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A small prototype with big hopes to unite all people who love changing and learning new things.
How at all began
This idea was born about a year ago and included some really long nights, a great book that made me realize some very important things about me, some dirty diapers and many, MANY weird ideas we discussed with my husband. You don’t need to know all the details, and I’m sure you don’t want to either. But one of the most powerful things I realized at that sleepless time, is that there are people that are not fit to a one life-long job, or passion. (This is from the book I mentioned in the beginning — Barbara Sher “Refuse to Choose”) There are people that just prefer something new to something familiar, the process of making the first steps and the excitement of getting another great (or not) experience is just irresistible. Well, I am one of those people. I am very passionate, but the subject of my passion differs (from season to season, from year to year, sometimes from day to day). And I just love trying and learning new things. People like that are called scanners. And sometimes it’s rather hard for scanners to keep focus and stick to whatever they started. It’s not always necessary, but if we really want to see those great result, sticking is crucial.
And there are some things I’ve been trying to learn forever. Like, dancing salsa. But there are some pretty big (and dirty) d̶i̶a̶p̶e̶r̶s̶ reasons why I’m not able to do that now. Or so I tell myself. And so do many other people. And there are some things we want to do every single day, like drinking enough water, eating healthy food (or cooking at home), exercising, not sitting too much at the computer and so on. And those things are even harder, because once you let yourself slip, if takes weeks to get back on track.
So we were talking about all these exiting new things we want to learn, and how great that would be to have other scanners around, to talk to them, to have some great TED-like talks, where people tell about new things they learned or started doing, all the whys and hows. Other people would see this from a regular person’s perspective (and not a cool professional guy), see if they are interested in this as well, get some hacks and tips.
And so a world of scanners appeared in front of our eyes — people sharing their experiences, people get motivated, people hold each other accountable. There is a great community of people that stick together and help each other become better people. There are local monthly meetings where people that committed to a new skill or a new habit have to give a performance or just talk about what’s going on with that. And no, we weren’t smoking. Those were our dreams, and they were beautiful.
Start small
So of course, we didn’t start a scanners’ community, but we decide to start small and make an app (and a website) that will help people focus on their dreams and after completing a dream (the steps should be rather small) they would post a written article or a video about their experience, thus helping people that come next to hear from a real person how that went. If we are young parents with almost full time jobs, we would love to hear from someone like us — how in hell did they learn salsa? Did they take private lessons? Did they find a place to drop of a toddler while they were going to classes? Did they stay at home and practiced with YouTube Videos after their baby fell asleep?
Continue even smaller…
So in about half a year , we started a Capstone Project at Coursera, and -what a miracle! — there was the theme I could work on to built an App prototype — Change. And I jumped right in, and started paper prototyping this huge app, were people are guided to create a dream and set up bite size steps, and also make a deadline at the end of which they have to publicly do something to show off their dream (like a concert for friends, an exhibition of photographs) and to post a video or an article about their experience to this app.
I was so exited! For about an hour. At the end of the second hour of my paper prototyping I was confused. Does this really take so much time? Ideas were coming at going, I was changing this directions of the prototype several times, At the end of the third hour i got hungry. So I went to make some coffee and a sandwich, and I thought to myself. I will never finish this app. If paper prototyping takes this much time, I didn’t even want to imagine the rest of it. And the next week I decided to change my direction completely, though leaving a window to later bring this to what it was meant to be.
And finish with a small App that almost doesn’t have to do anything with your huge idea.
So the new idea was to make a smaller app, where people are focused on their dream and to do so I decided to try mixing it with creating a Mandala. One week of practicing towards your dream — on circle of mandala is created. If you skip a day or two and let yourself be lazy or distracted with a next season of Breaking Bad (been there), your mandala will have ugly bald spots.
To make it a little more exiting (and that’s what my initial research showed), I made it social. If people have other people watching over them or controlling or simply being aware, they tend to finish what they started and they tend to do more, then when they are alone. So I added the Facebook and Twitter sharing and liking function. And I made the app comments for each mandala.
Also, by the color of a mandala one can tell how long a person is practicing towards a dream — each 8 weeks mandalas change color. So I imagine, that people would love to share their complete mandalas and show off their will of power and persistence.
However, the idea of having a community that shares their experience is put away for now, and that is something I had the most trouble letting go. I feel that a person will be more responsible with herself if there is a commitment like that (having to write an article or make a video for the whole community and being able to post this to other social media). But this is definitely something that I will add in the next iterations.
The most difficult part of designing an app was making it as simple as possible. I am definitely a person who likes simple clear designs, but when comes to making decisions, I want to add just a little bit more here and there, and this function, and that… so hopefully I did a good job just in overcoming that weird quality.
Do you want to have a world of people in love with new experience?
What do you guys, think about a network for people that can’t live without learning or trying out new stuff? Do you think this is possible? Or are people just lazy and won’t spend time writing articles, recording videos and helping each other become better?
Oh and… here’s our hilarious and sooo amateur add. It was fun making it, I hope it’s fun watching
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JYBVg0NcSts&feature=youtu.be