There’s something about messaging as we know it that irritates me. If your friends are like mine, planning what we are going to do after work or school, is a nightmare. And it usually takes place on various platforms like Whatsapp, iMessage, or Facebook Messenger. The conversation starts and suddenly I’m stuck in the middle juggling all their requests, and running these requests by each and every one. Suddenly a social gathering becomes a task. When someone makes a suggestion, I have to go through the hassle of checking FourSquare and/or Yelp, navigating through dozens of apps to check out movie listings, showtimes and restaurant reviews. Not to mention locating these places and determining if everyone is ok with the suggestion, and if it’s close to where everyone is. And if only one person says no, I’ll need to start all over again. You know how technology is supposed to be there to make our lives easier? Well, it’s starting to do the opposite recently. This is the story of how and why we built Homer Keyboard. It was born from the need to declutter our lives, and build a tool that would make communicating with others easier, smoother, and less stressful. I think you’ll agree with me that there are a lot of things in our day that we need to figure out, such as meeting up with family, hanging out with friends, going out on dates, or planning important business dinners. This is where Homer Keyboard comes in. It’s a tool that focuses on context, and makes conversations flow smoother by keeping everything in one place. It was made so it can blend in with people’s everyday conversations and means of communication without breaking the normal flow of things. With the help of Homer Keyboard, you don’t have to leave your messaging platform, open up another app or a browser to look up restaurants, movie timetables, or nearby events, because Homer can do it all for you. It suggests results based on your conversation such as specific movies that might be showing nearby, events you’d find interesting, TV premiers, products and their reviews, and makes suggestions that you and your friends can use to plan and decide on the when, where, and how. Homer Keyboard doesn’t just stop at suggesting what you do and where or how to do it, it also helps make it happen. Through suggestions or plan cards, users can book Uber rides, make reservations through OpenTable, get tickets over Flixtr, or purchase products through Amazon. We understand how everyone may be loyal to their current messaging platforms, this is why Homer Keyboard is platform agnostic, users can make suggestions and push them to other users through their existing communication platforms such as iMessage, Whatsapp, and Facebook Messenger, to share and view without leaving their existing messaging services. Homer Keyboard was built in an attempt to improve communications and messaging, with an aim to preserve the flow of our every-day conversations. It is here to organize the mess we have to go through, because our daily life is cluttered enough. Now, having Homer made life less stressful for me, and I think it will do the same for you.
So what does this all mean?