Back in times of our do-nothing-and-potato-on-the-couch weekends the thought of building our own business was still sleeping somewhere deep inside our minds. What both of us did know though is that we want to create our own product. A programmer and a designer with high ambitions and lots of inspiration working together – what else do you need for a dream team? The only question was: when you can create anything, which product do you choose to make?
It always starts from ideating
Great products solve difficult problems, and the easiest way to come up with an idea is to find a problem that you can relate to. At the time we were exploring various areas of self-growth and looking for ways to improve our productivity. The “aha” moment (you know, one of those genius thoughts you get while spacing out in the shower) came when we started digging into literature on habit development. Inspired by “Atomic Habits” by James Clear and “The Power of Habits” by Charles Duhigg, we decided to create a habit tracker app – Avocation- which would be based on theories and principles described in the books.
Doubts, doubts and a bit more doubts
As any idea needs validation, we made sure to do our research. At first glance, the market situation seemed quite frustrating. Extensive competition meant that our way towards top charts in online stores wouldn’t be easy. Lots of “what if” questions were popping into our heads – what if our app doesn’t get enough exposure to become successful? What if we imagine an opportunity where there is none? What if we are crushed by competition? What if people simply don’t like our app?
The good thing about the whole process was that we didn’t have anything to lose. Even if the project had turned out a failure, we would have used the app for our own purposes, with some newly acquired skills and experience as a pleasant bonus. With that thought in mind and despite all doubts we kept on ideating, analyzing, prototyping and developing.
Mistakes all the way down
Sadly, sometimes smart shower thoughts turn out quite stupid after you look at them for long enough – over a course of 6 months we had made numerous changes to the concept of the whole app, redesigning and kicking out large parts of it. In the end, we reached what we aimed for – very simple and minimalistic user interface, straightforward functionality and a memorable and unique design.
We made it!
What happened next was a pure miracle. To keep it short, a few months after release our downloads sky-rocketed, we got featured several times by Apple in the App Store, received thousands of reviews from happy users and countless emails with feedback, suggestions and incredible success stories.
As happy as we are with the success, we don’t stop on what has been achieved. We continue improving Avocation experience every day, as well as work on new projects to make self-improvement easier than ever before. Stay posted! There are many exciting things waiting ahead of us.
Mindvoll GesbR
Schlossergasse 12
3830 Waidhofen an der Thaya
Austria
Made with 🧡 and ☕️ in Austria