Small Society Blog

Introducing DoubleTree: Home & Away for iPad

Mon, 09 May 2011 11:01:29 -0700

Sometimes the thing that makes an app truly great is something that it doesn’t do.

When DoubleTree approached us for an iPad app for its hotel chain, you could have predicted the feature list:

The ability to book a room.
The ability to check in remotely.
The ability to verify that those mints you loved were waiting for you on the pillow.

Instead, we decided to build this app around a single profound insight:

When you are a traveler, you are in more than one place at a time.

This isn’t a turn of quantum mechanics, but a result of the way mobile technology has permeated our life. You could be in a business meeting in DC, while getting MMS messages from your family back home. You could be on a train to Seattle, and IM’ing with a business partner across the country.

The immediacy of our world is getting tighter. We constantly have to reconcile the fact that we often have to be present, even when we are away.

Our latest app Home and Away for DoubleTree is based off that very human observation. It gives you a snapshot of where things are at home, and what things look like where you are going. It orients you to the time & weather in both places, gives you access to AP news, and also scans the latest photos from Flickr to show you what 62 degrees and overcast really looks like. It syncs with your TripIt account, and also scans your calendar for your next meeting.

In short, it is designed to smooth out the toll traveling can take on you by beautifully connecting you to where you are going, while still anchoring you to where you came from.

Download Home and Away from the App Store™.

iPad: One Year Later

Fri, 18 Feb 2011 10:44:30 -0800

I will be returning to Web 2.0 Expo in San Francisco this year to give a follow-up talk on the iPad entitled, “iPad: One Year Later.”

The abstract:

A year has passed since the release of Apple’s iPad, and with it, new opportunities for developers, content publishers, and entrepreneurs, have clearly emerged. We now have a proven market for a third type of mobile, Internet-enabled device – more intimate than a laptop and more expansive than a smartphone. In a follow-up to his 2010 Web 2.0 Expo talk, “iPad: Mobile Computing Redefined,” Raven looks back on the first year of the iPad – its successes and failings, as well as a look forward to Apple’s new hardware and software technologies and their inevitable impact on the market. 2011 will be an even bigger year for the consumer tablet sector, with additional hardware players, continued app and services innovation, and a more mainstream, global market for these devices.

For those of you who were present for my iPad talk last year, I looked at the new market opportunities for the iPad and my plan to live without a laptop and fully embrace the iPad. I’ll be giving an update on both topics, and explore some of the successes (and failures) of the platform.

I hope to see you there!

Getting Ready for the 2011 Holiday Season

Tue, 18 Jan 2011 15:57:00 -0800

Wait, aren’t we just recovering from all of the 2010 Holiday madness?

As odd as it seems, in this business we live 6 months into the future, which means it’s time to get back into the swing of things… Can you feel it? the leaves are starting to turn, and Fall is right around the corner.

Here at Small Society, we take a lot of pride in our project process. Discovery, Creative, Development, and a thorough QA - that’s the way to make a beautiful, engaging, delightful app. But it is a process that takes some time.

Last summer, we had a few sales calls with major retail clients who were desperate to have something on the app store in October, just before the Q4 shopping season. Very sadly for all of us, we had to turn them away. Three months is just not enough time to design & develop an app that those clients would be proud of, and we wouldn’t have it any other way.

So this year, we’re thinking about the holidays early:

If you want an app on the store for Fall, then Spring is the time to get started! And if you want a project kickoff & Discovery in Q2, then now is the time to get prepared. Think about your budget, form your internal project team, start talking to prospective vendors. And if you think the match is right, we’d love to speak with you!

Stay tuned for amazing things coming Fall 2011. They are starting now!

Announcing the Amazon Deals App!

Tue, 11 Jan 2011 08:10:07 -0800

Small Society is proud to team with Amazon.com to release its latest app, Amazon Deals.

While Amazon is known for its incredibly low prices, Amazon Deals, which hit the app store today, gives customers easy access to limited-availability discounts on a wide variety of products.

