Indie Interviews
Can you tell us more about yourself and what led you to become an indie maker
I live in Christchurch New Zealand with my wife and three kids, I got into indie development around 6 years ago as I have a day job doing iOS development and was enjoying it so much I started to solve a few of my own problems at home with apps, originally they were just for me, but then I started publishing to the store and gained a bit of traction.
How did you come up with the idea? How do you generate ideas for your apps or projects, and how do you identify the problems or needs your app can address?
All of my ideas for apps have just come from different parts of my life that I thought could be simplified, when we had our first daughter I made a simple sleep tracking app so we could track her naps, I created my recipe app Crouton because I was going our meal planning for the week just using the notes app. I wish I was able to come up with new ideas just from the top of my head, but they’re mostly all just inspired by day to day life.
How is your day-to-day app development workflow look like?
I’m still involved with my original day job, so my time is split between personal projects and then work for them. I have a fairly simple workflow, depending on the tasks I might spend time designing a feature first in Sketch first, otherwise I’m straight into the tools and building and refining as I go. I try to get as much of the support work out of the way in the mornings so I can focus on other things for the rest of the day.
How do you launch and market your app?
I wish I had a solid answer for this, for me the thing I’ve found to have the most traction is just to share what I’m working on and my progress online, most of the traditional marketing avenues I’ve tried haven’t resulted in to much sadly. But if you can find people that are engaged and interested in what you’re building that in my experience can work quite well.
What are the future plans for your app?
I have a number of things I'd love to add to Crouton, I’m currently working on some changes to the grocery lists so that you can auto categorise ingredients which has been fun and dipping my toes in some machine learning. As September comes around I’m also preparing for all of the new OS updates
Do you have any interesting lessons learned or tips for other indie makers?
I think the main thing is just to put in the effort, there are no guarantees for success but if you put in the effort and are passionate then that creates a great environment for luck to strike in.
Looking back, are there any decisions or actions you regret not taking before or during the development and launch of your apps? Is there anything you would have done differently?
I think the initial launch of my app was pretty weak, if I could go back I would have put more time into trying to get the word out so it could have landed with a little bit more of a splash, at the same time I think being able to develop and grow it while not to many people were using it was also an advantage, so there are two sides!
Are there any indie makers or creators whose work you admire and follow closely?
I’m a big fan of Daniel Gauthier’s work on Up Ahead, it’s such a simple app, but so well executed.
Could you recommend any specific tools or resources that you believe are helpful for other indie makers, especially those just starting out?
I’ve found when starting out it’s great just to look at examples of apps or tools you enjoy, try recreate the elements you think are nice. By doing that over and over I think it helps build your own taste.
Thanks for reading til the end. Hope you enjoy the interview as much as we did.
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