First and foremost — I’m not recommending you to try fasting or that it can help you in any way. I’m in no way qualified on matters of metabolic effectiveness. I can however speak in-depth on the thoughtful app design. When I saw FastMinder, I wanted to add it to my list. The app’s premise is straight forward. Create your fasting schedule and it helps keep you on track and lets you know when it is time to eat again. It sounds easy, but to create this needed an entirely custom interface system. It is shown as a circle of different segments that are colorcoded with different icons. Each segment ..read more

If you’re gearing up to travel to Disneyland, you’re going to want to download the My Disney Experience app. It’s the one place to do everything from managing your hotel stay, viewing park maps, ordering food, or getting fast passes to rides. Despite its simple outward experience, this app has so much tech baked into it. On the surface, it’s a simple park app. You can view maps, look up attractions, check show times, and all that kind of stuff. Disney takes it further though by integrating the app directly into many park services. For rides, you can view the real-time wait time and jump into t ..read more

In the dynamic and ever-changing world of hospitality, travel companies constantly face challenges in providing guests with a premium experience. Maintaining a successful operation requires agility and a willingness to evolve, yet many hotels have failed to keep pace with their peers. This assertion is not based on mere speculation. For our project with MGM, Fueled spent months conducting interviews with hotel guests, casual visitors, top-tier loyalty program members, on-the-ground resort staff, and a range of corporate stakeholders. We also gathered quantitative research and reviewed past MGM ..read more

Quick story first, deal? My second-cousin is an architect and when my great aunt moved into a small condo, she set about using her skills to design this insane planter layout. It would maximize space, promote symbiotic plants, and be overall aesthetically pleasing. It was amazing to see her hand-drawn sketches which then came to life in this relatively small planter, at least compared to what she had before. Now, I am not an architect. I cannot plan out my gardens like that, but Planter definitely has my back. This has become my go-to companion for gardens and I’ve been diligently looking thro ..read more

I found the recent report “The State of Cross-Channel Marketing” from MoEngage so interesting and insightful that I had to respond. Fueled and MoEngage have a strong partnership, so naturally I review a lot of their content. However, this piece was filled with so many great insights and learnings that I simply had to share more broadly. To put it simply, the report concisely captures the enormous opportunity brands have to deliver on fundamental and proven tactics. A few key points stood out to me: Lack of Cross-Channel Orchestration The report outlines that only 33% of brands are capitalizing ..read more

I’ve never been great at keeping houseplants. I swear, I read up on them, and do everything right, yet they all still eventually die. I stare at their yellowing leaves and wonder why I’m failing. Is it too dark? Too bright? Maybe too much water — or too little? Or maybe it needs a different fertilizer? Whatever I choose, it still somehow seems to be wrong. The thing is, I love plants. It’s officially spring and I’m ready to buy more veggies for the garden and I’ll try more plants for my windowsills. To help me out, I started trying LeafSnap. There are a lot of “plant identification apps” on th ..read more

I usually tend to avoid high-profile apps in my reviews. I like to highlight smaller devs to bring attention and visibility to lesser-known apps. But when looking at hotel and rental apps, it’s hard not to mention Airbnb. In a way, it’s still the underdog compared to Hyatt, Marriott, and other big hotel chains. The app started on iOS and came from a tiny startup not so long ago. Design, ease of use, and the mobile-first strategy have been paramount to its concept. As it’s grown, it has had its share of issues with the actual rentals, but it’s hard to deny that it is still one of the best-looki ..read more

Returning to the college where it all began over two decades ago was a surreal yet deeply gratifying experience. As I stood before a full theater, addressing eager students embarking on their own creative journeys, I couldn’t help but reflect on the path that led me from those very halls to where I am today – the Director of Design at Fueled, a prominent digital transformation agency based in New York City.   The invitation to speak at Newcastle College, my alma mater, came from my old lecturer, now the Head of Careers Education and Student Progress. It was an honor to kick off the colleg ..read more

You may judge me, but I’m a sucker for whimsy apps. So many apps stick with this ubiquitous clean, modern aesthetic. That’s not bad at all and I praise apps that opt for that approach, but it gets me even more excited when I see an app that is made up of custom, delightful animations. That’s Hopper. Oh, it’s also great for actually booking flights and hotels. Hopper, as the name suggests, is named after the four-legged animal. Anthropomorphic bunnies are rampant throughout the app from the running in loading glyph, to hiding on the pages. They’re a fun way to separate the app from others. That ..read more

These days it may feel like we live in a divisive world, yet I bet we can all unanimously agree that robocalls and robotexts are absolutely abhorrent and need to end. They’re annoying, predatory, and in many cases — illegal. They’ve gotten worse in recent years and I finally started looking at ways to end them for myself. The app that stood out in my search was Robokiller. What’s funny to me, is that a good spam-killing app will live in the background. So what possibly could you need to access the app for if its main purpose is to just block calls and texts that come from spam? It should be en ..read more