How to say “hot dog” in Swedish using a Progressive Web App
How did this happen?
For years I laughed as my friend Niklas and other Swedish pals would joke around saying Korv in different dialects other than their own. I would often ask them to do it and they would laugh at my sorry attempts at a Skåne accent which ended up sounding like a tipsy Brooklyn Brawler.
Then one day after around half a year of employment at Humblebee, I somehow spurted out that I want an app that is a map of Sweden with hotspots you can select to hear how Korv is said. A silly idea in passing… Next thing I know fellow designer Pontus Brenner started designing screens for it! Then I started ideating features that this fictitious korv app should have with some UX verbal freestyle “FUN-specs” 🎉 and some back and forth we had a user flow and MVP in our consciousness that included even more value-add of helping users find their nearest hot dog stand (I’d dare to say that Sweden has more korv-kiosks per capita than America).
Before we knew it our idea spread to our 8-up desk area and our dev neighbors were into the idea of bringing this to reality. The idea bubbled up to our CEO Tove who was supportive of us doing this as an experiment and especially as a value-add to our summer party!
Progressive Web App
“Progressive Web Apps are experiences that combine the best of the web and the best of apps. They are useful to users from the very first visit in a browser tab, no install required. As the user progressively builds a relationship with the app over time, it becomes more and more powerful.” — Pete LePage (Google)
For Pete’s sake he’s right! 🌭☝️ We looked at our need and we wanted a low barrier of entry to the service we wanted to provide and it only made sense that we focus on creating a PWA with PMA!
And here we are weeks later — proving the Humblebee methodology of delivering fast new products with something Sweden didn’t even know it needed! 😂
What we learned
- How to quickly prioritize of our vision to what the MVP should be
- How to work efficiently leveraging APIs we never used before
- The best way to get audio-content is to hit people up in person
- We had the best elevator pitch “Find out how to say hot-dog in different Swedish dialects and find the nearest hot-dog stand”!
See our work at: www.saykorv.nu — updates to come such-as: user-submissions, top-ten, and remix soundboard!
The birth of another lab, the Plan Bee lab
On top of all of the above this process gave birth to another lab (alongside some of our more official labs we implement for clients). This new lab, tentatively titled Plan Bee, aligned as a casual internal lab where we work on lighter projects and yes sometimes to take our jokes too far! Or simply ideating too far. Who knows what’s next but we have ideas ranging from Swedish language learning tools, gig economy weirdness, VR monsters, AI conference organizers… and much more. Stay tuned!
Side note: There was even a rap theme song we recorded for the app that everyone should hear at the next melodi-festival. No joke!
Shout-out to our most-excellent team and advisors: Gustav Ågren, Pontus Brenner, Elina Åberg, Robert Hansson, Emil Söderholm, Mikael Vesavuori, Johan Uddståhl, Tove Bäcker.
