The Charm of Waiting
Writing Letters in the age of Quick Texts
“How wonderful it is to be able to write someone a letter! To feel like conveying your thoughts to a person, to sit at your desk and pick up a pen, to put your thoughts into words like this is truly marvellous.”
― Haruki Murakami, Norwegian Wood
I have always been fond of letters. Ever since I was little, I would write letters to my loved ones on important occasions. As I grew up, I wrote numerous letters to my friends, family, and others in times of joy, anger or grief. The art of writing letters is a lost one, which makes it incredibly precious. The process of taking time out of your busy schedule, capturing your thoughts in a sheet of paper, checking it to make sure you didn’t miss something important, folding it up, placing it in an envelope, writing the address, sticking a stamp, mailing it and then patiently waiting for a reply, is something that is lost in the modern-day texting where we receive quick and mindless responses to our texts.
Enter Slowly, an app that tries to recreate the beauty of letters directly on your phone. I first found Slowly through a blog and immediately downloaded the app. I was intrigued to see how they managed to capture writing letters in the digital realm. Needless to say, I was pleasantly surprised.
So, how usable is this app? And is it as delightful as actually receiving a letter?
Homepage
The Main Page of the app feels like opening a box of all the letters you’ve ever received. With a simple carousel pattern that is intuitive, the app allows you to browse through the various letters you’ve received from far and wide. Upon selecting a letter, you can view the complete letter and also choose to view the writer‘s’ profile by tapping on their profile picture. The interface feels fairly familiar as it is similar to many social media apps that we are accustomed to.
Navigation
The navigation tab at the bottom also allows users to easily access different tabs such as Pen friends, Letters to a New Pen friend, Drafts, and Settings. This makes navigation memorable and easy, increasing usability.
Sending Letters
Writing letters in itself is as simple as writing an actual letter. It involves a blank page with the Pen friend's information on top and the ability to change the stamp. The stamp feature adds a feeling of nostalgia to the process. However, you miss out on the process of licking it to add it! Nevertheless, once you click send, you see a popup that asks you to confirm your decision to send as you don’t have the chance to edit it once it’s sent. This provides the added feeling of permanence in the words you’ve written.
Finding New Pen-friends
The ‘Write a New Letter’ is a delightful feature that matches you to a random person who shares your interests. This helps you reach out to new people and have pen friends all over the world. You can also save unfinished letters in the drafts section. The profile section allows users to edit settings like their Avatar, interests, stamp collection, etc.
Does patience pay?
By far the best feature is the fact that the letter takes a predetermined amount of time to be delivered. This is based on the distance between the writers. This feature helps mimic sending and waiting for an actual letter wherein the wait is the charm of the process.
Conclusion
Overall, the app seems to meet the goals it sets for itself in terms of recreating the experience of letter writing. It is very intuitive to use allowing for a seamless experience of digital letter writing.
It’s about time we slow down our pace and enjoy the ride. And I believe this app helps users do just that!
Thanks for reading!
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