Is this a good idea for an app? Audio journal
I have an app idea. Basically, it's an audio journal. You can create separate journals in the app. The app also automatically transcribes your entries, and suggests tags.
You'd also be able to create playlists.
What do you all think?
EDIT: wow–thank you everyone for your feedback! I woke up Monday to see 7 or 8 replies here and it made my day :)
My next step is to build an MVP. I'm going to try and build it in iOS because I want the app to be self-contained. Will be looking for an iOS app coach if anyone knows of one!
Going to make my first attempt to #buildinpublic on twitter. You can follow me at @alexdw5
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I've been recording mini random conversations that I have with my kids (just with my phone and 'voice memo'), I've been wondering where to put them.
I want to create memories for my kids to have later on in life, it's not for public consumption.
Google photos for audio 🤯
Yes!! I use voice memos for this purpose too and this is along the lines of what I'm thinking. I also like to go for a walk and talk into a voice memo when I have a problem I'm trying to solve.
Thank you for the feedback, Rosie!
I'm super into journalling and really like the transcribing idea. An audio journal sounds neat because talking can flow so much better than writing sometimes, but I like to read my journal back and I'm not sure I want to listen to my own voice. So the transcribing, if it works well, would be an excellent feature.
Even if you couldn't get the transcribing perfect, I'm sure some folks will be interested in a well-executed audio journal with tag-able entries.
Thank you, @angusw, that's exactly what I'm hoping. I'm fairly limited in my app creation skills so the first version is going to be suuuper simple. The transcription aspect will definitely be a v2 thing.
I think transcription is a feature that needs to be done well if it's going to be done at all. Especially with apps out there like Descript, the last thing I'd want to do is bolt-on some underwhelming transcription feature that generates only half-accurate text.
I'd definitely use something like this. I'd love to have a "note taking" app specifically designed for audio. Count me in!
I record some notes on my phone when I go for walks. I would use something like this.
This is actually a pretty good idea! I've been trying to form a journalling habit but the issue is that I tend to walk while thinking and attempting to sit down to write doesn't let me be very articulate. I've been thinking of just recording myself talk while walking instead of sitting and writing, and this would totally let me do that.
One issue I guess could be about the quality of the transcript? I've noticed that most softwares tend to make mistakes here and there with transcriptions and then you need to fix them manually..
I like the idea. Apart from obviously needing to be super clean to record, think how you display the recordings/data back to the user in the app. Timelines, calendars, searchability of transcripts. Could probably come up with some cool things but connecting it to life events, feelings, emotions at the time of recording could be interesting when coming back to the journals later in life.
:-) love it, great minds think alike.
https://www.indiehackers.com/post/making-consistent-blogging-simpler-voice-to-text-3ff9e7df0e
Is it like podcast? I think it is feasible. But I think that App name should be added to the keywords when uploading, which will have a similar SEO effect. Consider embedding some App-related keywords and adding App links to the keywords. This is also a low-cost ASO method that can improve the ranking of the app store to a certain extent.
After all, the ranking of the app store is the source of the largest downloads. To find low-difficulty and high-traffic keywords, please refer to ASOTools（https://asotools.io）
Thanks @asotools! As an SEO/content person, I'm always thinking about SEO as a possible channel.
Very curious to know, do you have any tips for Apple App Store SEO? It's a pretty specific channel/type of SEO I realize, but asking in case you have expertise here.
I work for Day One, and we have what you describe! People use the audio feature, but it’s a tiny fraction of those who journal with photos and text. That said, I’ve thought that an app specifically designed around audio journaling for the blind, making the screen-reader UX amazing could have some great traction of its own. Might be an avenue worth exploring.
Thanks, @mrmurphy, that's excellent feedback! I also think a component of this app would be that it's self-contained, and everything can be easily exported, re: @rosiesherry's comment.
For myself, I'm hesitant to try just about any journal app because I: a) don't want my innermost thoughts being sold to data brokers(no shade intended, just paranoid bc I work in marketing lol), and b) I don't want to create a bunch of entries and content that I can't migrate out of the app if/when I decide to stop paying for it, or the app goes defunct.
With this idea of creating an app that's private and focused on the user's inner world, I love your idea about creating an audio journaling app for the blind. I think designing this app with that in mind would not only serve a criminally-underserved audience, but would also create a unique app experience.
Possibly, with the success of Clubhouse we will get to see more audio-first apps? As a very aural/kinesthetic-type, I would love to see that.
For sure! Re: privacy, we take privacy seriously enough at Day One that all journaling content is end to end encrypted by default on Mac and iOS. We’re working on it for Android as well right now. That way, even if the company did decide to turn evil and violate our privacy policy and sell info, we couldn’t actually read the content anyway. And yes, freedom to keep your data is huge. We make sure users can do a full JSON export of their journal data whenever to do what they want with.
If you move forward with this idea I recommend that you also plan to encrypt users’ audio data end-to-end. It’s reassuring to the user, and a lot of the fear around keeping data secure on the server (for syncing between devices) gets relieved for the devs, since the data is only valuable to the actual user who holds the private keys.
Thanks, @mrmurphy, it's fantastic to hear your experience from working on an app that's real and in the world 🙌
Since I'm one-man-banding this and have only the tiniest bit of app-building experience, my plan is to keep everything self-contained on the users device.
Your comment has me thinking about other possible models, though. Good food for thought :)
Oh right! That makes a lot of sense. Good luck!
I'm doing a version of this already, using a private Youtube channel and their auto-generated transcripts. I find value in that practice and I'm sure an app designed around it could provide a better experience. It would have to be truly great for me to spend money on it, though, given that my current system is free and supports video.
Matt, thank you for the feedback, it's invaluable :)
Do you automate this workflow? Curious to know more about your process.
Currently, I just copy-and-paste the transcriptions every few days. It hasn't been that big of a pain, to be honest. I used to do it every day, but I actually don't review the notes more than weekly, so that wasn't adding much value.
I do have plans to someday write code to sync the transcripts into my notes, but that's just out of principle and for the fun of it. The lack of this automation is not a problem I spend any time thinking about, and I don't think I'd pay for a solution. In fact, I'm quite sure of this, because I've never even Googled to see if it's an already-solved problem.
Also reminds me of: https://journify.co/
Damn, this is really cool. Definitely trying this. Thanks for posting it here!
Reminds me of Call Frank (https://www.producthunt.com/posts/call-frank)
No longer around, but seemed very popular on PH.
Wow, that's a really neat idea!!! I actually just reached out to the founder to ask whatever happened to the project. Thanks, @imsky!!