A project born from a dire personal situation.
I started adwaitapod in 2022 during a period of serious health issues, seeking a break from the craziness that was engulfing my life.
Setting a superficial goal of recreating my Laptop's UI system, GNOME, on my iPod I began to learn how to program and design a User Interface.
Learning by Failing the Hard Way.
After I finished the first version, I uploaded it online. I intended to forget about it and move onto the next project, but the world had other
The resulting software was incredibly rough, but still usable. This first version managed to capture the core functionalities of the project.
A Faithful Email that changed my Life.
After I uploaded the first version online, I intended to forget about it and move on. However one morning I got an email from a person using adwaitapod in a way I never intended.
Modifying the system to aid their poor eyesight, this user had broken the UI. Seeing that no iPod theme addressed these users, I realised I needed to rebuild adwaitapod using human-centered design principles.
Learning to Design by First Principles.
The rebuild of adwaitapod led me to question and dissect each and every feature involved in the UI theme. I essentialy learned First Principles by neccessity.
This required heavy amounts of experimentation and research, poured into countless iterations and hours of thinking. The result was a clear, thought-out design.
Becoming an Expert in Optimisation.
In order to make adwaitapod run fast on real hardware, I learned how to design systems for optimal performance.
This also led me to learn how to compress and optimise images, which has been a vital skill in my sustainable web development practice.
Getting lost in a Maze of my own Making.
Having no experience as a programmer or project manager, I found myself getting lost in the sheer size of project the further I progressed.
The hundreds of assets, and thousands of lines of complex code forced me into learning to manage and label my work effectively in order to prevent serious time-consuming mistakes.
Successfully reaching the Finish Line.
In June of 2023, I released adwaitapod to widespread praise. The project's userbase has grown rapidly since, with over 30,000 users based all over the globe and counting.
Seeing the validation of my growth as designer has been incredibly fulfilling, the experience has truly given me a new-found love for interaction design as a practice.
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