Simple Repeat Timer.

Notables

Key Functions

• Drive and lead the scope, design, and technical requirements of product

• Create timely marketing campaigns

• Growth hacks

• Manage and work closely with developers across 3 continents

It started with a personal need, and the urge to experiment

Simple Repeat Timer began few years ago with a personal need of wanting to tell how much time passed (while working out) without constantly having to look at time. A quick study of the landscape showed no shortage of repeat timers, but most of them are either strictly for workouts (mostly HITT), too complex, or just poorly designed.

So my mission was simple — to design a repeat timer that could be more set and forget, and not get in the way of your activity. After 15 interviews & 20 competitive app studies, it was blue skies and full freedom on what I wanted to create. Some loose requirements I drafted were:

• Quick gesture-based interactions

• Varying timers to make up ‘sets’ that repeat

• Ability to save & load timer sets quickly

• Ability to share timers with others & download sets

• Look beautiful

Getting the app built was the easy part

Having built numerous products, the design, management, and development process went without a hitch. However, growth and marketing was a new challenge and that was the goal of this project — to experiment and learn.

First set of problem was actually launching it to the App Store, back when the tools to create App Store assets was still in infancy. I wrote a piece about it on Medium and it generated over 2K views.

Post-launch with a controlled budget and experiments, I gained a deeper understanding of the effectiveness of ads on different platforms. Iterating on phrasing and imagery increased conversions by up to 33%, and I also found a rhythm to social media posting to keep the growth and retention of the app.

With opportunities to experiment because of the app, I’ve also learnt different methodologies and more structured approaches (at least proper names to them) such has SMART goals, ICE test, AIDA stages of the marketing funnel.

Being an experimental project there wasn’t deep investment into optimization post acquisition (aside from user reviews and feedbacks submitted), but more focus was placed on top of the funnel instead. Contrary to what I’ve read and was told, I found weekends and late night to be the best time for posting our campaigns. Engagements are up as much as 50% if the campaign was posted after 10PM.

It’s been a few years since Simple Repeat Timer was conceptualized but it remains a unique and rewarding experience close to heart, paving the way for more future projects and learning opportunities outside my comfort zone to come.

On August 22nd 2018 timer 2.0 was launched with Apple Watch support as well as world-wide timer sets sharing. The launch doubled the sale of the app and took 40% less time it took version 1 to reach.

Hope to continue more personal experiments in the future — Always be building. Always be learning. Always be innovating.