I’ve been on a hiatus writing blogs … consumed with another project that is finally at the point that I can share it… 🥁🥁
Vedaist
Vedaist is a modern english dictionary app (iOS & Android).
Who needs a dictionary anyways? Google exists and you can even get standard definitions from your device operating system. Besides, what is modern about dictionaries?
I’ve always been an active learner, but this year I wanted to invest more time doing things that matter. That led me to restarting blogging on this platform. As I was reading new books, I felt the need for a dictionary for obvious reasons. There are many dictionary apps on the iOS app store but none of them appealed to me. There were many gaps in the existing apps and then I realized I wanted something different.
Vedaist is designed to facilitate improving your vocabulary both for active and passive learners. The massive word catalog should have almost any word that you’re actively looking for. Passive learning also happens with special words every day so you can spend just a few minutes and continue progressing. Simple game mechanics have been added to the app to be engaging as you’re exploring words. Our lives are busy, but Vedaist has been a positive habit leading to actual vocabulary improvements for the first set of testers.
Designing and building modern design experiences to a seemingly mundane problem captured my attention with this project. Hopefully it resonates with you too.
There are many features that have been implemented in Vedaist, and a ton more are planned. However I want to call out the primary reason that this project can exist in the first place - Wiktionary a multi-lingual free dictionary by Wikimedia (creators of Wikipedia). The word catalog and meanings in Vedaist are from Wiktionary, and just like Wikipedia is an amazing product of the internet.
Finally here are some screenshots-
Thoughts and challenges
Software Engineering is my core area of expertise and so building the actual product is possibly the simplest part for me. I’ve made a career of shipping (ship early and ship often) software from vague ideas and in this case I had a fairly good idea of what I need in various stages!
Most of my career has been in complex distributed enterprise services. Those have massive scale and technical challenges but miss a human connection.
Building consumer products is much more engaging since you can see others interacting with your work and how it actually helps them. Vedaist has been even more rewarding for me since my kids have been watching me build it day after day. Obviously they have been part of the usability testing cohort.Mobile apps are complex. The architectural constraints are different compared to server applications but in no way are they simple. Ultimately building any product of sufficiently high quality is hard.
How apps should be monetized for the value created is a complex topic.
On the bright side I now have enough working experience on swift for my future blog on programming languages.Another issue that I’m still thinking about is the role of senior architects vs engineers in the software industry. I’ve seen some architects discontinue writing any code as they get more senior. Architecting solutions for me has always been informed by building and vice-versa.
I think that more students and companies should start investing in ethics courses. I vacillate between liberal and conservative ideas based on the issue, but I saw many dark design patterns in the various apps that I’ve been using recently… which was one of the factors for me to work on this project. My ideas on “Focus mode” is something that I should write about in the future.
Try it
The holy grail for any idea is to achieve product-market fit. Ideas are worthless by themselves and the only way to validate it is to get real users to use your working product.
It’s time to put my claims to the test. Give vedaist a try if you use an iPhone or Android. Send me any feedback (especially if it does not meet your expectations) and share along. This is going to be a long journey for me … and hopefully you enjoy Vedaist as much as I do.
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updated on Sept 17 with link to android playstore.
Sorry, I can't try your app - Android. Are you going to blog about the backend for your app? I'm curious to hear about how you made tradeoffs on using off-the-shelf "mega services" versus rolling your own?
Since you mentioned dark design patterns, I guess you've already seen https://www.darkpatterns.org and https://www.nytimes.com/2021/04/30/opinion/dark-pattern-internet-ecommerce-regulation.html
Good app Rahul. Definitely would try it out.
Coincidentally I have been learning Swift and SwiftUI recently 😃
Looking forward to your thoughts on the language