the look of your app that would be enabled by a new subscription service.

Takeaways

It was an exhilirating process from start to finish after many years being spent without a personal project. The day I got to share the news that the app was released on the App Store was so fulfilling.
It was interesting to realize that I was my own boss and still needed to explain my design thinking to myself!
A LOT of people asked for the Android version. I mean A LOT.
I see a lot of people working on their side-projects but end up not finishing them; either they eventually get distracted or think their idea is not worthy to go for that extra mile to finish it. I think what I’m proud the most is that I was able to ship a product from nothing within a month. I had my fair share of contemplating if people would even be interested in the slightest of what I’m working on; though I managed to dismiss all these by just realising the initial goal was to ship a product, not fulfill others expectations.
Apple App Store review team is all over the place. Our first attempt on submitting the v1.0 was rejected by them with the reason being “Your app has not enough functionality for the user”. I don’t even know where to start with that other than the explanation of it was just a weird hiccup on their end. After feeling slightly offended by their reason and all the self-doubts, I’ve appealed to their decision with some snark comments and we got approved the day after.
Exposure on the App Store might have lost its importance. On the week where Anygood got featured on the App Store, the uptake on the daily downloads was really small. To the contrary, being featured on Dense Discovery newsletter had a huge impact so newsletter hype must be real!