Behind The App: The Story Of Fences

You might not realise you need Fences until you use it. Its such a simple app that helps you organise your desktop icons into separate spaces yes, fencing off different categories to organise your clutter.

Fences was developed by Jeff Bargmann, a life long app developer who needed a way to organise his desktop back in high school. The idea stuck, and years later became fully fledged Windows application distributed by Stardock. And so my messy desktop was changed forever. We spoke with Jeff to learn about its development, distribution, and the story behind the app.

Fences was a pretty fun story actually. While Fences didnt come about until 2006, the original prototype dates back some six years to ~2000. I was in high school at the time managing our schools web editors club, and noticed that the desktops across the lab were inconsistent, harming our teams productivity. I had the idea to standardise the desktops with labelled groups for the projects we had the team working on. I was already deep into coding on Windows with other apps, so I decided to go for it, and Desktop Icon Organiser was born.

It wasnt until another six years later that I decided to polish the edges and take the program commercial. Id had my hands pretty full between college and other apps at the time. Until then Id just been using the early rough version for myself, but enough people had noticed the app on my desktop and asked for a copy that completing the project became a pretty clear thing to do.

When I had the idea originally, the next step was to validate the idea technically. I began experimenting to see if it could be done, how it could be done, the best way to get it done, etc, and built a proof of concept. This technical deep-dive also critically helps you discover whats possible, levels of difficulty and so on, so your product team knows their options while deciding what to make, and your engineering team knows how to cost and budget said options. This process has been the same for every product Ive ever made.

Once I decided to commercialise the project, after completing the coding work required, the first step was to test it out in the market. I started up an invite-only beta, launch page and beta sign-up, and began talking with a publisher Id had a long standing relationship with, Stardock. Together, we posted a link on a few message boards popular back in the day, WinCustomize, BetaNews, etc. to spread the word, and a few hundred people initially signed up. Testers could enter in why they wanted to be involved and how itd affect their workflow, which helped us learn about customer motivations, and helped develop personal connections for great beta testing. Stardock, their CEO, and I worked closely together during this period but kept the app grass-roots until we reached agreement on publishing the app under their umbrella.

So the running themes above: next steps were to learn, validate and to simply keep moving.

Like with most apps, distribution was our biggest challenge with Fences. On top of the usual discovery issue, the feedback we kept getting was that people didnt realise they needed it until they tried it, at which point they were hooked.

Fences did however have a distinct advantage in that it was highly viral by virtue of its visibility. People saw it on other peoples desktops, asked what it was, played with it then had to get it themselves. But the viral loop falls flat if you limit your adoption with a pay-wall or trial limitations.

So, we decided to take a pretty risky approach. Thanks to the app being published by Stardock, we had a fantastic platform for getting word out about the product. But instead of charging for the app, we decided to make it entirely free in hopes to find a way to monetise later.

See original here:
Behind The App: The Story Of Fences