The goal was to take the Amazon.com Gold Box to the mobile space, and to ensure that deal hunters would never miss a thing, regardless of where they were:

* The app gives you a quick view of each amazing discount and fast scrolling across all of the deals happening today.

* Drilling down into individual items shows you the list price, Amazon price, the deal price, as well as your potential savings.

* At a glance, you can find the time left on lightning deals and percentage of deals claimed so that you won’t miss your window of opportunity.

* You can see deals by category, and get a teaser of deals that are about to happen, including the option to receive notifications when these deals are about to launch.

The app provides all of the great information that makes Amazon.com such a great shopping experience, including access to Amazon.com Customer Ratings and Reviews, as well as the clean and simple checkout experience customers have come to know and trust.

Finally, the app also lets you share specific items via email, text, Facebook, and Twitter; so your friends won’t miss out on the Three Moon Wolf Shirt when it goes on sale.

Download the Amazon Deals app today, and keep a lookout for something special.

Grateful for a strong 2010, and giving a little back.

Wed, 05 Jan 2011 14:21:00 -0800

2010 was an amazing year for Small Society. We grew by 50%, moved to new offices, and got a slew of interesting & exciting new clients. And we are only now approaching the end of our second year!

We love what we do, we have awesome co-workers, we work near great food carts and the Apple Store. The universe has been good to us, and so we knew that this was our opportunity to give back.

In short: We allocated $10,000 of our 2010 profits for charitable donations.

To start things off, we donated $5000 to The Mangrove Fund (now merging with the Voice of Haiti). The Mangrove Fund is founded & operated by our lawyer, Bill Pierznik of Alto Law. Bill is not only a great lawyer, but is also a great person - he pours all of his spare energies into rebuilding orphanages and setting up basic health services in Haiti. He and his wife have been doing this since before the earthquake. Bill told me that our donation will go directly to a sanitation project that will help save many people from the scourge of cholera as well as other parasites.

Next, we allocated another $5000 to be distributed by group vote. Each employee of Small Society had the opportunity to nominate 2 charities, and then cast a vote for 3 (encouraging people to vote beyond their own nominations.) The top 5 winners got $1000 each. We had great nominations, and a chance to learn about each other’s passions. In the end, we donated $1000 each to:

* Planned Parenthood of Columbia/Willamette
* Project Pooch
* Mercy Corps
* Smile Train
* Oregon Public Broadcasting

What a great opportunity to end the year on a high note. Thanks again to every member of our extended Small Society family, and to all of our business partners, for helping make this possible.

Whole Foods Market Recipes for iPad (and iPhone 4)

Fri, 17 Dec 2010 15:57:00 -0800

Small Society is excited to announce the release of the extremely popular Whole Foods Recipes app for the iPad.

The app, available today, brings the key functionality of the iPhone app to the iPad allowing users to search for recipes, get suggestions based on what you have on hand, locate Whole Foods stores. Added to the app are gorgeous new visuals, and the ability to share recipes via email, Facebook, and Twitter.

The release of the iPad app also coincides with an update to the iPhone version, which brings users Retina Display support, improved Voice Over controls for enhanced accessibility, and deep social networking integration.

Discover healthy food, and share your favorite recipes. Download the Whole Foods Recipes app today.

Save where you live - from your iPhone

Mon, 04 Oct 2010 17:50:00 -0700

The paper used to come on Sunday morning thick with coupons, glossy inserts, and deals all printed on paper. The promise was that with a little close examination, you could see literally hundreds of dollars in savings on that next trip to the grocery store. Those deemed not worthy ended up in the trash or underneath the feet of your childhood hamster.

Oh my how things have changed.

So when Small Society was approached by the publishers of the Chinook Book, the goal was not simply to get people to buy the book or to give exposure to participating vendors; the goal was to help them transform the future of their business and make it mobile.

A bit of background: the Chinook Book is an institution in the Pacific Northwest. For a decade, people have used it to support sustainable businesses, discover new ones, and to save a little too! It’s also a fundraiser for local community organizations and schools.

