TJL #22: Building Wedje (part 1)
Building out a silly idea, please send help, I have no idea what I'm doing
Welcome back to Today Jan Learned (TJL) #21. In this newsletter I share the best of what others have figured out already. To get the full TJL experience, subscribe today.
What you might’ve missed:
TJL #19: Reflections on my first remote project (part 1): In this two-part series I reflect on my first fully remote project. What went well, what went wrong, and one major fuckup that we should’ve prevented. Read this is you are interested in remote software development and how I experienced my first remote project.
TJL #20: Reflections on my first remote project (part 2): Part two.
TJL #21: Three small things: In this post I rambled about time, product, and a small idea that I had. In this post, I try to explore this idea a little bit more in further detail.
In this post:
What is Wedje?
Why build Wedje?
Why is it called Wedje
Initial design
Grocery list
Playful
Functionality first
What is Wedje?
Wedje is an app that makes you more productive.
The idea of this app is based on the hypothesis that we, humans, want to be productive but we sometimes just need a little push in the back.
Wedje allows you to make commitments, with a stake (say $5), deadline (say tomorrow) and a supervisor (your friend). When the deadline has passed, your supervisor checks if you completed your commitment.
If did, you keep your money. If you didn’t, your supervisor gets to keep it. Wedje becomes a commitment device for you to follow up on what you said you were gonna do.
Why build Wedje?
Wedje solves a problem that I have: I want to do more.
I want to do more than what I am doing right now, but I have trouble following up.
My vision for Wedje is that it becomes a tool for people to be more productive and get closer to their true authentic selves (or who they want to become).
(Full disclosure: I am also really badly looking for an excuse to build an app.)
Why is it called Wedje
We had to call it something! Going name for the app is Wedje which is Dutch for “small bet”. We just thought it sounded cute, might delete later though.
Initial design
I spent 2 hours or so this morning in Figma creating the initial mockup.
Grocery list
Based on this design, can we make a grocery list of things we have to build?
Navigation bar on top (navbar component)
View settings drawer button (button component)
Text in the middle (text component)
Infinite scroll feed with past bets (scrollview component)
Individual bet cards (card components)
Add bet button (button component)
Add commitment flows (series of screens)
Flow
Still not entirely sure about the flow.
I want it to be super obvious what to do.
Big buttons, one thing per screen. Obvious. Simple. Perfect.
The basic flow is as follows:
User wants to commit to something
“What do you want to achieve?” (goal)
“By when?” (deadline)
“How badly do you want this” (stake)
“Who is your supervisor?” (share unique link to whatsapp)
“Verify” (check and validate)
“Now go do it!” (good luck screen)
Just realised that a timer that starts ticking down on the final verification page could be a good nudge…
Here are some more flows that we came up with.
We have to simultaneously think through what the best way is to ask these questions and build a super simple working prototype without styling first.
Playful
We took a lot of inspiration from Tikkie. Tikkie is an app which makes it super easy to ask back your money from friends. We Dutch people love our money and would do anything not to part with it. Asking people for money sucks, Tikkie made it less sucky.
We believe that if we make the app playful, funny, bold, daring, interesting, people might use it more. Let’s see.
Functionality first
What do we build first? The design or the functionality?
Just like everyone else, I like pretty things. Yet, I also know that you should build something that works first. Build a solid foundation and the later add a coat of paint to the walls. In other words:
“Make it work, make it pretty, make it fast.”
— Kent Beck (paraphrased)
Functionality it is.
Recap
In today’s newsletter I elaborated a bit on an idea I had in TJL #21. I called up a friend and said “Hey you wanna work on this thing?” And he was like “Hell yeah I don’t need no Wedje app for that!” OK, he didn’t say that last thing, but the first thing was true!
Hopefully I can keep the chain going and keep working on this idea, otherwise I’ll start writing about silly productivity stuff again!
That’s it! Enjoyed this? Feel free to subscribe! Hated this? Feel free to subscribe and let me know what to improve!
As always, you can find me on my website janmeppe.com or on Twitter at @janmeppe.
Previous TJLs
Read my previous TJLs by following on the links down below:
TJL #6: How to remember the difference between margin and padding
TJL #7: According to Jeff Bezos there are two types of failure
Bonus: Thai Basil Beef
Made this recipe with minced beef. I use 4 little green peppers and should’ve used way more! I also used 5 cups of rice which took 40 minutes to cook (that’s long!) and it was way too much. Reduce to 3 cups of rice next time for 4 servings.