I’m incredibly lucky to have a little bit of time to pursue hobbies or interests outside of my work and family life. One of the [interests I’d been exploring](https://tonedeafcolorblind.substack.com/p/210-everyones-a-workaholic-and-other) was app development: I am deeply in love with the iOS/iPadOS ecosystem and have always wanted to tinker within it and contribute to it. Plus, I’d played a little with development before by running a few Wordpress sites in the past, doing low-complexity coding and bug fixes in previous gigs, and spending most of my workweek talking with other developers for a job. **And I had an idea for an app that would actually be useful to me.**

So I tried picking up Swift and SwiftUI to develop said app. After about 10 days I’ve given up. I either don’t have the brain, or the patience, for software development. I get the model-view-controller framework completely – I need to at least *understand* this concept to do my day job, but while I can sort of read code, it’s a whole order of magnitude of complexity for me to write it *and* not run into a dozen build failures or inexplicable crashed. The place where I got stuck, specifically, was around supporting Siri Intents: the idea involved needing to talk to Siri, or build Shortcuts, around locating a specific piece of data, and I got incredibly frustrated trying to figure this out. [Tech pundits are right when they say Apple’s documentation is not useful](https://atp.fm/episodes/363), and I don’t have the skillset to adapt examples from other people to my own use cases.

The idea stuck, though. It came out of an episode of the [wonderful ](https://overcast.fm/+E5INvkfOI/10:17)*[Reconcilable Differences](https://overcast.fm/+E5INvkfOI/10:17)*[ podcast](https://overcast.fm/+E5INvkfOI/10:17). In this episode (“Squirrel List”), John Siracusa talks about his use of Apple Notes to keep a running list of where random things are in his house. Turns out I could have used one of those: **My wife and I move random items around the house regularly and then forget where we put them.** Some of these are easy to track down, such as AirPods or our phones, because we can yell out to Siri and then a loud bell will be emitted from said device. I wanted to be able to yell out to Siri, “Where’s my goddamn box cutters?” when I have a dozen cardboard boxes to break down and can’t find them. The only options I could think of were to buy a [Tile](https://www.thetileapp.com/) or wait for [Apple’s competing product](https://www.macrumors.com/guide/airtags/), but I also don’t want to spend hundreds (possibly thousands) of dollars putting a Bluetooth tracker on all my tools, random cables, passport, etc. Not to mention all the [problems](https://techcrunch.com/2018/11/01/bleedingbit-security-flaws-bluetooth-wireless-networks/) with [Bluetooth](https://www.foxnews.com/tech/turn-off-your-bluetooth-warn-security-experts)[security](https://www.wired.com/story/bluetooth-complex-security-risk/) and [electromagnetic radiation in the house](https://www.healthline.com/health-news/are-wireless-headphones-dangerous#Scientists-believe-the-current-EMF-guidelines-are-inadequate).

**So instead of frustrating myself endlessly trying to build a swanky app to solve this problem and then monetizing it for no good reason, I built a group of shortcuts to help me with keeping track of shit around the house.**

## **Introducing Found It, the shortcut suite**

Collectively they’re called **Found It**, and they enable you to securely tell Siri where your stuff is around the house. When you can’t find one of those things, just ask Siri and she’ll tell you. If you put that thing somewhere else, just tell Siri and she’ll remember next time you can’t find it.

If you like, you can tap on the links below to download Found It and all its components:

* [Found It](https://www.icloud.com/shortcuts/934134a4d9d041bf887295cb53e9a7ca) (the master Shortcut, which does everything)

* [Keep Track of Something](https://www.icloud.com/shortcuts/1a70d1021e8643bab99a0c68481f8efc) (just asks Siri to track something new)

* [Help Me Find Something](https://www.icloud.com/shortcuts/04f01a26eb474a89b42a9bc683c13d10) (just asks Siri to look up where something is)

* [I Moved Something](https://www.icloud.com/shortcuts/81941086663b44249bc4266ac47fa012) (just tells Siri the new location of something)

From there, you can start tracking your own stuff. These shortcuts also support custom inputs, so you can make your own mini-Shortcuts that ask Siri for a specific item (so you don’t have to re-specify every single time). For example, I made a shortcut to ask Siri “Where’s the hammer?” since I keep leaving my hammer in random places around the house, and she’ll just tell me that. You can get that example [here](https://www.icloud.com/shortcuts/f20812149ab5454db4800a0ec570323d); you’ll just need to tell Siri where your hammer is first.

The master shortcut is available on [RoutineHub](https://routinehub.co/shortcut/4636), which is a community and directory of crazy-powerful Shortcuts.

Found my stuff

Finally back to recording some new music - stay tuned.

Product + music

Where we're going, there are a million roads

On "pop writing"

Location agnosticism

On Prince's "The Ballad of Dorothy Parker"

A bunch of crap duct-taped together

I composed this during my senior year of college, with advisement from Mike Frengel, as an excuse to fiddle around on a bass guitar, and it turned into one of my more interesting works.

Variations on a Lonely Theme, for 5-string electric bass and live electronics

A composition for tape composed during the fall of 2009 with advisory from Prof. Ronald Bruce Smith at Northeastern University. Source sounds for the piece include various screams, moans, cries, whips, slaps and choking sounds, sounds that are considered gross or deviant according to social custom, but are ever-present in people’s private lives.

Music behind closed doors, for tape

A short run podcast about product management, and our struggles personally and professionally while doing it.

Cohost

I write, record and release music. 4 albums released so far, one in progress. Genre is hard to pinpoint, but generally piano-driven alternative pop/rock.

Songwriter/Producer

Location-driven social music app. Advised on product strategy and UX/flows.

Advisor

I made a group of iOS shortcuts to help me keep track of stuff around my house without Bluetooth trackers.

Found It shortcuts

Director of Product, Fulfillment

Staff Product Manager

I helped Abstract level up its platform for enterprise scale, and then led the discovery, initial development and go-to-market for its Notebooks product.

I lead a team of PMs, engineers and designers building the internal experimentation platform used across Wayfair. We develop the tools and infrastructure to enable experimentation, and collaborate with data scientists and analysts to raise the bar for good testing.

Associate Director, Product Management - Experimentation

I was a PM for Wayfair's internal supply chain APIs, focused on enabling express delivery programs and creating internal visibility around delivery costs. I then spent a year squarely focused on this for Wayfair's EU business, spinning up a team in our Berlin HQ. After returning to the US, I then led product development & discovery on two customer-facing features: Favorites and Room Planner.

Senior Product Manager

QA/Product

Anything and everything product for an early-stage two-sided marketplace for one-of-a-kind goods.

brandon lucas green

2022