Our challenge was to take a brand that had huge appeal, and make it more useable, more local, and more accessible than a book hiding in your glove box. But in order to do that, we also had to change the behavior of people who were used to the familiarity of paper coupons.

The app we designed takes the book and puts it in your pocket. Not only can you search the Yard and Garden category for a deals on those organic vegetable starts, but you can click the Near Me tab to discover the eco-minded mom and pop store or yoga studio a mile from your house that you never knew existed. And of course, you can redeem coupons straight from the app, and see how much you have saved over time.

Getting to this simple execution was no small task: we performed usability testing on an early prototype of the app to test our design decisions (a rarity in the mobile world). We solved the tricky issue of how to present and redeem single use coupons with some solid design thinking and a great creative insight. We gained an understanding of the potentially awkward interaction of a person showing their phone to someone behind the cash register, so that we could make the whole thing a beautiful and seamless experience. And so far the response has been positive and overwhelming.

Find the Chinook Book on the App Store and discover some amazing local sustainable businesses.

This Is Your Mission

Tue, 24 Aug 2010 13:50:00 -0700

We at Small Society love Whole Foods Market. Last Sumer, we had the privilege of working with them on the launch of the Whole Foods Market Recipes App, which you can read about on our company blog (Whole Foods: our most drool-inducing project yet).

So we were ecstatic when they approached us about building an app that helps people discover foods they haven’t tried before, and get on the path to healthier choices. The result is the Whole Foods Market Missions app, and it’s available on the iTunes App Store now.

We love a lot of things about this app: it’s fun, it’s really beautiful, and it has a sense of discovery. We also love that by using a game-like approach, people can learn about eating right in an engaging, entertaining way with close to 400 healthy eating tips and over 70 missions. But underneath all of that is some pretty compelling technology - the store locator was reengineered in Core Data, we integrated with Twitter and Facebook, and the app is engineered for ultimate beauty when viewed on an iPhone 4 with Retina display.

We have all challenged ourselves when it comes to food, and most of the time the challenge is to cut something out. This app offers some balance, by adding things in that you might not have thought about, or forgot that you knew. So download it today, and take some steps towards trying something new.

Download the Whole Foods Market Missions App for FREE from the iTunes App Store.

Visit the Whole Foods Market Missions App Product Page.

Democratic National Committee/Organizing For America - Mobilizing Voters through Mobile Devices

Thu, 24 Jun 2010 09:02:00 -0700

It’s not often that small agencies get a chance to do the work that changes the world. We’ve been asked to do it twice, and that is why we are incredibly excited to announce that the apps we developed for the Democratic National Committee and Organizing For America are now available for the iPhone and the iPad.

Designed to mobilize voters for the 2010 election season, the applications incorporate national and local news, rich video content, action alerts, as well as integration with Facebook and Twitter.

Working with a strong technical and creative team out of the DNC headquarters in DC, this project represents how you can bring a robust app to life for both the iPhone and the iPad in just a few months. For us at Small Society, it’s also personally significant in coming full circle since our founder Raven Zachary directed the official Obama ‘08 for iPhone project in the 2008 election season for the Obama Campaign. The launch of the Obama app in October 2008 directly lead to the creation of Small Society, and it is our privilege to be asked by the DNC to help them with the creation of this new pair of apps.

OFA Blog:
http://my.barackobama.com/page/community/post/joshhendler/gGGjNY

OFA Product Page:
http://my.barackobama.com/page/content/iphone2010

Download the Organizing for America Universal iPhone/iPad App:
http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/barack-obama-organizing-for/id376413567?mt=8#

DNC Blog:
http://www.democrats.org/a/2010/06/connect_with_de.php

DNC Product Page:
http://my.democrats.org/page/content/iphone2010

Download the Democratic National Committee Universal iPhone/iPad app:
http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/the-democratic-party/id376405891?mt=8

We’d especially like thank our friends at the DNC who we worked closely with to bring these apps to life: Peter Welsch, Nathan Woodhull, Josh Hendler, Lucas Fleischer, Mike Conlow, Christopher Gill, Natalie Foster… and a huge congrats to the whole team on a successful launch!

