I couldn’t believe it last week week when I saw that the BBC's Apprentice show was featuring the launch of an app. Earlier the same day, my friend and I had launched our own iPhone app so it was such a coincidence and hopefully a very good sign!
Mo and I met as neighbours in the Scottish Highlands. We both have young children and having previously been involved in business, last year we started talking about new ideas and ventures. It was around the same time that I had my will drawn up. Like many new parents, I had never got round to doing this but after having children I felt a huge responsibility of making sure they would be looked after if anything happened to myself and my husband. There are many moments in life when you suddenly recognise your own mortality and for me having children was definitely one of those.
Although my will dealt with legal matters and appointed guardians for my children, I realised that there was no way of leaving details of how I would like my life to be celebrated or things that I would like my children to know about me. After many nights of chatting over glasses of wine, we realised that an app would be a perfect way of storing this information and we came up with the idea of “Legacy Organiser”.
We wanted to give users somewhere to store all the important life defining information about themselves including photos and songs, and to be able to plan ahead for all aspects of their funeral and farewell. Friends of ours said that they would want someone to leave messages or advice for their children so we also built this into the app.
The whole project has been a massive learning curve - at the start neither of us had an iPhone nor any experience in IT or new media! Our app developers came up with the design and the functionality for the app and we spent several months working with them to get it right. We submitted the app to Apple and having had it approved we are now starting to spread the word through friends and family. It has been a fantastic, annoying at times and interesting journey so far…….
