⟵ work · Own projects

Me and my wife and two friends built a baby-name app while we were expecting children. Each partner swiped through a huge collection of names; names they both liked appeared on a shared match list. It reached about 500 downloads before we retired it.

We were struggling with the long alphabetical lists of names and had difficulty agreeing on one. So we invented Naampie: invite your partner, swipe through names in your own time, similar to the UX of Tinder which then was a new app, then look at the matches together. We released it for iOS and Android in 2016 for one euro.

Three phone screens: the swipe screen with the name Aline in a pink cloud on a white card, a cross and a heart button below and a counter of 36 out of 10.000 in the filter bar; the same screen with the card Alice being thrown to the right and Alex showing behind it; and the card turned over for Alexandra, with the meaning “Beschermer van de mensheid” and four of five baby icons filled in.
Swiping, throwing, and the back of a card: meaning and popularity.
Three phone screens: the filters screen with 10.000 names to swipe and buttons for boy, girl, alphabetical, letter and from partner; the favourites list on the match tab, every name with a double heart and a bin icon; and the favourites list on the own tab, where Aaron and Adam carry the double heart and the rest do not.
Filters, the matches, and one partner’s own favourites with the matches marked.
Three phone screens: the menu with Swypen, Favorieten, Partner, Logboek and Account on pastel bands; the partner screen reading Geen partner with a search field to invite one; and the reset history screen, which explains that a selection of the history can be reset and offers boy, girl, bin and all.
The menu, inviting a partner, and resetting part of the history.
The store banner: a phone showing a swipe card beside a list reading 10.000 names, statistics, easily compose your favourites, match names with your partner and several filters, with App Store and Google Play badges.
The store banner. Ten thousand names, and the match with your partner.

4 images — swipe or scroll sideways

Make the gesture easy to read

A card followed the finger and tilted as it moved, giving a clear indication of yes or no before the swipe counted. Turning it over showed the name’s meaning and popularity. The deck loaded ahead so the next card was ready, while swipes were sent in batches to avoid a request for every gesture.

I built the app with plain JavaScript inside Cordova. The interface scaled together across phone sizes, keeping the cards and controls in proportion.

Shortcuts for easier matching

Matching happened on the server using the partners’ saved choices. A filter could show only names the other person already liked, making it quick to work towards a shortlist.

Accidental swipes were recoverable through a history view, where one tap changed an answer.

A white iPhone lying on grey weathered wood beside a glass of white daisies, showing the Naampie login screen: a sleeping sheep in outline, the name in white script, fields for username and password, a log in button and a link for new users.

The app received about 500 downloads. We later took it down because we did not want to keep maintaining it.

After us, many copied our exact idea, among which, Zwitsal. Also, a newer app using the same name Naampie now exists, but is someone else’s product.