Small Society helps build WordPress for iPad

Fri, 02 Apr 2010 10:26:00 -0700

When the iPad was announced in late January, the citizens of Small Society immediately began sketching, coding, building foam-core board likenesses of the device. It was madness. We were stoked. And when we thought we couldn’t get any more excited about the potential of the iPad and our work in building for it, we got a phone call.

At the tail end of February, a couple of us hopped on a plane for San Francisco and headed to the absolutely lovely Automattic offices, home of WordPress, to meet with Matt Mullenweg and Raanan Bar-Cohen. We did a rapid-fire discovery workshop, and left a few hours later, a little bit giddy, but also knowing we were in for a wild ride.

While our usual projects are several months in duration, with a strong, process-focused methodology - we simply didn’t have the luxury of time for this project. Instead, we had just about a month to go from concept to app, with two full time developers (who were both already booked for an extended geek spring break at SXSW), and an existing iPhone code base that would be the basis for a universal app.

It seemed a bit daunting, but who doesn’t love a challenge… and, who doesn’t love WordPress?

One of the most incredible things about this project was the chance to work in an Open Source environment, which could not be more different than working on a marketing focused app for a large corporation. We were to blog our progress, work with a distributed team, and partner with the WordPress community to get things built, debugged and out the door. It was a blast.

Exactly one month after our trip to San Francisco, we submitted to the App Store. We are very proud to announce that right now, this very moment, you can download WordPress for iPad (even though most of us mere mortals won’t be able to see it on a device until tomorrow).

Now, because it was a crazy, quick turnaround, project - it is not a design-rich, feature-heavy application. Instead, we’ve got a sturdy little app that does just what you need it to. As you may expect, it leverages what already existed in the iPhone application, but takes full advantage of the expansive screen size and presents a much more welcoming and compelling way to write.

For what it’s worth, we also think it falls squarely into the mantra that you find on the home page of Automattic.com:

Inspired by you
Striving to create good
Nothing is perfect.

We are thrilled that we were able to work with the whole WordPress team and enable a whole army of bloggers to create and publish from a native app, on their shiny new iPad, from day one. We love writing for software for our friends. Enjoy!

If you want to learn more about WordPress for iPad -

What our friends at WordPress have to say about the project
http://iphone.wordpress.org/2010/04/02/wordpress-iphone-ipad-2-4/)

WordPress for iPhone OS
http://iphone.wordpress.org/

The iPad Has Been Unveiled - Now What?

Thu, 28 Jan 2010 11:33:00 -0800

As a veteran of agency life, I can say that being an iPhone™ OS-driven agency brings with it a unique set of hurdles - namely, that we have hitched our wagon to Apple’s pace of innovation, which includes newly accessible features with every new release of the OS, and sometimes, like yesterday, a whole new device.

As with all great things in life, this pace of innovation is the thing that gets us up and into the office each morning, but at the same time, it presents the most formidable challenges - creating the need for both our little business, and our client’s businesses, to stay nimble, aware and enthusiastic.

Getting Comfy with Our New Tools

Now that we have finally emerged from the post-launch haze, the Small Society team has downloaded the new Software Development Kit (SDK), the new Human Interface Guidelines (HIG), and run our existing apps through the paces in the iPad simulator.

We are taking a hard look at how well our apps will scale, and which of our clients might benefit from making custom iPad™ experiences. Of note, we are under NDA with Apple, as are all developers - so we can only say so much about what the future holds - but we wanted to share with you our thoughts around what details are already in the public realm.

While technically all iPhone apps will work “out of the box” on the iPad, that does not mean that most apps will look great, or even make sense when blown up to twice their natural size on a new device.

iPhone Apps Will Work Out of the Box, But is That a Good Thing?

