The way we interact with our smartphone home screens is older than the\u00a0phones themselves, and the founders of Flow Home think we\u2019re overdue for an update.<\/p>\n
Developers Matt Hall<\/a> and John Watkinson<\/a> have been making apps since before people really knew what apps were. They met in school at The University of Computer Science<\/a>\u00a0in Toronto and have been working together for 15 years, since starting\u00a0in mobile with the T-Mobile Sidekick.<\/p>\n If you look at pictures<\/a> of the phone now, it may seem a little\u00a0clunky and a bit like a tech novelty, but Hall said it was a “modern smartphone ahead of its time.\u201d<\/p>\n Around then, Hall and Watkinson fell in love with mobile<\/a>\u00a0and ended up making about 40 apps for the Sidekick before writing apps for\u00a0Android. (This was back when Android was just starting, which was around the same time that the iPhone was released.)<\/p>\n As they were making apps for the Sidekick and then Android, they started to think about the place where all of these apps lived \u2014\u00a0our home screens. Hall told me that, even though we think of it as only a container for iconic representations of our apps, it\u2019s an important part of the interface.<\/p>\n He said, \u201cIt’s something you see\u00a0…\u00a0on average close to 100 times a day … You just assume that it’s always been this way.” But they started thinking, “If you could figure out something better to do with it, then it would be really important.\u201d<\/p>\n