Bias towards action: Built my first product.
I’ve been really inspired by Naval Ravikant’s perspective about skill stacking, escaping competition through authenticity, and learning to build and sell.
Taking his advice to heart, I’ve decided to experiment with stacking my skills in an intentional way; stack my design skills with something I do everyday (meditation), and learn something new which is proper programming. I always wanted to learn proper programming and my prior “programming” experience was Arduino and simple Python scripts so very basic stuff.
I signed up for Angela Yu’s iOS dev course on Udemy and it was excellent – very thorough and well paced. However, I was really bored about a third of the way through, not because of the course, but because of my learning style and I wanted to build my product.
So I just started working on my app and used the course as a reference guide, jumping to different sections to learn a specific topic when I got stuck. This method worked out much better for me as I was able to work on my app and learn a lot along the way.
The final result is a meditation app called:
Pulse
I started my journey on August 1st with sketches and wireframes to version 1.0 release to the Apple App Store on September 12. So a good 6 weeks from concept to release. Since then I've been doing fixes and updates with feedback from users and my testers.
Why a meditation app? In addition to the stacking my skills with something I do everyday, the app I used use started to cram a bunch of content into the app which started to frustrate me give me anxiety lol. So I want to build something that I would use everyday.
Second, I wanted to design something unique unique echos my design philosophy so it was an outlet to exercise my creativity and be “authentic”.
This is the short version of the story but I hope some newbie out there will be inspired to learn new skills. Check out my app Pulse at
https://pulse.dicksonchow.com
I’d love to hear your feedback.
Thanks for coming to my TED talk. ;)
Congrats on the launch!
Your design is truly remarkable. I really like it! Great job with that.
The urge to DO something "for real" rather than sitting there, consuming content passively is something I can truly resonate with.
Generally speaking I'd always try to define a project I could work on when learning new skills. Following the instructor and implementing what (s)he does is a good thing but at the end of the day it's more motivating and challenging to apply the acquired skills in your very own project. You'll be amazed how fast you run into the first roadblocks.
Another great learning technique I've always used to great effect is the "Feynman Technique" (Googling should bring up explanations and instructions). It's a very powerful way to learn something and ensuring that you really retained the information.
What are your future plans for the app? How do you plan to differentiate yourself from the competition (like Headspace)?
Thank you! I am definitely going to put the Feynman Technique into use by writing about my iOS dev experience from a designer's perspective. I think that will help solidify my learning.
As for future plans, I am going to create content around the app that deals with design and mindfulness. The app is only a part of the vision. But short term I am currently doing some user/design research in the "mindfulness" space and getting feedback from users.
Good question on differentiation. I used to be a Headspace user but they started to add too many content into the app which lead me to stop using it. Like other meditation apps, it seems they are trying to be a "mindfulness content platform". I want to keep my app, Pulse, as a minimal meditation tool.
Headspace and the like are very good at capturing beginners that are learning about meditation which is an area I don't want to compete in. I am trying to capture the users that are "graduating" from the beginner level to the intermediate level as I see there is a void there - hence my app doesn't have talking voices and focuses on being a tool. Users go to Headspace to learn about meditation, I want intermediate users to use my app as part of their daily ritual.
That's just an hypothesis so there is much research and learning to be done!
Putting out more content and educating your users sounds like a good plan. IMHO nowadays there's just too much chatter around "mindfulness", TM and stuff and a lot of people don't really know what it actually means to be "mindful".
I too used Headspace a couple of years ago. Regularly I get back to Meditation but for some reason it's really hard for me to stick to it (my longest streak was for a couple of months before "life got in the way").
You are exactly right! The one thing that made me stick to it was focusing on the science - the cognitive benefits meditation brings is huge. This is something I want to focus on as well.
Good stuff! That's what I'd love to learn more about as well. Keep us posted here in IH on your progress.
Thank you for the encouragement, I appreciate it! I will keep cranking and continue to improve on the idea.
Congrats on the launch, looking good!
Amazing how quickly you learnt Swift - really inspiring.
Have you started to prepare a strategy to acquire users?
Thank you! I set a goal to work on the app 4 - 6 hours everyday. That consistency was really what made it. I am currently telling people in meditation circles to try out the app and see what happens. Another learning experience for me.
Congratulations on the launch. Looking good!
Thank you!