Bought this lil chamaco in Mexico some tacos after he hustled me $40 for two mazapanes hahahaha eat up lil man

"I'm still considering whether or not to add notifications on the app. Duolingo notoriously does this, but I've come to accept that promoting education technology to consumers is like promoting Adderall to improve corporate productivity to enterprise HR teams. In theory, it makes sense, but in practice it's basically nonsense.

So one reason Duolingo does this is because they essentially have to abuse, spam and beg people to even use their education app in the first place with notifications, emails and other "marketing" tactics, and it's really because promoting education to consumers is like pulling teeth - so you need to create a habit forming tool, a game, an abusive notifications system and brainrot content to even remotely have a chance.

I digress, I added a cute dog because it's more pleasant in a number of ways and a heatmap is less anxiety inducing than a calendar streak system."

Upgraded my language learning app in a number of ways to improve retention and joy.

You can read about it here https://www.patreon.com/posts/154801947

but tl;dr:

- pet health system replaces calendar streaks

- flashcard mode has spaced repetition and guided learning

- realtime conversation has a better design and less bugs

- small UI/UX details to improve how the app feels

- less overwhelming onboarding

I think I'm settling on giving up on entrepreneurship. What I care about doesn't really work in the consumer space. It was a fun and hopeful 3 years but it's probably best to let go of expectations and just do it as a hobby.

Been working on some design upgrades for my language learning app (not yet shipped)

Decided to try out that viral pretext library to control to create a neat little visual cue for realtime conversations =)

Nothing like a little bout of depression to get some decent work done

Another wave of entrepreneurial depression. Perhaps doubling down for the 40th time will solve it, or perhaps I've gone insane in ways that will damage me for years to come.

I gave away about 17,000 sats requesting feedback on an app I’m developing. 1000 sats is admittedly not much to offer for people’s time, but it was insight and good community fun.

Anyone that knows design knows that user feedback is absolutely worth its weight in gold. I think next time I do something like this the offer will be 5,000-15,000 sats for feedback, as a way to incentivize even more nitpicking and depth.

Highly recommend doing this to any app developer here.