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I'm Thibaut Sailly, an independant interface designer based in Paris. Say hello on twitter or by email at thibaut ✉ tsailly ◦ net.

Le Baby is an iOS app I made with Amadour Griffais, a shared and private memory helper for parents with newborns. View on the App Store.

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Le Baby

version française disponible

For the past few years, I've dedicated part of my work time and more to an iOS app that I came up with shortly after the birth of my first child. Le Baby is a baby tracker app, or as I prefer to put it, a memory helper for parents optimized for feeding and sleep.

Le Baby App Store description page

When our first child was born in 2012, my wife and I had to keep track of breastfeeding times and durations, as well as diaper change times and contents for a few weeks. Written in a notebook with a pencil, these notes ended up being added by my wife to the Notes app on her phone. It was more convenient since she had it at hand most of the time, while the notebook wandered between the changing table, the couch and the nightstand, with or without the pencil. The App Store already listed a few newborn tracking apps, but none were really satisfying. A few sketches later, I had laid the functional foundations of an app that seemed more practical to use in this particular context (in short, a lot of fatigue and hands always busy). But not knowing how to code, the project was put aside in an envelope for the day when I would have the courage to learn programming.

Two years later, while working on mobile applications for Le Monde newspaper, one of my developer colleagues, with whom I had a good relationship, told me that he wanted to publish an app not for a client, but for himself, in order to experience all its implications first hand. That's how Amadour Griffais and I started working on Le Baby, in addition to our regular professional activities.

Our motivations were initially the discovery of publishing on the App Store, the making of an application that reflected our respective best abilities, and the pride of having in our hands an object that we alone were responsible for.

We released the 1.0 of Le Baby in December 2018. The feedback from users was very positive, and we decided to continue working on this project so that it could become a complementary source of income that would allow us to focus on projects that are important to us.

A few posts will be published here to share the experience of a designer publishing an app on the App Store, and to take the time to explain some of the choices we made in this project: fundamentals of the app, interface behavior, visual identity, tools and work methods, the publication on the App Store, and communication of the app. Other topics may be covered, but properly addressing the ones listed here will be a good start. I hope that these articles will provide people who are curious about what is involved in publishing an independent app with a relevant and rewarding overview.

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