An app in 20 minutes

The “Decide for me” app (DeFM) is what could call an extreme case of rapid prototyping to finished product.

The idea for the app came up on the way to a weekend of skiing in the Austrian alps. It was the long carnival weekend in Germany, so traffic towards the mountains was heavy. We had already spent two hours on the first 70km, and the following hours similarly stretched on forever, with recurring traffic jams every 30 minutes or so. 

Each jam would trigger the discussion on which lane to take again, and again, so at some point I decided to solve this problem with a technical solution.

After 20 minutes in Unity, I had the first version of the DeFM app ready to use – however we had now passed traffic jam country, so testing had to wait. 

One hour of nightly Austrian mountain roads, a B&B checking and a ride to the nearest restaurant later, testing could begin though: choices to make included what to each, which beer and how many (another?) shots to drink. 

Convinced of the general usefulness, and after finding no simple yes/no app in the App Store, a go-ahead for production was reached. But first some skiing had to be done!