After two months of grinding on a ton of infrastructure work to enable "Smart Lists", this was the first week I was able to dive back into the fun stuff.

The way "Smart Lists" work is forcing me to rethink some parts of the UI which then ended up raising some bigger design questions.

This new direction is feeling pretty fresh, and fun. That being said, this is still very exploratory and a work in progress. Things likely will change.

Smart Lists

Smart Lists are now fully working. You'll be able to create filters based on your owna href="https://www.poohbers.com/micro/2023/10/previewing-custom-properties/">

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Smart Lists will have a little lightning bolt icon attached to them.

Pinned Lists

If you're someone who has a decent number of groups and lists, sometimes it can be a bit of a slog to scroll to a list you use frequently. Well, now you'll be able to pin any list and it will stay at the top of all your lists for quick access.

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Pinned lists also come with a nice card design that displays a larger cover image.

New Home Screen Design

I've had the current design for Sofa since the summer of 2021, when version 3.0 was released. Since then, I've learned a lot about what works, what causes people to get a little tripped up, and what's annoying.

One of the main bits of feedback I've gotten is wanting to disable some of the default lists like "The Pile" or "The Shelf". While these are handy tools, not everyone wants or needs them. They are taking up valuable space regardless of what you want.

The other bit of feedback is confusion around how to use certain features. I think this has mostly been due to how I'm named things. For example, "The Shelf" confuses a lot of people. I end up explaining it by saying "it's like pinning something"...which means I should probably just called it "Pinned".

So, this design gives a lot more control, removes things if you don't need them, and (hopefully) clarifies the naming of features.

What's Next

I'm currently working on getting all of this polished enough toa href="https://www.sofahq.com/beta">

I've been calling this release 3.5, but now I'm starting to wonder if it's more of a 4.0 🤔.

Anyways, I'm open to any and all feedback 👋.

Remember a few weeks ago when I said I was just about wrapped up with the data model work? Well, lol, it took a little longer.

After lots of fighting/cursing with iCloud, that work is nowem>

For Smart Lists, I have two main buckets to tackle:

There are many other things to polish around Smart Lists, but once the two main buckets are done it will be in a good spot.

Social Media

I will usually post most things from this site on various social sites. You can follow me here:

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During the holidays, I made good progress on Smart Lists in Sofa, but then ran into some tricky issues. I had to revamp Sofa’s data model a bit to get things working properly. This little detour took a decent amount of time, and I’m just about wrapped up with it. In hindsight, it’s good that I made some of these data model changes because it should make Ingredients more efficient throughout the app.

Anyways, once I’m finished up with the data model work I’ll be jumping back into finishing the UI for Smart Lists. This still needs a good amount of love, but I’m hoping to have it in your hands for testing in the next few weeks.

Thanks for all your patience and let me know if you have any questions!

Cancel your New Year's plans because I just dropped a 45 min video recapping Sofa's 2023.I go over the state of the product, health of the business, quitting my job to go full-time, and talk about what's next for 2024.

Thanks for a great year everyone 👋.

Since working on custom categories and Ingredients, I’ve been thinking through the most useful first way to “expose” all those new features in @sofahq. I’ve settled on “Smart Lists” and I’ve just started working on it this past week. If you’re interested to see my progress and how it’s going to work, check out this video.

I’m 100% open to feedback on this too.

📺 New Video 📺

I learned a good bit from running a Black Friday sale for Sofa and I talk about what went well, the issues I ran into, and what I would do next time.

Soon you’ll be able to add anything into Sofa via a link. There are two reasons this makes sense for the product:

Adding links into Sofa increases it’s flexibility, and allows people to organize their downtime beyond media.

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I’ve been thinking a lot about what to call “Custom Properties”. That name feels a little too technical to me.

Here’s my working idea that I’d love some feedback on:strong>

With these new properties, you can essentially create your own custom features in Sofa. They em>

Enhancements sounds much simpler and friendlier to me, and also kind of describes what this feature does.

I’m open to feedback on this 👋

I want to share a little preview of something pretty cool I’ve been working on for Sofa. There’s still a good bit of refinement that I need to do, but I want to start getting feedback.

The working title for this feature is called “Custom Properties” (I’m open to other ideas…naming is hard lol).

Basically, you’ll be able to add your own custom properties to items in Sofa. Here’s the different properties you’ll be able to add:

Here’s a little demo showing how you can edit the properties within a detail view

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This shows how you can edit existing properties and add new ones

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I’m working hard to get this out to the beta group for further testing and feedback. First, I need to finish a few things and do some testing.

I’m open to any and all feedback on this. There is a lot of power in this feature, but also a lot of potential for confusion. I’m happy to answer any and all questions.

Adding analytics to your app can seem like a simple and obvious thing to do, but once you get into it, it can be a little confusing.

In my video this week I share an easy framework I follow that makes analytics more useful. I also share some of the dangers of analytics and things you should be careful of.

Where did September go?

Time is moving a little too quickly. Overall, the past month was a busy one for me, but I feel like I’m starting to find my grove with my new work schedule. I’m also starting to find a better balance between work and downtime.

