Introducing…
After nearly 6 months of design and development, I’m proud to announce the official beta launch of my first web app, Lystee. I teamed up with Jason Hurt on the project, with whom I’ve done several Hack-a-Thons at Zappos. Jason took care of the back-end and release work while I handled the front-end and design aspects. It was incredibly fun to work on a project from conception to finish (although let’s be honest, what project is every really “finished”?), and it was super fun doing my own design and UX work (which I love, but don’t generally have a chance to do at Zappos). One of my goals for 2011 is to receive a Dribbble invite, so hopefully this design brings me one step closer (anyone?). :D
So, what is it?
Introducing Lystee!
I like to describe Lystee as an app that “makes lists fun again.” I have always been a big fan of the book Listography and thought it would be fun to create an app based on that idea. However, I wanted to make the app more social and enjoyable by allowing users to share their lists on their favorite social networking sites and by allowing users to collaborate on lists. We all know there are a ton of list-making apps on the web and mobile platforms, but I wanted this app to stand out in that it is meant for “fun” – not to-do lists, task lists, or grocery lists (although you can certainly still use Lystee for those things… but my favorite to-do app is TeuxDeux), but for lists such as where you’d like to travel, bucket lists, favorite foods, and so on.
The name
Lystee lists
Would you believe how hard it is these days to find a free, non-parked .com domain? We went through a ton of names that involved the correct spelling of “list” but couldn’t find anything that was available. Grrrr domain parkers! At one point we were calling the project “SocialLyst” (which we thought was funny) but in the end, we thought the name might offend some people. I’m a huge fan of 2-syllable names and wanted to keep the name short and sweet, so we eventually went with Lystee, whose .com domain was free. It was until after we had already bought and deployed in beta that I realized Lystee sounded like “list tea” and that Listtea.com is available. Oh wells.
The Tech Stack
If anyone is interested in knowing what tech stack we’re using, here it is:
Back-end
- Python
- Django
- MongoDB
- LightHTTPD
- memcached
Front-end
- html5/css3 (some)
- jQuery
- handlebarsJS
LLCs
Jason and I decided we didn’t want to be sued for anything regarding what people used our application for, so we registered an LLC. I had no idea how much paperwork would be involved, or how expensive it would be. However, it’s definitely worth the peace of mind we’ll have, for this app and for the future projects we collaborate on.



