#FollowFriday: Five Questions with @jerols
Ah, Friday! Thank goodness you are back. I am knee-deep into my own startup, so meeting developers/designers as smart as Jeremy Olson is an absolute dream. At the ripe age of 24, he is the founder of an app-building company.
Name: Jeremy Olson
Twitter handle: @jerols
Hometown: Huntington Beach, CA
Favorite date night spot: Birkdale Village for its amazing eats, atmosphere, outdoor mall and ice cream choices from Ben & Jerry’s, Kilwins and TCBY.
Founded: Tapity, in 2009. This 8+ person team’s apps have been featured in national news, received an Apple award and made it into Apple stores around the world.
Tapity field trip pic.twitter.com/HZhVrUkdJs
— Jeremy Olson (@jerols) April 10, 2015
What do you love the most about building apps?
“I enjoy almost the entire process of building apps so I apologize if my ‘favorite’ part is kind of meta. I really enjoy seeing an idea turn into a tangible design and then that design turning into something you can actually use on your phone, and then eventually being polished to the point where your ‘baby’ is ready for the world. [And when it’s] used by hundreds of thousands of people.”
What is your least favorite part?
“My least favorite part has got to be the bugs. They never fail to show up and they are almost never fun to fix. Thankfully I don’t have to do much bug squashing these days.”
As a designer, what is the one thing you wish consumers knew about the design process?
“DESIGN IS NOT MAKING THINGS LOOK PRETTY. Sorry for yelling, but this is a huge misconception. Design is the whole process of making a great experience for your users. That includes: learning about your users, talking to users, defining your product to meet real user needs, making your app simple to understand and navigate.”
Huge congrats to my dad & partner @toddols for writing today’s #1 article on @medium https://t.co/ueWFv2y8vE pic.twitter.com/BlGTqWMrnB — Jeremy Olson (@jerols) December 7, 2014
What is your favorite app that you have built to date?
“My favorite app so far is Hours, the app we are almost exclusively focused on right now. The goal was to not only take the pain out of time tracking, but even make that tedious task slightly enjoyable. We built it because we couldn’t find a time tracking app that we could use every day — none of them were solving the human problems like forgetting to track your time, or being able to quickly identify mistakes in your time.”
Effortless time tracking Now on Apple Watch 100% FREE for a limited time Get Hours now on the @AppStore https://t.co/EXwBKqgrTG
— Hours Time Tracking (@UseHours) April 23, 2015
If you could only bring one thing to a deserted island, what would it be?
“I would definitely want to have my Bible handy.”
This story was originally published May 28, 2015 at 10:58 PM with the headline "#FollowFriday: Five Questions with @jerols."