Thanks for sharing Oz! I’m looking forward to the Android version!
I love that it uses reflective listening in the meditation session - would love to see how that works in Balance - and that it remembers what you’ve answered over time.
I wonder if there is a part where some of the information can be captured without necessarily asking - especially when it comes to contextual information. Phones can tell a lot about my location, my schedule, etc…Thanks to this info and the checkins over time, the app might learn about my context too (how it might affects my), and perhaps anticipate my anxiety before i.e. my work deadline, so to act on it/prepare for it before I even realize I’ll need to address it.
I think that there's a lot that can be captured without specific user input. That's the beauty of our devices. So I think that's a great point. This is where data science comes in and can turbocharge an app experience through a smart algorithmic personalization. A great example of this is TikTok.
I've always been a huge proponent of personalization and customization in design, but have been pretty disappointed in seeing how it manifests itself in product the vast majority of the time. This feels like a particularly empathetic application, ensuring that the user feels heard, understood, and catered to in a fairly-invisible manner that's actually meaningful to their everyday experience.
To pull this off, it seems like a modular approach would need to be taken from the ground-up, from a design, content, and architecture perspective to ensure that the app remains lean and focused in on what matters to the relevant user-set. But a very interesting exercise for an existing app could be a "relevancy audit" to discover how much of the current experience and content is relevant for each user persona, then working backward to discover how different experiences in the app could potentially be decoupled to show only the most relevant to each user journey.
Love the idea of a relevancy audit. In addition, I think it's important for an app like this to ask the user for feedback very frequently. Maybe even after every session. I didn't mention this in the post but there's a nice feedback mechanism in Balance. A start rating and then additional written feedback if the rating is particularly low.
As a long-time reader I wanted to tell you that I love this new format. It's very readable on mobile and focused in a way that keeps me thinking about the main essay.
One of the promises of software has always been pro-active customization but to date its only really been used for content discovery & advertising. The Dithering guys talk about how Facebook is really billions of different highly customizable Facebooks but as much as they know you for content and ads they never really take the time to get to know you.
I think the customization you describe regarding Balance can be a powerful new paradigm and I hope to see more apps employing those techniques.
I couldn't agree more with your perspective. I would love to see more of our technology go toward non-advertising related endeavors. Creating products that are more human and humane should be the goal for the next decade.
Thanks for sharing Oz! I’m looking forward to the Android version!
I love that it uses reflective listening in the meditation session - would love to see how that works in Balance - and that it remembers what you’ve answered over time.
I wonder if there is a part where some of the information can be captured without necessarily asking - especially when it comes to contextual information. Phones can tell a lot about my location, my schedule, etc…Thanks to this info and the checkins over time, the app might learn about my context too (how it might affects my), and perhaps anticipate my anxiety before i.e. my work deadline, so to act on it/prepare for it before I even realize I’ll need to address it.
I think that there's a lot that can be captured without specific user input. That's the beauty of our devices. So I think that's a great point. This is where data science comes in and can turbocharge an app experience through a smart algorithmic personalization. A great example of this is TikTok.
I've always been a huge proponent of personalization and customization in design, but have been pretty disappointed in seeing how it manifests itself in product the vast majority of the time. This feels like a particularly empathetic application, ensuring that the user feels heard, understood, and catered to in a fairly-invisible manner that's actually meaningful to their everyday experience.
To pull this off, it seems like a modular approach would need to be taken from the ground-up, from a design, content, and architecture perspective to ensure that the app remains lean and focused in on what matters to the relevant user-set. But a very interesting exercise for an existing app could be a "relevancy audit" to discover how much of the current experience and content is relevant for each user persona, then working backward to discover how different experiences in the app could potentially be decoupled to show only the most relevant to each user journey.
Love the idea of a relevancy audit. In addition, I think it's important for an app like this to ask the user for feedback very frequently. Maybe even after every session. I didn't mention this in the post but there's a nice feedback mechanism in Balance. A start rating and then additional written feedback if the rating is particularly low.
As a long-time reader I wanted to tell you that I love this new format. It's very readable on mobile and focused in a way that keeps me thinking about the main essay.
One of the promises of software has always been pro-active customization but to date its only really been used for content discovery & advertising. The Dithering guys talk about how Facebook is really billions of different highly customizable Facebooks but as much as they know you for content and ads they never really take the time to get to know you.
I think the customization you describe regarding Balance can be a powerful new paradigm and I hope to see more apps employing those techniques.
I couldn't agree more with your perspective. I would love to see more of our technology go toward non-advertising related endeavors. Creating products that are more human and humane should be the goal for the next decade.