What were we thinking?

The story behind our app…

A few years ago the idea of MyMeander took hold as I was looking through a few scrapbooks a friend had put together for her kids – pages of old photo’s telling the story of their growing up. As pretty as the decorations, ribbons and lay-out was, I wondered if it was possible to create a similar story of one’s life, with room to write about the memory the photograph represents and add contributions from others who shared the moment – a photo or a funny anecdote…

And that’s when Nev suggested that, instead of trying to make a physical album with that much crammed onto each page, why didn’t we look to design an app that does it all! That way we could share the idea with our friends and family in different countries and they could start capturing their stories too. And that’s when the real fun started.

We started to brainstorm what this idea would look like digitally

– a curvy timeline with little markers popping up to represent each memory created

– tags or badges that categorise the memories for easy sorting and searching

– what a memory looks like if you open it up from the timeline

– text, images, attachments

– Memory Bubbles: the contributions from those who are invited into the Memories…

the list went on and on, and the idea grew and became MyMeander.

We noticed that there are three key benefits that come out of the process of building the story of your life or of someone close to you:

MyMeander allows you to create, connect and continue

Create – building your or someone else’s story using MyMeander is a creative process. It allows you to record each memory in detail, add images or documents, sound bites or videos, and can be edited at any time. When you share a memory with the people who were there, you are inviting them to contribute to the Memory from their perspective – they can add a photo or other attachment to their contribution. Every moment recorded on your timeline builds the picture of your life.

Connect – you can connect on a meaningful level with the important people who have shared in moments and events in your life. When you invite someone to contribute to your memory, or you send back a Memory Bubble to them, you both get to relive the experience and remind each other of that shared moment or event. It’s the digital version of a chat with that person. Some of the most valuable connections occur when you ask a parent or grandparent about their lives and enjoy the time spent together wandering down memory lane.
If you just want to use the app as a journal you get to connect with your younger self later when you read through your storybook and see how you’ve grown and changed over the years.

Continue – all the recorded memories together form the story of your life, and is a legacy for your kids and grand kids, friends and family. Many people I’ve spoken with wish they knew more about their ancestors. They only have little snippets of their lives – a birth certificate, a newspaper cutting, or stories passed down the generations. Using technology we are now able to create a rich, digital storybook of detail and images of our lives that will inform future generations of who we were, what we did and thought, and how we lived our lives.