Lists
A shopping list that reaches you in the shop
You remember the milk in the car park. You remember the bin bags at the till. You remember the thing you actually went for somewhere on the drive home. A grocery list reminder is an attempt to move all of that ten minutes earlier, to the point where it is still useful.
The shopping list is the most-abandoned list there is
Almost everyone has tried to keep one. Almost nobody keeps one for more than a month. The reason is not discipline, it is friction: the list has to be built at one moment, carried to a second moment, and consulted at a third, and any of those three can fail.
Typing is the first failure. Nobody types twenty-two items into a phone keyboard, so the list gets shortened to the five things you happened to think of, and the other seventeen are rediscovered in the aisle or, more often, at home.
Arriving is the second. The list is in an app that does not interrupt, so you would have to remember you have a list, which is the same act of memory the list was supposed to replace.
Three moments where it goes wrong
Each one has a different fix, and the fixes are independent — you can take one of them and leave the others.
Writing it
Twenty-two items of thumb-typing is a job in itself. Whatever survives that process is a partial list, and a partial list gets trusted as though it were complete.
Taking it with you
The list is on one phone, in one household. The person who ends up going past the shop is frequently not the person who wrote it.
Remembering to look
You are inside the shop with a trolley. Nothing in your hand has made a sound. The list is four taps away and you will think of it at the checkout.
Search and tap, in three languages
Timelee builds a grocery list from a catalogue rather than from a blank text box. You search, tap the item, and it joins the list under its category, with suggestions appearing as you go — which is how a list ends up with twenty-two items on it instead of five.
The search runs in English, Hinglish and Hindi against the same catalogue, so you can type "dahi", "curd" or "yoghurt" and reach the item you meant. Household vocabulary is rarely consistent, especially between two people sharing a list, and the search is built for that rather than against it.
Items keep the name in the language you chose, so the list reads the way you would say it out loud in the shop.
- Item search in English, Hinglish and Hindi, in one catalogue
- Items grouped by category, with suggestions as you search
- Items keep the name in the language you picked
- Tapping, not typing, which is what keeps the list complete
Getting the list to reach you
Three ways, depending on how your shopping actually happens. Most people end up using two of them together.
Give it a time
The whole list rings as one reminder at a time you choose. Set it for the evening you usually go, or the hour before the shop shuts, and the list arrives rather than waiting to be remembered.
Give it a place
Attach a location with a radius and the reminder reaches you when you arrive there. This is the version that works for the unplanned trip, the one you did not know you were making until you were near the shop.
Give it to the other person
Share the list so whoever passes the shop first has it. They accept or decline, so you know before dinner whether you are going yourself.
Make it monthly if it is monthly
A restock list — cleaning things, storecupboard, pet food — can repeat, so you are not rebuilding the same twenty items every four weeks.
What it is like in the shop
Once the list has reached you, the useful part is that it behaves like one object rather than twenty-two separate reminders.
Grouped by category
Items sit under their category, which roughly matches how a shop is laid out, so you are not walking back across the building for one thing.
One list, two people
Share it and both of you are working from the same items, which is the end of coming home with two bags of rice and no milk.
Arriving or leaving
A place reminder can fire when you arrive somewhere or when you leave. Leaving the office is often the better trigger for a shop on the way home.
A tone you recognise
Give the grocery list its own tone and you will know what is ringing from your pocket without taking the phone out.
Out of the working day
Filed under Grocery or Shopping, the list stays out of the views you use for work and turns up only where it belongs.
What you bought last time
Completed lists stay in history, which is a quiet way of answering when you last bought something you only buy occasionally.
The place trigger is watched by your phone
You can build the list, set its time and attach a location from the web dashboard on a laptop, and for a twenty-item list that is the faster place to do it. The location trigger itself runs as a geofence in the Android or iOS app, because a browser cannot watch where you are when the tab is closed. Build it at a desk, and it reaches you at the shop.
The list was never the hard part. Having it in your hand at the right moment was.
A time, a place, or another person — three ways of making sure the list is present when the trolley is.
Build this week's shop by tapping
Search the catalogue in whichever of the three languages comes naturally, give the list a time or a place, and share it with whoever else might go.