A smartphone application that lets you prerecord and schedule your last messages to your loved ones seems like it could only have been dreamed up in Lebanon. But Hady Abdelnour, the designer behind the app, says nothing could be further from the truth.“Honestly, I didn’t think about it. Lebanon was not on my mind,” he said, adding a sentiment rarely expressed this country: “I am never worried in Lebanon.”
In fact, the genesis of the OhWow! application is far more prosaic than a response to life in a country renowned for forever being on the edge.
“I was going to Saudi Arabia, I had business trip, it was very normal you know,” Abdelnour said, describing the moment when the idea first came into his head.
The question he asked himself is certainly one we are all familiar with in our moments of doubt – what if something bad happens?
The idea coalesced a month later when Abdelnour was placed under anesthesia for a routine operation and began to wonder how – if the worst did happen – he could have gotten a final message to his family, friends and the people he loves.
He is aware of the morbidity of the thought. “If you are going to use it, before something you can’t control and are worried [about], it has to be pessimistic. I’m not going to lie to anyone ... it’s not a cheerful app.”
Cheerful it may not be, but Abdelnour believes that the app could bring comfort to people in situations out of their control.
“If you are on an adventure, let’s say a diving trip or something, usually you control it. These [people] are not our target market, they are experts in what they do ... but when you are on an airplane or you are going through an operation or you are doing something that you can’t control,” it is these kinds of scenarios that OhWow! is designed for.
“Consider plane crashes, for example. You could have sent a message before getting on the plane, and this message would have changed the lives of so many people ... I’m not saying I want to make an application to make use of the misery of people, of course not, I’m just saying it could be useful to people who listen to them.”
The OhWow! application is simply executed: First you record your message – “you have video, audio, text message and picture; you can send in four formats” – then you schedule it for delivery, a minimum of 12 hours later.
At the time of delivery you will receive a notification asking you to confirm that you want the message to be sent. If all has gone well and that day is not the day you make your peace with the world, simply cancel the message.
Asked what would happen if you, for whatever reason, were unable to get to your phone but definitely wanted to cancel the message, Abdelnour explained that you would be given three chances over a 24-hour period, optimistically adding that someone “can’t be busy over 24 hours and three notifications.”
For now, anyone with an email address can receive the messages sent from OhWow! – the app itself is a “very feature basic application” that Abdelnour deliberately kept simple while he test-marketed its popularity.
If there is a strong market for the app – which can be currently downloaded on Android and IOS – then Abdelnour plans to “aesthetically improve it ... and add more functionality to it.”
In the future, his aim is to move past the current group message function “to have the option to send it publicly, so it’s like Twitterbut scheduled and more private.”
Abdelnour didn’t develop the app on his own. While the original concept behind it is his, he himself is not an app developer; in fact he works in an investment bank. Wanting to experiment and build a portfolio outside of finance, he took his idea for the app to a friend of his, Lebnan Nader, the “Executive Chef” over at Game Cooks, a Lebanese game developer studio.
Referring to Nader as both a “technical expert” and a “geek,”Abdelnour said that with his help, along with that of the mobile software development company Apps2you and the guidance of its CEO Mario Hashem, the app was launched after a four-month development process.
Not just for the morbid at heart, the app can have day-to-day functionality, Abdelnour insists. “Sometimes I use it just to send a simple scheduled message at night, I want to ask my mother to do something and I don’t want to wake her, so I send her the message [via OhWow!].”
You could be forgiven for thinking the name OhWow! came about from the response to hearing there was an app to record your last goodbyes, but for now Abdelnour is keeping mum. “This is something we have decided to keep to ourselves, maybe in the future, if the app succeeds, people will find out.”
By Susan Wilson
