I am a product designer living in the Netherlands, interested in how my design work can contribute to a more sustainable way of living.
Add privacy friendly analytics to your iOS app with the Simple Analytics swift package
I'm a huge fan of Simple Analytics, the privacy friendly alternative to Google Analytics. I use it on all my websites and it is great. No cookie banners are needed and the dashboard gives me all the data I need without invading my users privacy.
But for the iOS apps I made I was still using a self hosted instance of Matomo. To change this, I created a swift package for Simple Analtyics! It allows you to add Simple Analytics to your app with just a few lines of code.
You can create a shared instance with the hostname of your app:
And then add pageview or event tracking in your app:
This is the dashboard of one of my (still in stealth) apps. Notice it tracks pageviews as well as visitors. The device type is available, as is the country. It is all I need for my apps!
My newest product: an app for the Pientere Tuinen sensor.
I have a Pientere Tuinen ('Clever Gardens') sensor in my garden. It is a soil humidity and soil temperature sensor. Humidity is an important factor for plants, so the Pientere Tuinen project is gathering data from gardens all over the Netherlands. The data can be viewed through an online dashboard, but I don't check it much. Then, a couple of weeks ago, I noticed Pientere Tuinen released an API. So I created a simple app that reads the humidity and temperature data from the API and shows it. This makes the data much more accessible, it's right on my phone and even has widgets!
I used the Health app as inspiration, so the main screen shows an overview of the latest measurements. By tapping on a measurement, the user can dive into more detail and see the trends of their garden's soil humidity or temperature over time. I hope this is helpful for people who own a Pientere Tuinen sensor!
Spotify lanched new "niche" mixes, which combine your favorite music and new tracks into weirdly specific mixes, like "170 bpm", "saturday uplifting" or "funky carioca". You can find them in the "for you" section of the app.
Paradox announced a new life simulator: Life by you. I'm playing Sims 4 pretty regularly and this trailer looks awesome! It features an open world, and every character in the game is simulated.
I completely missed that Apple was developing a TV series based on one of my favourite sci-fi novel series: Silo by Hugh Howey. Until the trailer dropped, and it looks awesome!
If you haven't read the 3 books that this is based on, I can recommend them!
Last week I was in Kitzbühel, and took the 3S cablecar to Jochberg. It was terryfing and impressive at the same time. The cablecar spans over 3 km and only has a single support. It flies over the valley below at 400 meters above the ground. I looked up how it was constructed and found a whole channel of cablecar company Doppelmayr where they show some of the incredible things they build.
Cities Skylines 2 was announced yesterday and it looks great! I've played the original Cities Skylines for hours and hours so can't wait to play this! Only problem is I have a mac and the game will only be released for PC and consoles..
You can wishlist Cities Skylines 2 on steam already, it will be released later in 2023.
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ / 5
I'm a sucker for the whole "human creates robot and things go horribly wrong" movie genre. And M3GAN is a prime example. First it made me want to own a perrrpetual friend toy (a modern furby), but at the end of the movie I was ready to remove all smart home tech from my house and never use siri again. A sequal is already planned for release in 2025..
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ / 5
The Menu is a great movie that is a smart parody of Chef's Table mixed with a good thriller story ala Knives Out. A young couple goes to an exclusive restaurant on an island. The high-end restaurant bullshit bingo starts right from the beginning. You can watch it on Disney+