Objective of the App
Time for a short story
About 1 month back, I got the idea of creating an application that helps in conducting an effective meditation practice. The problem that I was trying to solve was that sometimes after a meditation session my mind was on overdrive and I felt overwhelmed by my thoughts. To channel and understand my thoughts I started the practice of writing a journal. I would use pen and paper to do journaling and the practice helped me to calm down and structure my thoughts. Often I would set a meditation timer on my phone and then I would scramble for the pen and paper after the meditation session.
The core idea was to have a meditation + journaling app right on the phone so that the meditation session could be smoother. The app would cater to people like me who would like to journal just after a meditation session.
I started on the app and worked on the same for about 15-20 days.
Then came the pivot.
As I was creating the app, I understood that the core premise for my application was meditation and journaling was secondary. Moreover, there were quite a lot of good resources available on the app store that helped in the primary practice of meditation. I was not offering anything to improve or expand the core feature of meditation. The app was solving my core problem but I was not sure if it was offering a solution for a larger demography. At this time, the basic features of the app namely: onboarding and login flows, meditation timer and journal were ready. Undoing the existing work meant a lot of rework and consequently a lot of time wastage.
To solve the core problem and to minimize the redevelopment, I decided to pivot.
The change I sought was to create an app that helped to calm down during busy periods while working. I drew on my experience of working in a stressful job, and how at the job I first started with the meditation practice. The little periods of mindfulness and calm by doing short and effective meditation helped me to thrive on the job.
The new mission now is to create an app, that solves the problem of anxiety and restlessness in the workspace by doing short, effective meditation or journaling while being at the desk with very little time in hand with the aid of a mobile phone and a headphone. The core demography would be working people needing a small space filled with calm and reflection during their busy schedules.
Objective of the Blog Practice
I think the cause of the pivot has to do less with the old mission/plan and more with the loss of touch with reality that happened while I was building the product. I got so focused during the build stage that I completely forgot to notice if this solution would actually help people. This problem was a feedback related problem. I got the feedback late (much thanks to my wife!!!) and hence the pivot took a long time to think and execute.
Thereby I think that the act of sharing the build notes will help me to:
- Receive and execute feedback quickly
- Improve my intuition and product sense with the help of good people of the internet
What is the Tech Stack?
As of now, I am trying to build the app on a low code builder tool, FlutterFlow with Firebase as a database.
Why nocode and Flutterflow?
In my previous job, a lot of new development was happening on Flutter and I thought it was an interesting technology to learn. I started learning but I realized that to create complete applications, I would have to dabble my hand in a lot of things and hence task prioritization was needed.
I chose to work with Flutterflow so that I could continue to develop the application and simultaneously learn and utilize my Flutter knowledge.
What’s next?
The next step would be to share my workday notes and take the help of the gods of the internet to work fast and learn fast.