Apptisan #33 - Talking with Did I Do’s Creator: MKBHD Gave This App a Shout-Out? How This App Uses Minimalism to Combat Everyday Forgetfulness.
For our 33rd edition, we welcome Jose Saez-Merino, a 3D designer whose journey into coding began with tracking Apple Watch inventory and led to creating Did I Do, an app for your daily task tracking.
Name: Did I Do?
Developer / Team: Jose Saez-Merino
Platforms: iOS, iPadOS
Read this newsletter issue in Chinese (中文) .
Please describe your product.
Did I Do? is a task tracker, but instead of helping you plan your day or weeks, its meant to help you remember if you did some routine thing that you’ll sometimes forget if you actually did. It does so by giving you a widget that instantly lets you know if you completed the task, and if not, will let you complete it from the widget with a satisfying animation.
You could say it has some similarities to habit trackers, but mostly, its meant for people who, in the middle of the day, will wonder if they forgot to lock a door, feed the cat or turn some appliance off.
Was there a pivotal moment that inspired your product’s creation?
The app was inspired by two things: the first is a tweet I saw of someone who had a text conversation with themselves and they would write “I locked the door” every time they left the house, to be able to check it later in the day.
The second was my sister in law making me drive to her house to check if she had turned the straightening iron off because she couldn’t remember and was terrified of burning the house down. It was off.
Both things happened in the span of a couple of weeks and I just thought “why isn’t there an app for this?”
What makes your product unique compared to others in the market?
The widget is what I think makes my app somewhat unique. The whole idea was to keep you out of the app as much as possible and just have very visual widgets on your screen that would instantly let you know if you had done the thing or not.
It was also important for me to, at last on release, have one task per widget instead of seeing visual clutter with several tasks on one widget. One task, one widget. Yes or No. Either you’ve completed it or you haven’t.
This also inspires the app’s UI, mostly black and white.
As someone who transitioned from 3D/video to programming, how has your creative background influenced your approach to app development and UI design?
I have mixed feelings about the whole thing. On one hand, having experience with design means you are not starting from scratch when it comes to making something that looks decent; and 3D apps always require you to be technically-minded and understand how computers work. On the other hand, when you’re used to moving images around with almost immediate feedback it can be frustrating to spend a while typing code and then see it not compile or look wrong and have no idea why because its all abstracted and not something you can immediately see.
I would also say making the transition was easier than I expected it to be and I'm glad a lot of the stuff I've learned over the years has helped me understand a lot of the concepts that are necessary when developing an app.
How have you marketed your product, and what key lessons have you learned?
I haven’t done much marketing yet because even after release I’ve been focused on adding features and tweaking stuff. Most of my efforts have been simply sharing promo images or videos on my Twitter and Threads profiles. I was extremely lucky that one of my posts was seen and replied to by MKBHD which sent me into a panic and brought a good amount of eyes to the app.
At some point I’ll start a marketing push by posting videos on TikTok. One of the things I’ve learned is how powerful a tool TikTok can be if you find your niche, and I think Did I Do? can be very valuable for people that suffer ADHD and OCD so there’s a big community I can market the app to.
What has been some memorable feedback since your product’s release?
I’ve had people tell me that now that they have the app they couldn’t live without it, which is probably the greatest compliment any dev could receive. Some other power users quickly showed me some of the shortcomings of how I implemented certain features, which led me to revamp how notifications work in one of the first updates.
Photo completion was a big one that came from people who asked for it when I started talking about the app on twitter. It had not occurred to me that some people need to take a picture to make sure they locked their doors or closed their windows every day.
My favorite is a friend who is obsessed with daily routines and wanted the app to be as annoying as possible, so he made me implement the “Insist” feature that allows you to get notifications every minute until you actually complete the task.
It’s funny how no matter how much you test your products, users will always find ways you could've done better.
Did I Do? seems to address a very specific cognitive need. How did you balance between making the app simple enough for quick tasks while robust enough for anxiety-inducing concerns like checking locked doors?
I’m mostly making it up as I go, but even from the start I knew I didn’t want to target the app at hardcore task completionists that use to-do lists to plan their whole lives, so keeping it minimal and easy to use was the main priority. There’s a million task apps out there and I wasn’t looking to compete.
What I try to do is identify what features would be useful to the target audience of the app and it’s surprisingly not that many. Most people’s problem is actually remembering to do the thing, so a robust notification system as well as a widget that will catch your attention every time you look at your phone were the main priorities. Most other features including a few that I’m still working on mainly came from early adopter feedback, but I make sure to filter out (or at least deprioritize) stuff that would turn the app into every other to-do list app.
Are there any products out there that you feel deserve more recognition?
I love how when products are at the greatest, they simply become almost transparent to us. While I wouldn’t call them overlooked, I’m just in constant awe at Apple products throughout all its eras. Even their most underrated products are filled with details that other companies just don’t even think about.
I keep a small collection of Apple devices that speak to me either because of their appearance, because they were so ahead of their time or because for some other reason they appeal to me and remind me to always try to go one step further than I really have to.
Could you show us your iPhone home screen and share your daily apps?
As much as I love my iPhone I don’t use a lot of apps in my day to day. I use Did I Do to remind me to charge my watch every morning and then a mix of Twitter, Instagram and Reddit to stay updated about what’s going on in the world. Telegram and WhatsApp handle my messaging with friends and family. Ironically I use Apple’s reminders app for things like shared grocery shopping list with my wife or one-time only reminders and Apple's notes for any thoughts I have that I might want to revisit later.
For photo and video I use Halide and Kino a lot, they’re two of my favorite well designed apps. Lightroom Mobile to edit photos too.
Tell us a bit about yourself and what you envision for the future.
My background is 3D, video and general tech nerd stuff. I had never coded until a couple of years ago when I learned some javascript to make a bot that would let me know when the Apple Watch Ultra came back in stock so I could get one. This led me down a rabbit hole of learning to code, falling in love with SwiftUI, turning that bot into my first app (Fruitwatch, an iPhone/Watch stock tracker for Spain) and then just waiting for the next idea to spring.
I’ve been obsessed with computers and tech since I was a kid, but surprisingly never got into programming until now. It’s been a journey of self-discovery and throughout it has simply felt right and opened many paths that I never thought I could walk. Right now I’m focused on taking Did I Do? to a point where it has the main features I want it to have but I already have an idea for my next thing.
I’m pretty active on Twitter/X at @josesaezmerino and it’s the best way of keeping up to whatever I’m interested at the time, which changes regularly.
About Apptisan
Apptisan is a portmanteau of “application” and “artisan”, signifying “a weekly exploration into the world of apps and the passionate artisans who create them.” Each issue is a conversation with global creators, aiming to uncover and present intriguing products to a wider audience.
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