The fact of the matter is that for most iPhone apps, there are two tricky areas that dominate the planning process. The first is what we tend to call “mobile context usage” - which simply means, what is the user doing on-the-go? What features will differentiate this experience from what you might traditionally do for a user on your website (who is tethered to a desk and/or wifi)? The second question is usually one of the feature to pixel ratio. With such a small screen, feature clutter is deadly.

Both of these problems become far less important for the iPad. We do not anticipate that people will be using their iPad while walking down the street or standing in line at the grocery store. We also have twice the pixels to play with… and thus, many (non-game/non-immersive) iPhone applications will not “feel” right on this new device.

The Argument For Creating iPad-Optimized Experiences for Existing iPhone Apps

Apple, themselves, mentioned that they re-wrote all of their own apps specifically for use on the iPad - and if you look at the interface choices they made, a pattern about how to do this becomes clear.

On the iPhone, users are very used to drilling down from a list view into a content view, and then often toggling between these two views to compare items, or merely to work their way down through a stack of important content. You see variations on this paradigm from news applications, to mail, to shopping applications. This makes sense given the pixel constraints of the iPhone, but it is a bit of a burden with a larger screen.

As evidenced by the iPad mail application demonstrated in yesterday’s announcement, Apple is leveraging a split view for iPad apps, where the familiar list view is available on the left, and where the message content is available on the right. This is actually more akin to what most users are used to seeing in desktop mail applications, and makes sense to most users almost immediately. The iPad’s split view makes the best use of the pixels available, and uses the gestural based interactions that existing iPhone users know and love. It truly is where traditional computing and iPhone meet in the middle.

It is of note that there are further considerations for optimization (a greater emphasis on re-orientation of the device being but one example) - but they are mostly secondary to rethinking this split view approach for most applications.

From a Technical Point of View

For sanity’s sake (and because of our NDA with Apple) we won’t get into the deep technical nitty-gritty here. (Although you can certainly hire us if that sounds fun!) But, there are a few technical notes that are public knowledge that are worth mentioning here.

First of all, the iPad does run the iPhone Operating System (OS), and our development team is thus already amongst the best in the business in terms of technical acumen necessary to build iPad applications.

Also, with the release of a new version of the iPhone OS to support the iPad, there are a number of new features that are available to us as developers. This means that even existing iPhone apps (whether or not optimized for the iPad) stand to benefit from the technology behind this announcement.

Next, the split-view approach to an iPad optimized experience is in many ways, simply taking two views that have already been built for an iPhone experience and presenting them side by side. This means that for any existing iPhone application, we should be able to leverage existing code to build an iPad experience more efficiently.

Lastly, it is important to note that we can bundle up one universal app that contains both the iPhone and the iPad optimized views - which is what we believe most consumers will come to expect. There are a few exceptions to this rule, as we saw with the New York Times demo, where sister apps that sync with each other may be most appropriate… but out of the gate, I doubt this will be the dominate paradigm.

The Case for Making iPad Apps, Whether or Not You Have an iPhone App

We’ve already talked a lot about the relationship between iPhone and iPad apps, but the citizens of Small Society also believe that the iPad does signal a pretty major shift in the traditional computing paradigm.

We cannot help but notice that Apple is offering a pretty compelling and affordable replacement to casual computing (previously defined by a low-end, mouse-driven PC with a cheap internet package). Many of us at Small Society have come out of a desktop software development and believe that the iPad has the potential to redefine this casual computing category. With it, we also believe there is a huge opportunity to innovate.

Part of this is rethinking desktop software for gestural-based interactions. Another aspect is simply rethinking what software means for the average household, when it is more location-aware and reliably/consistently networked.

We got into this business because of a common belief that the iPhone OS is fundamentally shifting the way every day people interact with the world around them… and we are thrilled that Apple’s vision is continuing to evolve, and that our business will evolve right along with it.

So… Apple upped the ante again. Do you have an idea? How can we help?

