HEAVY AND LIGHT

At The History Project, we value stories. We all have them, and each and every one deserves some form of telling. Why? Because stories help us bridge the past with the present and future. They offer us wisdom, and they deepen our connections with ourselves and others. This notion is real. It’s heavy. Yet, what we’re doing with our iPhone app is light-- we’ve shaped it to fit within existing behaviors, so it can become a realistic part of your life.

HOW TO COLLECT

You use your phone to take photos, right? Do you record videos and maybe even a voice memo on occasion? In this digital era, we’re betting that you’re thinking to yourself (at least partially) “Why, yes. Yes I do.” Yay. This is how easy collecting memories is:

1) Download and log in to The History Project app. Activate the new button for your “Share Menu.” This is new in Apple’s previous iOS release and is a one-time step.

2) Next, from your native Photos or Voice Memos, hand select a single image, video, or recording, and tap the share icon. Instead of emailing, texting, or posting to Facebook, etc., try sending directly to your history project. Optionally, add the details worth remembering. It’s a subtle thing, but these details will transform a basic media file into a special memory.

3) That’s it! When memories live together, larger narratives are emerge.

OUR LITTLE JOURNEY

Despite big plans and robust designs, our team decided to avoid the trap of building a full-featured iPhone app. We know mobile is the present and future. We know that desktop is nearly dead. Why? Why would we "skimp" on our native mobile effort and resources? Well, we're still in the early stages of business, of the prototyping mindset, and we know that you don't need (and probably don't want) to learn a whole new app and set of behaviors.

So we kept it simple. We pulled in 1 engineer and 1 designer to push through a 5-week plan to get the app ready for a demo at The New York Times. We're pumped to be using it ourselves and hope to get a bunch of feedback from you! We're going to iterate a couple times, then build a native sister for Android. Go ahead and download it from the App Store now.