It has been a year since I started development on the breastfeed tracker. We wanted to breastfeed our child and in the end did so for almost a year. It is important to keep track of the timings and evenly distribute the feedings across both breasts for a multitude of reasons I am not qualified to explain. Sufficient to say, you have to keep track of this.
In the beginning we used a piece of paper. This worked, but was quite cumbersome: you had to note the start time and breast, while you have a baby in your arm. Writing on a piece of paper. Add to that the bed is not a great surface to write on and you can imagine the struggles we had.
As a software engineer, I saw the watch on the wrist of my wife, and remembered that Garmin provides additional apps, through the IQ Store. The watch was accessible with a baby in the arm and could, in theory, be used with your nose. Maybe this could work.
Having never developed for these watches before, it was quite an challenge to come up with something that could work on such a tiny screen.
The first prototype was very rough: it could only store the last two feedings, and only provides left and right. I did not yet figure out how to draw lines, so it was all just text. But: it worked! Over the next month, while the baby was asleep, I developed the app further, providing a bigger history, an undo button, an option for a bottle (very handy when mommy was away!), and provided a better user interface. It all started to click!
We used the app extensively for the first few months and it was amazing. We refined the app to fit our needs perfectly. At this point, I saw an opportunity to release the app to the world; if it works for us, why would'nt it work for others?
I did some cleanup, added a logo and support for more devices and we got an app! It is great seeing the good reviews flowing in and people having genuinely been helped by my creation.
It thought me a valuable lesson:
It helped us, so it can help others.
I plan to further improve the app in the coming months with a companion Android app and some UX improvements, like deleting a specific entry.
Thank you all for the kind words and support. It really feels good to do good :)