Addictive apps are designed to be launched quickly to hook you ASAP. My app slows them down so that you can be more intentional!
📖 Origin Story
"Speed cause stress. Slow down!" ~ Me!
Last year, for various reasons, I was going through a stressful time. I was trying out different ideas to relax more, which is when I got this thought above about speed inducing stress. Since then, I have been trying to introduce "slowness" in life.
For example, I have the tendency to think/worry while walking. The more I worry, the faster I walk. The moment I realise that I am walking fast due to stress, I slow down now and I can physically feel the calmness the slow walking brings me.
Same at work. Deadline usually make me work faster, so more stress. When deadline is pushed out, I get more time to work slowly, so that reduces stress.
At one point, I started thinking how can I slow down my app usage. Wouldn't it be great if every time I try to launch an app, I have to first wait 10, 20 or 30 seconds? Why does phone usage have to be so quick?
I just wanted to slow down my phone usage, but that led to creation of App Pause.
📢 Introducing - App Pause
An app that will slow down your phone/app usage.
Simply select all the distracting apps on your phone.
Select how long you want to wait
And that's it. Whenever you launch the app, you will be intercepted and forced to wait.
I then kept on thinking, what else can I do to motivate myself/user from not using the distracting app?
What if I showed exactly how long they used the app this week/today? Sometimes we are just not aware that we have used the distracting app for 4 hours already! Just getting to know the data is often sobering enough to stop.
What if I showed a customised text to remind user "why" they want to be mindful?
Etc, etc. So I added above features and more.
📊 Current State
It has been around 3 months since I started developing the app and 2 months since I launched.
Here is my current stats:
Downloads: 300
Active Devices: 120
User Acquisition Rate (28 days avg): 7.04
User Loss (28 days avg): 5.11
🙏How you can help?
I am currently thinking about:
How to get more downloads?
My user loss rate is high. What would help here?
Someone suggested I add an on-boarding journey.
Any advice on how to measure effectiveness of an on-boarding journey?
I haven't monetised it yet. The app still has lots of features missing so I am planning to build it up more and then later add either a tip jar or create a life-time subscription model.
Any advice on my strategy?
Any suggestion on any reading materials that could help with app business? There are lots of helpful articles here which I plan to read. Anything else?
Life of an IndieHacker is rough! There is always so many things to do! Really glad I found this website where I get to learn from other IndieHackers! Looking forward to the journey
