Habit Tiles

Leveraging personalization to make content discovery across The Washington Post mobile apps easier and more seamless.

Role

Technical Project Manager

Year

2024

Daily Forecast

Weekly Forecast

NWS Weather Alerts

Goals

Learning

I built this app first and foremost to learn how to code in React Native. My objective was to be able to build an app that I could load on my iPhone that would be beneficial to myself and others.

Practice

I wanted to practice the full end-to-end product lifecycle of a mobile app. From initial concepts to designing early wireframes to the development and testing, this brought me back to my web development roots from early in my career.

Positioning

I also got to practice my communication skills from a builder’s perspective in writing the README on GitHub, telling friends/family about the app, and of course sharing the app via this website.

Key Takeaways

Making this weather app reminded me that all it usually takes is a bit of time, dedication, and focus to learn something new. And that knowledge is often transferrable to new domains of life and work. In this example, building my app during the COVID pandemic while locked inside was a way for me to channel frustration about being cooped up into planning and organization, and emerge with something tangible. Lemons into lemonade!