Shipped my first order today - so satisfying
This story begins 7 months ago. My neucards app lets you share your contact information with others via a digital contact card. I wanted to add NFC tag support to the app, so people could exchange their card information more quickly and to generate some revenue. Little did I know how much work this would entail, but today I sent out my first tag order and this is a chronicle of what went into that moment.
First step, read about NFC technology and how you can add it to an iOS app. Apple has Core NFC and some good sample code, so that went well. Now, I need actual tags. I called Easy Badges and they asked, "What type?", and I responded, "Type?". Turns out there are many forms, specifications, manufacturers, and capacities of NFC products. They graciously sent me two NTAG216 CR80 blank cards for free, just so I could see if they worked. Once they showed up, I was happily tapping away.
Now the hard part starts. In the app, card information is shared with a long web link, but I couldn't just dump that to the tag as there wasn't enough capacity and those links normally expire to safe guard the information. I needed something permanent and fixed length. Ok, I'll put the long links on the server and just use a short pointer link to access them; but, there was problem. The philosophy behind my app is to respect people's privacy. No one should be able to view the content's of your digital card without you expressly giving your card to them. If I kept card links on my server and someone gained access to them, they'd be able to see everything. More thinking was required.
The solution was to use a one time key that was generated in the app to encrypt the long link before sending it to the server. The shorter link that is shared directly to the other person now contains the pointer to the encrypted long link and the key. Nothing leaks on the server and the payload on the tag is now a fixed size. Win-win.
Next, the UI work starts. How do I activate a tag? Which card is linked to my tag? How do I switch my tag to a new card? What if someone is using multiple tags? These were challenges I had to work through. A flow was built to guide people into the tag activation screen just by tapping the tag to their phone out of the box. I added a narrow accessory view to the side of the card that displays rows of little tag icons for each linked tag. An action menu added to the top of the card let me sync a new card to a tag quickly. Iteration and user testing were very important.
What about the tags themselves? I had never designed a physical product. My prototypes for the back of the phone round tags were made by TapTag and I could have other vendors print my logo on blank tags for me, but I had to start thinking about cost. I decided to try producing the tags myself. I bought a used card printer off eBay which almost immediately broke. I didn't have the right software to print to it, so I had to figure that out as well. To iterate on the design, I printed on much cheaper PVC CR80 blanks and used a lower quality ink ribbon. As you can see, my first attempts were not very successful.
I learned about screen printing and asked advice from the fine people at Blick Art on the best techniques and materials to use. I needed to create a process that would start with raw elements and result in a quality branded tag I could sell.
Up next, I needed an online store. There are a lot of good options out there (Shopify, Squarespace, Wix, Weebly), but I decided to go with simple payment links at Stripe. Now I had to put on my marketing hat and think about product descriptions, pricing, photos, bundles, incentives, shipping, etc. and then I needed to get the word out that I have something for sale. Ads, tweets, demo videos, and even this very post, are all a part of that continuing effort.
Finally, an order comes in and I have to think about packaging, order fulfillment, quality controls, postage, product presentation, and instructions. Just throwing a tag into an envelope won't do. Now, I'm starting to worry about what happens if an order comes in while I'm on vacation? How do I deal with returns? What if no more orders come in? It's such a long process filled with learnings, setbacks, discovery, and above all iteration. However, this morning I felt a deep satisfaction when I handed my first order over to the post office for delivery.
I’m up to 6 now :)