How I got the idea?
I started using traditional pen & paper journal but I was always concerned about its privacy. I wondered if there exists an app which could solve this problem?
17 year old me on my desk in India while I was learning to code
Was this idea worth it?
SensorTower is a market intelligence tool I use to collect competitors insights to make data driven decisions
I used market intelligence tools to determine the market size (if it exists)
Based on my research, I can expect between 1000 to 100,000 downloads per month, depending on mobile marketing
Let’s start with the customer!
Goal
Develop deep user insights of the journaling marketplace
Dovetail is a UX Research platform I use to document customer insights
Interview
I conducted over 10 user interviews to understand user needs
User Persona
I created multiple user personas based on different use cases of the product
Jane Vent
“I have no one else to talk to so i can just pour all my feelings into this app and not be judged at all.”
Leslie Privacy
“I've decided to journal online now for privacy reasons - specifically with regards to little fingers opening books”
Sam Look Back
Love this app! I have had it for several years and being able to go back and read what I wrote years ago for fun or reference is exactly what I want.
Jane Vent
"I can remember many things from days and weeks ago .. saved me time and the pain of looking into my papers and receipts to remember events"
Insights
I uncovered multiple insights from the research which will help to form the vision and strategy of the product
Users like to export their journal to keep a backup copy of it
Users prefer a single subscription which should unlock everything
Users likes to vent using audio by talking to themselves!
Users like to look back at the past journal entries they have written
Users often have concern for losing their personal data
Users like to create a video diary, not just a text diary to record their life
Users add photo because it helps to express the journal entry visually
Users tend have multiple entries for a single date which makes organizing them difficult
Where we are going?
to improves people's mental health by helping them vent their thoughts in a secure journal and by providing a place to easily find and reflect back on past memories
How will we get there?
Problem
My strategy was to built product which solves just one problem exceptionally well; hence, I prioritised the use case of venting emotions
I want to write in a journal to reduce my emotional stress
I want to write a journal but I’m worried that someone might read it
I want to write in a journal but I’m worried about accidentally losing my journal
I want to look back at up/downs I have been through in my life so I can reflect
Product Differentiator
Most of the popular journaling apps on the App Store have features which don’t solve any problem. For example, Day One, Alan Mind, and Journey, which are the top journaling apps in the market, have a quote feature. During my user research, a customer told me that “the last thing I wanna see in my journal is a cheesy quote out of nowhere”, so our advantage will be simple design and better feature mix.
Features
I created various epics in Jira and documented the strategy in Confluence.
Confluence is a team workspace which I use to document product related work
What we should work on?
I created roadmap in Trello by prioritising features by impact and effort
I created a public roadmap to be more transparent to my customers and employees. Moreover, it provided them an opportunity to give feedback
How will it look like?
Wireframe
I created wireframes on whiteboard to gather early feedback from users
Before creating high fidelity mockup, I often create a rough wireframe on a whiteboard
Mockups
I made high fidelity mockups and prototype in Figma
I use Figma, a product design tool, to create final designs. These designs are then used for usability testing
How did I defined success?
Users gets the most value from their journal when they consistently write lengthy journal entries
Amplitude is a product analytics tool I use to measure KPIs (Key Performance Indicators)
Let’s start coding!
Hiring
I hired and managed software engineers to code Journal X along side with me
I received over 500 applicant for the role of iOS Engineer so I created a take home project to filter out applicants and used Linkedin Recruiter for applicant tracking
Shivani Dubey was the first employee I hired. I was a 2nd year computer science student at University at Buffalo. She was in India so there was as 12 hours timezone difference. Hence, I used to go to college during the day and conduct meetings at night.
Development
We used scrum framework in Jira to complete app development
Jira is a project management tool I use to track status of the development
Launch Day!
We released the app in phases while closely monitoring analytics
I closely monitor App Store Connect Analytics to measure the performance of the changes after every release
Then, I repeated the process of
Built, measure, and learn for 4 years to reach product market fit
Open App StoreInterested in hiring me?