U D'cide

My Story

UD’cide started with a problem most people know all too well: a group of friends trying to decide where to eat.

While I was attending Boise State, my friends and I spent countless game nights, movie nights, and weekends together. But before we could enjoy any of them, we often spent more than 30 minutes debating where to get food.

“I don’t care.”

“I’m not in the mood for that.”

“I don’t like that place.”

“You pick.”

During my senior year, a friend and I were talking near campus when we finally said, “There should be an app for this.” At the time, it was one of those ideas that sounded great in the moment but could easily have ended there.

After graduating with my Mechanical Engineering degree, I began working at Idaho National Laboratory. The idea stayed in the back of my mind, and about a year later, I decided I wanted to make it real.

I began filling my phone with notes and spending hours imagining how the app should work. Not just as its creator, but as someone who would actually use it. The basic idea remained surprisingly consistent: one person creates a room, friends join, everyone votes, and the group finally has an answer.

The difficult part was figuring out how to turn that idea into an actual product.

I contacted programmers, searched for developers, and even reached out to universities to see whether computer science students might take it on as a senior project. Some people didn’t understand the vision, while others quoted prices far beyond anything I could afford. As the true cost of development became clearer, I started losing hope before the project had really begun.

Then a coworker introduced me to his sister-in-law, who had recently graduated in computer science. She understood what I was trying to create, believed it was possible, and was willing to work within a budget that was at least close to what I could manage. That meeting changed everything.

From that point forward, I handled nearly every part of UD’cide other than the programming itself: the concept, features, layout, branding, testing, coordination, app-store submissions, business planning, and marketing.

Financing it was often the hardest part. There were times when I had to ask my programmer whether I could pay her later than planned. I skipped meals out and nights with friends because I couldn’t afford them. Projects around my house were delayed because the next app update had to come first. Despite having an engineering job, I often felt broke.

There was a certain irony in building an app designed to help people decide where to eat while regularly being unable to afford going out myself.

The testing process brought its own frustrations like finding bugs, waiting for updates, testing everything again, recruiting enough testers, and meeting Apple and Google’s requirements. But once I could see that UD’cide was genuinely possible, quitting stopped feeling like an option.

When the app was finally approved for production, I felt a mixture of relief, excitement, pride, and disbelief. After years of seeing it mostly as notes, mockups, unfinished builds, and plans for the future, I could finally open the finished app and say:

“I did that. I made it happen.”

Of course, launching the app isn’t the end of the story. It’s really the beginning.

My hope for UD’cide is bigger than ending the “Where should we eat?” debate. I want it to help people experience more of what their communities have to offer. There are incredible restaurants, small businesses, and hidden local favorites in towns and cities everywhere, but many people never discover them.

Even if UD’cide only helps someone try a new restaurant, spend more time enjoying an evening with friends, or realize that their city has more to offer than they thought, then it has made life a little better.

And that is what I hope to keep building.

— Dexter Peterson, Founder of UD’cide