Roam

As of today, there are approximately 40 million digital nomads worldwide. And yet - one of the biggest challenges digital nomads face is loneliness. How? - Travelers come and go, meaning the friend you make at a cafe today can easily be gone tomorrow - Inactive online groups. Going into a Facebook group or finding a digital nomad WhatsApp chat may seem like an obvious solution, but these are often inactive or nonexistent depending on the city - Isolated by remote work, digital nomads can easily spend hours at their accommodation or coworking space glued to their screens. This makes it so easy to miss digital nomad meetups, traveler events, and social interaction So how do we bring together 40 million digital nomads into global, active communities? A social travel app with chat rooms for cities all over the world. Roam's goal is to: - cater to digital nomads, backpackers, and all types of travelers looking for connection - facilitate meetups and provide a space for local businesses to share tourist-friendly events - remain free for core social features, because no one should have to pay a membership fee for friendship We'll be rolling out on the App Store soon and are excited to see nomads come together around the world! ??

First impressions matter, and so does budget. Roam is a bootstrapped app without an experienced designer. For the app itself, this hasn't really been an issue. But for marketing materials? Rough ?? This week, the biggest challenge was preparing App Store screenshots to use in the app listing. Specifically the first 3 screenshots that give off the first impression when downloading an app Now I'm no expert designer, but I'm proud to say I took a shot at it myself and am proud of these drafts ?? While I know they can be improved, whether in graphics or copy, what mattered most was having screenshots professionally and accurately portray the app and show (not tell) travelers why they should download it. And once Roam is launched and on its feet - we'd be happy to have a designer on board for a little makeover ??

"I think this app is finally ready to launch! Lemme ask my friends to test it ONE more time..." 12 hours later: - can't DM other users - users can't log in with Google - profile details won't save when signing up with Google ...big sigh.

Roam will NOT be launching until this feature ???? is fully functional. Here's why. A few weeks ago, I was chatting with another nomad. When I told her about Roam - a travel app with group chats for cities around the world to make it easier to find new friends while traveling - she told me that already exists. Not necessarily an app, but a website. But it didn't work for her "I only met up with 2 people from there. No one was really responsive in the chats and it wasn't easy to make plans with people. There was nothing facilitating interaction." ?? This is my worst nightmare for Roam. After some brainstorming to figure out how to prevent this, I'm excited to say Roam now has in-chat events ?? What does this mean? Within the group chats, travelers can now create an event that others can join with one tap. Whether it's "Dinner at Bistro, 7pm, tonight" or "Hiking SomeMountain, 12pm, Saturday," travelers can easily create and join plans ??? Making social facilitation as seamless as possible. Unfortunately, implementing this new feature has led to a lot of bugs and glitches. While I originally planned to launch Roam without this, it's clear from talking to other travelers that this is a high-priority feature they actively want. While I wish I could move faster and launch ASAP, I'm learning patience. I won't be launching it until in-chat events are fully functional and I feel confident in Roam's usability. But in the meantime, check out my rough progress in the video below ??

I had 3 different engineers try to explain Git to me at my last job. But as someone right out of college with very basic programming experience who never learned version controlling, it never stuck ?? "What's a repo?" "What's a commit?" "What's a branch?" To the engineers, the answers were intuitive. To me, it was total gibberish. So I let it go and hoped I'd never have to use it in my day-to-day. ...until I left my job to build an app of my own. And quickly realized the need for tracking updates and versions ?? I hated the idea of setting up GitHub because of how confusing it seemed at my last job. But I knew I couldn't avoid it anymore. So I started small and went step-by-step. Turns out, it isn't actually that complicated. I set it up in less than an hour ?? And it MAKES SENSE! Now it's easier than ever to maintain different versions and updates for Roam - and I learned how to use a new tool ?? Goes to show, the best way to learn is by doing ??

silly feature, or potential social facilitator? several users requested more profile features for their Roam accounts, with a category for "Countries Visited," for example. I was going to save this as an update to push after launch, but I added it as an essential before launching. why? users on a social app need icebreakers, especially in the beginning. they NEED talking points to get the ball rolling. the easiest way to create this in Roam's early phase is by letting users display the countries they've been to, so other travelers who have been to the same places or are planning a trip there can have a conversation starter nothing brings travelers together more than sharing their experiences ??

I dreaded implementing 'Sign Up with Google' Only to learn it wasn't actually that bad ?? For the longest time, Roam test users could only sign up manually with an email and password. But after several users requested to sign up with Google, especially after forgetting passwords to manually created accounts, I knew I couldn't avoid it anymore So I faced the thing I dreaded the most - and while it was a bit of a pain due to confusing documentation - I did it in just a few days ?? And now I've learned to stop avoiding the tasks that seem 'scary' and tackle them head on. Odds are, they probably aren't that hard

another beta move. literally, we just launched beta version 2 ?? some updates: - sign up with Google is now available - it no longer signs users out when they close the app (whoops) - bug where users can't join chats if they don't have notifications enabled is FIXED! - you can DM someone only one message until they accept or decline it (safety) one step closer to launch! ??

can't!! reach!! button!! ?? this is why user testing is SO important. look at the video of the screen below. after users edit their bio, they can't reach the 'save' button I never noticed this myself, because when I edited my bio, I tap out of the box to get rid of the keyboard and then I can click save. however, several users don't do this and prefer to click save right after typing while the keyboard is still up. to them, this was a complete blocker to editing their profile. such a tiny thing I never noticed - yet I got this feedback from SEVERAL users during testing always helps to get other perspectives ??

Two weeks ago, I launched a beta version of Roam among my friends for user testing. And boy am I glad I did ?? I figured maybe they could catch some bugs from an outside perspective since I've been a little too deep in the code - and they took their role very seriously. Context: Roam is a social travel app where users can choose the city they're going to and join a group chat for it, making it easier than ever for travelers to make like-minded friends as soon as they land in a new country In the app, travelers make a user profile. Part of this user profile is selecting a country and language, so travelers who speak the same language or are from the same country can connect But here was the problem. When signing up, users are given a DROPDOWN of countries and languages to choose from. But after signing up, when users can edit their profile, these fields were a TEXT INPUT. Not a dropdown. Meaning, users can manually type in any country or language. Whoops ??♀? Doesn't seem like too bad of a bug, right? Well, if taken too far, it can end up like this user profile in this photo ?? Lesson learned: if there's any possible way for a user to misuse a feature, I can safely assume that they WILL misuse it. Anyway the bug is fixed now, it took 5 minutes. I'll be sharing more learnings from user testing before launch so follow for a good laugh ??