How did we get here (September 26, 2011)

Well, that Feynman quote was on the top for very long — more than half a year, actually. In the meanwhile I left the world of large corporations to have a ride of my own. The project I work on now is called Scalar², it’s an app that aims to disrupt the way people carry out calculations on iPad.

How did all this happen? A year ago, when Esad and I at now defunct Critical Point Software were trying to invent an idea for a new app, we felt like we were running in circles. We have just tasted minor success with our subway maps app Transit and travel apps niche seemed promising. We tried thinking about local area guides, but nobody of us wanted to deal with well-funded too-Viennese Tripwolf. It turned out to be a good idea: despite attempts from big players, no company seems to create the mobile travel guide that would be truly great; what could two folks with day jobs have done?

So in short, we stuck. And we decided to go for the idea that was on the surface: just write a better calculator for iPhone. The one built into the phone was definitely not good enough. There were virtually no competitors, except for Soulver, the old big player in this niche. The app would be data-independent: we learned the hard way with Transit that having an app that strongly depends on the external data you collect makes support a nightmare. So, according to git log, we have started working on 13th of April 2010, and on 4th of June we were ready to release. We named the app Scalar.

We got modest sales, but people seem to love our tiny app. Reviews were very positive despite all the wrinkles, like, for example, the fact that calculations were almost set in stone after you enter them at that time (there was a backspace key, but you couldn’t modify anything in the middle of your calculations). After we decided to split the assets with Esad (won’t go into details here), I took the app with me because I loved the idea and I felt we could be onto something here. The Scalar development stalled for few months.

When I decided to leave my day job, the competitive landscape was still almost clear. Tapbots released Calcbot but it was clearly a well-designed toy, not really an app for calculating. Soulver was now available on iPhone and iPad, firmly sticking to the initial vision of having everything in the app in text form — not the best form for touchscreens. Apple’s Numbers were now available on iPad, but heck, isn’t there a place for something new on this magical device, not just a remake of 30-year old killer app? I already had my sleeves up and was looking for the project to focus on, when I saw this Apple’s commercial (I encourage you to spend 30 seconds of your time and watch it):

See? Nobody works with numbers, even the CEO! So I was about to make something people would love to use instead of the spreadsheets, something that’ll have no tiny cells or won’t force you to type =SUM(B4:B16)/E17 anywhere. So, off you go. Very simplistic iPad version: check. Better copy and paste: check. Redesign, because people love beautiful things: check.

In the middle of this summer I was full steam ahead with development. Convenient edit functionality: check. Built-in analytics for better understanding of users’ behavior: check. Multi-document support: check. Text handling to allow people to leave any annotations next to their numbers: check. I implemented and tried three different UI metaphors to allow selection of some parts of your calculations just to find out that no UI metaphor is needed. Simpler is better: one finger swipe means scroll, two fingers swipe means select. Storing parts of your calculation for referencing them later: check. Pinning them to have them always in sight: check. After all this was done, I moved my budget data from a Google spreadsheet to the working version of Scalar on my iPad and never looked back.

This is where we stand now. Dogfooding is a key turn for a small company with a big vision: from this moment on you only embarrassed of what you’ve built if you can’t use it the way you envisioned. I, for one, only feel proud now.