Self Checkout: Two Years Later
Self Checkout is an app that enables users to track their moods and mental wellness through check ins, reminders, and self care suggestions.
Self Checkout Today
It’s been two years since the first version of Self Checkout was released on the App Store, and one year since we launched version 2.0. We want to share some data, and the story behind the app.
Today, Self Checkout has over 13,000 downloads, and 2,000 monthly active users. On an average day, 40 people download the app. In 2018 alone, users of Self Checkout have logged over 50,000 check ins, averaging 373 per day.
The Self Checkout Story
Self Checkout was created by students in the Emerging Media program at Ithaca College. The core product development team consisted of three members of the class of 2017: Belen Martinez, Bridget Strawn, and Evan Sobkowicz. Various other Ithaca College students participated in the project in smaller roles during the Spring 2016 and Fall 2016 semesters.
The idea for Self Checkout started in the Fall of 2015 as Bridget’s final project for the Topics in Media Technology course at Ithaca College. In the Spring of 2016, several students, including the core Self Checkout team, started development of the app, completed user research, and created marketing materials as part of the Emerging Media Junior Project course. We launched version 1.0 of the app in April 2016, and started growing our user base.
In the Fall of 2016 we worked on exploring business opportunities and the potential of scaling Self Checkout to universities, hospitals and other institutions in the Entrepreneurial Innovation course at Ithaca College. As part of that course we also pitched Self Checkout in the Start Up Idea Demo Day at Rev Ithaca, the local startup incubator. This allowed us to develop the idea much further and do more research into the market space.
For our Emerging Media Senior Capstone course, we decided to redesign Self Checkout, improving and rethinking some of the features. We completely overhauled the design of the app, optimizing the ease-of-use for our users. We also added the ability to customize moods and self care checklist items, as well as making it possible for users to add as many items as they want. We added new visualizations and breakdowns of user check ins, and also improved the notifications, including adding self care checklist reminders. We launched version 2.0 in April 2017, about a month before our graduation.
Self Checkout’s Impact
We’re really excited that Self Checkout has so many active users who can benefit from our work. Self Checkout’s downloads and monthly active users numbers are beyond the dreams we had when we started this project. We always wanted to release Self Checkout to the App Store for anyone to download and use, and we’re happy to have achieved that goal.
Although Belen, Bridget, and Evan all have graduated and have full-time jobs, Self Checkout will remain available in the iOS App Store and receive minor updates for the foreseeable future. Self Checkout will always be free to use, and we hope users will continue to adopt it to serve their needs.
You can download Self Checkout at selfcheckout.me/app, learn more at selfcheckout.me, or send any feedback or questions you might have to selfcheckoutapp@gmail.com or @selfcheckoutapp on Twitter.
We’d like to thank Devan Rosen, Brad Treat, and everyone else who helped us make this project a reality.
Thank you for your support and we hope Self Checkout makes a difference in your life!
~ Belen, Bridget, and Evan
