Building a Calm App in a Loud Market

Building a calm app in a market that rewards loud ones is a strange job.

Every bit of advice I read said the same thing: add rewards, add streaks, add push notifications to bring them back. Make it sticky. The word they used was sticky. I kept hearing it as trap.

So I did the opposite. No notifications begging you to come back. No streak that punishes a missed day. No sounds that make a quiet room loud. The app is there when you want it and silent when you don't.

The hard part isn't the building. It's the not-adding. Every week there's a new idea that would 'increase engagement,' and every week I have to ask: would this make the app calmer or louder?

The answer is almost always louder. So I don't add it.

A calm app is mostly defined by what's missing. I think that's true of calm anything.

I hope it's the kind of app you open with your kid, do one thing, and close without either of you feeling pulled. That's the whole goal.