That being said, I am excited for some fall weather 🍃.

I just released an update to Sofa (v3.4.14) that brings a new design for the pricing page, a URL scheme for searching, and some helpful bug fixes. You can read more via this blog post.

🎲 Board Games Being Removed from Sofa

September came with a big unexpected surprise. The vendor I use for board game data in Sofa went out of business. This lead to some hustling on my end to get a few fixes out as quickly as possible.

I was able to get in touch with the data provider for board games and get an extension to Oct 1, 2023. This means after Oct 1, you won’t be able to pull any new board games data into Sofa. I pushed out an update on Sep 14, 2023 (v3.4.12) that migrates and stores all board game data locally so people don’t lose any information.

The board games news forced me to reprioritize some infrastructure work I had already been planning. Most of that work is now done, so I’ll be refocusing back on some big new features.

a href="https://www.sofahq.com/blog/board-games-being-removed-from-sofa/?ref=shawnhickman.studio">

💬 A Social Media Experiment

I did a little experiment for a week to post a Reel, TikTok, and YouTube Short every day. I wanted to see if I could manage and keep up with a daily posting schedule. The results?

I hated it.

It tanked my focus and added a lot more stress to my week. For me, it’s not worth the trade-offs of my time, energy, and focus to post that often. I’ll be sticking with my weekly YouTube video and once-ish per week on other socials. That gives me the time I need to be heads-down working.

Also, this was the first time I really used Reels and TikTok. I understand why people love it, but personally it gave me a headache. Everything is so fast and chaotic. I prefer a much calmer experience when I’m trying to relax lol.

I have to think about how much I want/need to contribute to that chaos.

This triggers a bunch of questions in my head around having to be on em>

🛋️ What I’ve been working on

Why I built a real-time announcement system for my app

A few weeks ago I really needed to communicate with people who were using Sofa…but I couldn’t. There was a big issue related to board game data and it was important to let people know as quickly as possible. The best option I had was social media, a blog post, and App Store release notes. So yea, not many good options.

❤️ Thing’s I’ve enjoyed

I finally got around to watching season 1 of a href="https://www.hbo.com/the-last-of-us?ref=shawnhickman.studio">

a href="https://www.hbo.com/the-righteous-gemstones?ref=shawnhickman.studio">

I’ve discovered the incredible talent of drummer a href="https://www.youtube.com/@DominoSantantonio?ref=shawnhickman.studio">

a href="https://youtu.be/WeuskcJyoBQ?si=J2jbPSWJA8rWv1ll&ref=shawnhickman.studio">

a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lAqgMP2ExGc&ref=shawnhickman.studio">

a href="https://youtu.be/Idtlug8jg98?si=iIktFUL7zdeVsAqC&ref=shawnhickman.studio">

I’m still slowly enjoying Zelda Tears of the Kingdom. This game is just so deep and wonderful.

📸 Favorite recent photo I’ve taken

A few weeks ago I really needed to communicate with people who were using Sofa…but I couldn’t. The best option I had was social media, a blog post, and App Store release notes. So yea, not many good options.

I wanted to fix this, so I built a real-time announcement system into Sofa. In this video, I talk about how it works and how I plan to use it.

I think I went a little too extra on this simple setting 🙃

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I think this one is pretty fun. The current pricing page for Sofa has a few problems and I show my process and design iterations for fixing it.

So if you like seeing UI redesigns, this video is for you.

I did a little experiment over the past week to post a Reel, TikTok, and YouTube Short every day. I wanted to see if I could manage and keep up with a daily posting schedule.

The results?

I hated it.

It tanked my focus and added a lot more stress to my week. For me, it’s not worth the trade-offs of my time, energy, and focus to post that often.

I'll be sticking with my weekly YouTube video and once-ish per week on other socials. That gives me the time I need to be heads-down working.

Also, this was the first time I really used Reels and TikTok. I understand why people love it, but personally it gave me a headache. Everything is so fast and chaotic. I prefer a much calmer experience when I'm trying to relax lol.

I have to think about how much I want/need to contribute to that chaos.

I am working on some changes to the Super Sofa upgrade screen. Basically, I want to highlight the annual plan more than the other options. Lots of good reasons for this.

a href="https://www.threads.net/@shawnhickman/post/CxV5T2POEoP">

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Here’s another iteration I’m trying. Still keeping the pricing up top, but tidying up the spacing and overall visual hierarchy.

I’ve seen more my pricing screens with price on the top or bottom. So I’m not sure what will work for me here. But I have some benchmark numbers to track against.

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This might be a good compromise…using a floating card at the bottom. Still needs some TLC, but this might work

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This is pretty close to final and I think it’s coming together pretty nicely. This solves the two biggest problems my pricing page had:

I’m still open for feedback if you have any! (constructive is welcome)

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iOS 17 is coming out on Monday and I’m not ready for it

Some nice light hitting the home office today ☀️🪟

I put together my initial thoughts on the new iPhone 15 & 15 pro.