It all began with a DM…

On January 14th, my friend Ian Ownbey sent me a direct message on Twitter about a freelance design project. It turns out he was working on a small iOS app with his friend Jason Goldman and they were looking for a designer to help them wrap it up. At the time, I was in the middle of a substantial iPad design project for another client, but I really wanted to work on something with Ian and Jason. Luckily, since their project was small, I was able to squeeze a week of time for them in the middle of my other project.

Ian sent me the prototype he’d put together, which had most of the functionality of the final app but in a very rough form and zero design. He also sent me Jason’s product spec for the app. A few quotes stood out to me in the spec:

Despite building all kinds of “share” buttons into both apps and sites, people prefer to share by screenshot. This is true for both private sharing where the screenshot is sent over text. As well as public sharing.

This is so true. I screenshot tweets, articles, and all sorts of things to share via text message or back on Twitter. But it’s a very tedious process to make it look how I want it to before sharing.

“Again the experience challenge is that the oneshot card has to look good but not so stuffy that it doesn’t feel like it came from a human. We’re not trying to create illuminated manuscripts out of web pull quotes.”

The app was meant to make tweeting screenshots of articles easier, and I was the perfect user. Plus, it was interaction and UX-heavy, which is where I feel most confident in my abilities. I eagerly said yes to working on the project.