Swipe Them

Can't decide? Tell them to swipe!

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Inspiration

My wife always send me and her friend photos of outfits, travel destinations and asks which one(s) should I buy, or which one's should we go to etc. This usually leads to back and forth in the group chat and usually lead to more indecisiveness that clarity. That's when I thought, what if the votes were binary(yes and no's) with simple swipes, like Tinder. A few weeks later, after finalizing my other side project, I decided to build Swipe Them. With her favorite color as the primary color (Purple) and a simple user interface, I set out to build it.

What it does

Alt text Swipe Them is an intuitive mobile app that lets you create swipe polls, to make group decisions easy. Your friends and family don't even need to download the app, only the creator of the polls needs to. The Process is simple:

Select Photos -> Generate a voters link -> Share link with your voters

You will then get a notification when your voters have voted. You can then view the results in a simple and easy to understand format with rankings and who voted for what.

How we built it

We(I) built it using React Native Expo for mulit-platform support (iOS and Android - Coming soon) for the front end. Firebase for the backend. Both using TypeScript. And various LLMs (ChatGPT and Gemini) to help me with assets generations. Here is one example GPT thread.

Challenges we ran into

Some challenges I ran into include:

  • Designing an intuitive user interface that makes it easy for users to create and participate in polls.
  • Ensuring real-time updates and notifications for users when votes are cast.
  • Handling different screen sizes.
  • The biggest of them all was finding time to work on this project while juggling a full time job and personal commitments.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

The most proud accomplishment was seeing all of my ideas come together cohesively. When starting it out, I had a vision for a playful and eye catching user interface, and I think I was able to achieve that. Another accomlishment is seeing the all the postiive feedback from friends and family who have used the app to make decisions.

What we learned

My biggest learning from this project was the importance of showing up for myself and dedicating even the smallest amount of my day to work on my side projects. The biggest click moment for me was when sometimes I would feel like I didn't make much progress on a particular day but when I look back the next day, I would notice that even the small change make a big difference in the overall polish of the app. Consistency is key.

What's next for Swipe Them

My next steps for Swipe Them is marketing. I have already planned the app functionality around new user acquisition. Mainly because the each voter is me with a Make Your Own Poll button on the voter page. I'm also planning to apply the same consistency on making TikTok videos to market the app.

In terms of app functionality, I plan to add more features such as:

  • More customization options for polls (themes, fonts, etc.) for paid users. This is meant for professional use cases like weddings, corporate events etc.
  • More analytics for poll creators to see how their polls are performing.(how much time it took to swipe).
  • Creating polls using urls, making the swipe card show a webpage preview instead of an image. This is meant for use cases like choosing between products, travel destinations etc.
  • Creating polls using videos.

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