More Resources from Apple:
Watch the Keynote
Learn about the iPad

A Great Overview of the iPad from the New York Times, with a quote from Small Society’s very own President - Raven Zachary:
iPad Blurs Line Between Devices

A Sneak Peek at the Small Society Team During Yesterday’s Keynote,
Glued to our Screens:

New Year's Resolution: More Blogging

Tue, 05 Jan 2010 14:52:40 -0800

Happy New Year, everyone! At Small Society, we’ve been so busy building apps that we’ve been doing a poor job keeping our company blog up-to-date. One of my goals for 2010 is to dedicate more time to outbound communications. 2009 was a very successful year for us as an iPhone agency and we have already some exciting things in the works for 2010. Hopefully, you’ve been following us on Twitter (@smallsociety), where updates are a bit more frequent than they are here.

Expect a batch of catch-up posts in the next few weeks covering some of our 2009 news and app launches.

Support your Local Community - this Thursday!

Mon, 16 Nov 2009 11:06:23 -0800

When the citizens of Small Society heard about 30 Hour Day we knew that this was something that we wanted to come out to support!

For those of you who haven’t heard, 30 Hour Day is an event where Rick Turoczy of the Silicon Florist and Cami Kaos of Strange Love Live are going to livestream for 30 hours straight in an effort to raise money for charities like Free Geek, Oregon Food Bank, and Toys for Tots. So basically, 30 Hour Day (@30hourday and #30hd for you twitter types) is the warm, fuzzy trifecta of Portland community, charity and fun!

While the actual Livestream itself isn’t happening until December 18 and 19 (including 30 hours of entertainment, interviews, and interesting goings on) - we wanted to start the excitement, get the word out, and kick off the giving season where we knew there would be a collection of generous geeks… so….

We are proud to announce that we will be accepting donations to both Toys for Tots and the Oregon Food Bank THIS THURSDAY at Ignite Portland:

November 19, 2009
IGNITE PORTLAND 7

Bagdad Theater
3702 S.E. Hawthorne Blvd.
Portland, OR 97214

Doors Open at 5:30PM
Show Starts at 7:00PM

General Admission, No Tickets
Admission is always FREE!

We know that even the most organic-home-grown-in-my-garden types must have an errant box of mac and cheese lying about, or perhaps you bought too many cans of refried beans in a regrettable Costo moment. Or perhaps you can swing by your local Fred Meyers and pick up some crayons and a coloring book? When you’ve got those non perishable foods and new unwrapped toys together, bring ‘em to the Bagdad, and we will take care of the rest. Whatever you can contribute, we will be grateful.

We also wanted to give a huge thanks to the Legion of Tech who didn’t hesitate to let us set up a collection area at Ignite.

See you Thursday!

Whole Foods Market - There's an App for That

Fri, 14 Aug 2009 18:31:00 -0700

Apple has been running a series of TV commercials over the past year featuring iPhone applications in action. I’m sure you’ve see a few of these. In the past week, Apple has released a series of new iPhone TV commercials, two of which include the Whole Foods Market Receipes iPhone app icon during both the beginning and end of the commercials (“Travel” and “Share”). And while the mysterious hand does not actually tap on the Whole Foods Market Recipe app itself, it sure is an honor to be included on the iPhone during these segments.

Yahoo! Developer Network Spotlight - Small Society

Fri, 14 Aug 2009 18:15:00 -0700

While I was at Yahoo! for iPhoneDevCamp 3 a few weeks ago, the fine folks at the Yahoo! Developer Network (YDN) filmed a short video interview with me about my work at Small Society. They did a fantastic job with the production of the video, especially considering that I was a bit tired and stressed during the filming, as it took place just a few hours before the start of iPhoneDevCamp 3. Thanks again, YDN!

iPhoneDevCamp 3 Recap

Fri, 14 Aug 2009 18:07:00 -0700

Two weeks ago, I (along with Small Society developers Jon Wight and Andrew Pouliot) visited Yahoo! headquarters in Sunnyvale, California, for iPhoneDevCamp 3, the largest iPhone developer conference (other than Apple’s own WWDC). This year, we had close to 600 attendees, the largest event yet. This is our third year. The prior two years were held at Adobe Systems’ San Francisco office. I created iPhoneDevCamp in June 2007 before the release of the first iPhone - when iPhone development equated to web development. We’ve come a long way since then, and with the tremendous success of native apps and the App Store, this year was bound to be a success.

