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I am very passionate about bettering myself every week through reading books/articles as well as watching Youtube videos and listening to podcasts. I am involved in some online communities that love personal growth as well, through Discord, Reddit, and Nesslabs. I decided to reach out to these communities with a survey to see how like-minded folks currently find and consume content.
The survey results confirmed there was a problem. I surveyed 55 people throughout my online communities and 43 of them listed that they weren't satisfied with how they are currently finding content. I reached back out to those who felt this way to dig a little deeper.
In order to come up with ideas for what to potentially make, I looked through what was out there today. Email newsletters were very popular because it is useful to receive information and not have to keep up with another app or website. It has it's pros but based on my research, people don't love the way email feels like spam.
The other services fall under two categories, personal blogs like Paul Graham's and James Clear's, or curated content centers like Medium and Read Something Great. Focusing on my research I didn't want to go with either of these because people want more than just a list of articles.
I hypothesized that people would like to receive daily or weekly texts with personal growth content instead of emails. I reached out to those that I previously surveyed and 90% of them said they would like this and are open to being my first users.
At this point I should've tested this idea without building anything (simple no-code mvp) by signing up 15-20 people for this service and then just manually texting them from my personal phone number. This was a big takeaway for me from this project that I will discuss at the very end.
I built a very simple application using the MERN stack (MongoDB, Express. React, and Node) and hosted this application on Heroku. The application would text users everyday asking what they wanted to accomplish as well as a curated article.
In parallel with coding this application, I wanted to design a fun logo and name that fit the theme of personal growth and felt new and exciting. Since this was an application that would text you every day I wanted this logo and name to be a modern, cartoonish/animalistic character so it felt like they were real and texting you every day/week. I started out creating an inspiration board to get the creative juices flowing, but also have a sense for what the logo should resemble.
I sketched up some fun little characters and ultimately landed on the brain character because it was cute and fit the theme of personal growth perfectly. I did want to make the brain character very modern and have little detail with smooth curves. It was important to create a simple logo with a simple shape so that users could recognize the character from their phone's contact image.
I perfected the shape of this brain-like character and now had to look into color options. Since my focus for the logo was to be fresh, new, and energetic I chose a soft orange. This color fit well since it's similar to the color of a brain. As for the name, I wanted a simple 1-2 syllable name that was cute and spunky and after trying to think of something clever, I landed on "Dewwy" because it almost sounds like you're saying "Do it!"
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I released a beta version of "Dewwy" to everyone who I had been surveying and collecting feedback from. I got an overall positive reaction for the logo and and general excitement for receiving personal growth content everyday via text message.
About 2 weeks into the beta, I started receiving feedback that text messages every day felt "overwhelming and spammy". It didn't quite have the negative affect that "everyday emails" would have, but was still too much. I set up some interviews with these users and also found out that they wanted to really feel like Dewwy was not so "automated" and felt more like a personality.
I don't have the technical capabilities to create advanced AI algorithms that could text users like a real personality so I had to rethink my service. I did some additional research and found a service that allows me to mass text groups of people on a set schedule. This allows me to tackle the main functionality of sending out personal growth content via text message on a set cadence but also allows me to break from the mold very easily.
As discussed briefly before, I should've tested my hypothesis without building anything (simple no-code mvp) by signing up 15-20 people for this service and then just manually texting them from my personal phone number. I want to always move the needle forward with small steps that can be tested as quickly as possible. My goal for the future will be to get as close as I can to "constant feedback".
Another takeaway from this project was how helpful it is to have a group that you can always reach out to for quick opinions and feedback. I learned it is appreciated to reward them with early or beta access to your product. I was very lucky to have such a solid group of users supporting the project and always willing to chip in feedback. This project is ongoing and so much fun because the users are all lovers of personal growth and enjoy helping others!