📮 May Development Update

From prototype to product.

Zaymon @ LetterDesk, May 2021

Welcome to LetterDesk’s first development update. I’m planning on doing a round-up after each month of development covering what I’ve built, and what’s up next.

If you haven’t read: Introducing LetterDesk you’re missing out on a lot of context around how LetterDesk came to be.

I’ve been hard at work, rapid prototyping ideas and building out the functionality for LetterDesk.

📮 Invitations

One of the first things we need is an invitation system. People need to be able to get into the app and invite their friends to write.

The current plan for the early access release is to limit the number of invitations per user to 5. The two ways to get early access to LetterDesk are either to be invited by an early access user or by being on our mailing list, so please consider subscribing.

✍️ Writing Experience

I’ve been working on tweaking the writing experience. Some important considerations for the initial editor are:

Simple. Limiting the number of styles and options helps you focus on the content of the letter.

Intuitive. Common hotkeys for bold, italic and underline work like a charm.

🌙 Dark Mode ☀️

Save your retinas while writing letters at night with full dark mode support across the app.

During development I find myself cycling between the themes as the sun rises and falls.

💸 Pricing

You’re probably wondering about the pricing of the platform. For the foreseeable future the core functionality of LetterDesk will be free!

Up Next!

There’s still a lot more to do, but I’m currently accelerating towards an early access release. The next technical challenges are:

• Getting the app deployed and live
• Automatic draft saving when authoring a letter
• Organising the letters received from users

If the mission of LetterDesk resonates with you, please share this around. If you have any feedback or ideas I’m always contactable on twitter or here in the comments