The highlights from this year included keynote presentations by Chi-Hua Chien from Kleiner Perkins (talking about the iFund, of course), Andrew Stone (Twittelator Pro), and Steve Demeter (Trism), a musical performance by BT, dozens of presentations by attendees, and 54 new iPhone apps demoed during the Hackathon.

Thanks to everyone who made the event possible this year. While we aren’t quite ready to start the planning for iPhoneDevCamp 4 in 2010, based on the success this year, I suspect we’ll be repeating the event next summer.

Oregon Business Journal: Kickin' Apps

Fri, 14 Aug 2009 17:56:08 -0700

The August 2009 issue of Oregon Business Journal included an article by Adrianne Jeffries entitled, “Kickin’ Apps: Portland’s fertile ground for mobile app development.” Jeffries did an excellent job covering the diverse and impressive mobile technology scene emerging in Portland. Small Society is included in the article, along with a number of other cool companies in the area.

Willamette Week: Hotseat: Raven Zachary

Fri, 14 Aug 2009 17:49:00 -0700

Catching up on a backlog on Small Society blog posts…I was recently featured in the one of Portland’s arts papers, Willamette Week. The Hotseat format is essentially a Q&A with an individual in Portland. I was selected by the paper for the July 15th, 2009, issue. I have linked to the online version of the article for those of you who are interested in reading the interview.

Whole Foods: our most drool-inducing project yet

Thu, 02 Jul 2009 14:22:23 -0700

Raven and I have been known to pass travel time by making the short list of folks/brands that we’d like to work with someday, but from day one of Small Society, there was one company that Raven was passionate about making an app for…

Whole Foods Market has always kept the citizens of Small Society stocked with Kombucha (those of you who know us will understand how serious this is), and both Raven and Jon spent some time living in Austin, Texas, home of Whole Foods and their absolutely gorgeous flagship store. So, this year when Raven was in Austin to moderate the “iPhone: The New Gaming Platform” panel at SXSW, he and I decided to swing by headquarters to have a quick meet and greet with their team. Lucky for us, it was a great meeting, and we kicked off just a few weeks later.

When we started thinking about how to bring the Whole Foods brand to life in the mobile space, there was a lot of passion about the content available in their recipe database. Whole Foods has a core mission to bring fresh and healthy food to their customers - and so it makes sense to help those customers transform that food into a nourishing meal that they can share with friends and family around the table.

Our only concern was that there were already some recipe apps available on the app store. But, after discussing it, we all agreed that the exact same brand values that make Whole Foods different than your average grocery chain would help differentiate the app itself. We focused the user experience on these key criteria - for example, the recipe search has a filter that supports special diets such as vegan, dairy free or sugar conscious, and the recipes call for quality, whole ingredients.

We also wanted to flip the recipe finder concept on its head a bit. As much as I’d like to tell you that I pre-plan each week’s meals and shop ahead, the project team agreed that most of us don’t usually approach dinner that way. Instead, most of us open the freezer, fridge, and pantry door and rely on our creativity to make something work. It was this paradigm that inspired the “on hand” feature that allows you to choose up to three ingredients and the app provides recipes that leverage what you already have available.

Our app launch was timed perfectly with the launch of the iPhone OS 3.0 Software Update, so the Whole Foods app was built using key new Apple technologies such as MapKit for the store finder, in-application email for sharing favorite recipes, and the ability to copy recipe data using Cut, Copy, Paste functionality.

(Please note that because we used these awesome 3.0 technologies, your device needs to be on 3.0 for the app to work. If you haven’t already done so, upgrade, it’s worth it… we promise!)

On its first day in the app store, it was hailed as a Staff Favorite. We are also very proud to announce that it is currently Apple’s App Store Pick of the Week.

