HomeHero - next iteration

It's time for me to write an "I'm excited to share" blog post. This time, the excitement is regarding the second phase of the HomeHero app. The HomeHero app was released a few months back, initially more of a proof of concept than a useful tool. I released it to gather early feedback fom friends and family. The feedback was positive, but it was clear that the app needed improvement. I've been working on it since then, and I'm proud to say that it's now a (more) useful tool! Of course, there's plenty of room for further enhancements, but I'm happy with the progress so far.

What's new?

Two significant changes are the UI and the custom item types.

Improved User Interface

Initial users (myself included) really didn't like the look and feel. It was ugly. I'm not a designer and I prefer usability rather than looks, but it was ugly. Others also didn't like it as it looked half-baked and, well, ugly. I've updated the UI significantly, and while it isn't perfect, it's much better now.

Custom Item Types

A key piece of feedback was that people didn't care about appliances as much as I do. Fair enough! However, it turns out that everyone has something else that they care about in a similar way. Examples include plants, books, and craft supplies. There isn't an easy way to organize and keep track of these items.

To address this, I've added custom item types. This feature allows users to specify what they want to track, what is important to them. We are (cough cough) democratizing the tracking of things by letting users decide what "things" are!

What's next?

The app isn't perfect, and there are many improvements and additions I'd like to make:

• Better photos and files handling, especially improving local previews and adding more sharing options
• Improving automation and "one-click" experiences, such as linking to or importing from external resources

The mantra is: Inventory management is easier when there's less of it.

Besides app improvements, I'm also enhancing my internal tooling. I started this journey almost from scratch. My backend is in Go, the frontend is in Flutter, and the cloud provider is not one of the big four. Except for Go, everything else was new to me, which meant learning many basics and reinventing tools available in other ecosystems. This includes working with GenAI components. (Yes, of course, there are GenAI components in the app and tooling!) As I polish these tools, I might start sharing them as well.

Call to action

What's the call to action here? Give HomeHero a go! Android user? Visit the Google Play Store and search for HomeHero. Do you prefer the web? Visit HomeHero console and start tracking your items and tasks. Let me know your thoughts, feelings, desires, and frustrations. I'm open to feedback and eager to make this app better for you.