Building for myself first

Let’s lead with the fact that building Swift apps with my agentic team process (discussed earlier) is by far the most fun I’ve had prototyping solo in a long time.

At the moment, I’m solving problems for myself in hopes of finding something I love to use, and others enjoy. I don’t think I’ll build in public in the sense of sharing a lot of code, etc., because the code for the apps won’t be wildly interesting or re-usable. I will likely generalize a good boilerplate and share once I build two or three apps with it.

I do have some conviction which is driving me but it’s less on a specific experience as much as the problems I want to solve and product design strategies/pillars that’ll guide my prototypes.

The problems I’m interested in at the moment guide me to seek help:

Keeping in touch with close friends and fam while managing to make it abundantly clear it’s not a business networking app
Creating a messaging experience which is more secure and present than any other platform out there where I “own” my content. No I’m not thinking about blockchain.
Managing my goals, emotions, mindset, tasks in a way that feels more natural than journaling or todo lists.
Controlling my home experiences and devices in a way that feels more delightful. This one feels like it’s limited by tech and integrations today.

From a product design perspective I’m deeply interesting in finding a new way of building apps and tools on devices that recognizes they have huge disks and computation on device. There was a time before the Internet, and I’d like to consider what apps may look like if we assumed we were running on dialup.

Everything I want to build will be “privacy-first” with strong ownership and control of my data, reduce my overall time scrolling, and create more opportunities for serendipity and connection.