SmartFriends - Interview with the developer of a fantastic app

Did you have any prior development or coding experience?

Yes, I’ve been coding now for about 7 years. Together with my girlfriend, responsible for the designs, we developed 5 other iOS apps.

What was the most challenging aspect of developing mobile app?

It wasn’t the coding part that was hard. Daily publishing the suitable IQ challenges has always been the most difficult part. Always asking: What should be the level of the IQ challenges? It’s hard to find a good balance between the easy level and hard level as we have many different kinds of users.

_{Jeroen Geurts}

The interviewee, Jeroen Geurts, is a seasoned iOS developer with 5 apps under his belt so far.

Name a few of your favorite apps and reason you love them.

DuoLingo: The best app to learn a new language. It has been set up in a way it’s really easy to use. Also, it has a good mechanism to take your lessons every day by using a streak score.

How long have you been working on this app?

From idea to the first version of the app, it took about 2 months. The first version was really basic, with not many features and the quality of the IQ challenges was low. We are upgrading the app all the time. One of the most important things we added was the competitions-function. Now it’s possible to compete against friends within your own created group of people. This makes it nice for groups of friends, companies, and universities to start their own competition.

What need of the user did you have in mind when developing this app?

We believe that people are mentally dulled by watching superficial television and spending too much time on social media. To compensate for this, it's good to stimulate your brain in a more challenging way. This is obviously something people need.

With SmartFriends, you stimulate your brain every day, and most importantly: in a fun way! Why fun? Because you’re doing it together with friends, that’s how you stay motivated!

In what way do you think your app is better than similar apps on the market? Please describe in detail what innovation you think you bring and what you are proud of in your app.

There are of course many brain train apps available. What makes SmartFriends unique is that you play it together against your own friends. This in a (monthly) competition where you get a brain teaser (IQ challenge) daily. This way you stay every day and you get an incentive to solve the brain teaser day.

What are your future plans and expected features of the coming new versions of this app?

That’s still a big secret :-) Will let you know when the time is there.

Assuming new users of your app are reading this page. What do you want to ask them to do (contact you about X, Share the app, etc.)?

Just get started, you will like it. You’ll automatically get the feeling that it is fun to play against friends. Suggestions are very welcome and appreciated, please write an e-mail to [email protected].