Project Settle Up started in beautiful Prague, Czech Republic in April 2011. I was finishing my studies at +Czech Technical University in Prague and travelling with friends - snowboarding in the Alps and walking around whole Czech Republic borders. I had to think of some class project for a tough class Combinatorial optimization and at the same time I had all these receipts from our trip to mountains. Figuring out who should pay to whom was a pain. In that moment the dots connected - how about I write an algorithm which would solve this problem?
My supervisor in class liked the idea and suggested that I should work not just on the algorithm, but also create some usable interface. I was experimenting with Android apps, so Android was an obvious choice. I had the first prototype published in the Play Store in 2 weeks. It looked like this:
My supervisor in class liked the idea and suggested that I should work not just on the algorithm, but also create some usable interface. I was experimenting with Android apps, so Android was an obvious choice. I had the first prototype published in the Play Store in 2 weeks. It looked like this:
I have attended some Czech contests with the prototype and I was surprisingly very successful. Local tech media wrote about me and I got some initial users from the Czech Republic. I was always very open and stated that anyone can use my open API to build a version for another platform. A company Bioport took this opportunity and started working on a iPhone version. I discovered a great service GetLocalization and users started to translate Settle Up into more languages. During summer I got popular in Spain through some favorable reviews. Towards the end of 2011, the iPhone version was released by Bioport and I released first major Android app redesign:
In 2012, I was gaining more users from the whole world and Settle Up became my master's thesis at university. I successfully finished my degree and even I got a prize for the thesis. Bioport helped me with shiny new web and I was experimenting with measuring what users do in the app in order to improve usability. In May Settle Up was reviewed by +Reto Meier and +Fred Chung (both +Android Developers) and they told me what I can improve to better match new Android features and how to support tablets. I have rewritten most parts of the app and now you can see the result:
In 2013, the whole project is finally mature and contains all important features. There is a bright future ahead of us.
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