It was awesome working with the Whole Foods team, and we hope that as you read this you are happily snacking on Strawberry Shortcakes with Maple Syrup and Frozen Yogurt. Wait, you aren’t? Better download the app (after all, it’s free!)

One Big Step for One Small Society

Fri, 19 Jun 2009 16:42:00 -0700

So here’s the thing… Small Society is the type of agency that believes that great people with a great idea can make a great app - but if you add just a dash of process garnered from years of experience making software, it can take that app from great to outstanding. We also fundamentally believe that in these young, Wild Wild West days of iPhone applications - having a strong process really sets us apart from many of our peers.

That being said, every once and awhile, an opportunity comes along that requires you to let go just a little bit and follow your heart.

Last week, we had the honor of having some of our work onstage at Apple’s Worldwide Developer’s Conference (WWDC). The Apple keynote has found its way into pop culture - having been parodied by everyone from 30 Rock to the College Humor crew - but to an Apple fan, it’s far more than that. Leading up to the keynote most Apple fans have already spent countless hours reading up on the rumors, trying to guess what the new announcements will be. For those who are not lucky enough to attend the keynote live, most fans will endlessly hit reload as one of the big Apple sites live blogs the entire event. So for us, the geeks who have dedicated our careers to this platform, an opportunity to help build one of the keynote showcase apps is an incredibly awesome experience.

It was this opportunity that inspired us to throw our usual user-centered design process out the window and join our friends at Zipcar for a crazy five-week sprint to bring a prototype of the Zipcar application to life. Our lead developer (Jon) and our fearless leader (Raven) went through a similar sprint on the Obama ‘08 iPhone application, and so the team was confident that there was enough time to get some solid code written, but our challenge was in understanding the Zipcar customer (25% of whom have iPhones!) and what they would want from this app, while at the same time leveraging brand new technologies to highlight the iPhone 3.0 OS.

Needless to say, we were excited. The weekend before the kick-off meeting in Cambridge, Jon had already implemented MapKit as a means to locate cars. On the plane home immediately following our kick-off, I had developed a first draft of the wireframes. From there, we were iterating the app almost daily, side by side with the Zipcar team, who were providing design, server development, and moral support every step of the way.

It was a crazy timeline, and the sprint wasn’t without a few tense and tiring moments, but in the end we built something that the whole team is quite proud of. We leveraged the best of 3.0 technologies including MapKit and Push Notifications, while at the same time bringing out the brand personality of Zipcar and keeping true to the ideal iPhone user experience. Luckily, Apple was pleased with our progress.

Perhaps the most talked about feature of the prototype was the ability to honk the horn and even unlock the car. Thanks to technology already built into the Zipcar fleet, it was possible to do some pretty amazing work in an incredibly short period of time. We were also lucky enough to not only see the demo live on stage at WWDC, but help the Zipcar team demo the technology for our fellow devs inside the Moscone center on Tuesday and Wednesday of the conference. (It was also pretty cool to be trending topic on twitter, if even briefly, amid all of the other cool announcements.)

Watch the Zipcar demo at the WWDC 09 keynote

Also, check out media coverage of the demo:
Wired (http://www.wired.com/autopia/2009/06/zipcar-iphone/)
Mashable (http://mashable.com/2009/06/08/iphone-30-apps/)
The Apple Blog (http://theappleblog.com/2009/06/09/zipcar-car-sharingrenting-with-your-iphone/)

We’d like to thank Apple for giving Zipcar (and us, by proxy) the opportunity to participate in the keynote, and for giving us such an awesome platform to work with. And, of course, we’d like to thank Zipcar for being an outstanding client. Not only is Zipcar changing the way we think about transportation as the largest car-sharing service in the world, but the people who work for Zipcar truly embody the company brand - they are smart, fun and passionate.

We feel lucky to have been a part of such a crazy endeavor, but are all just a tiny bit relieved to have a little extra time to catch up on all of that sleep we missed.