Problem: Nobody likes being unproductive, but having to navigate between multitudes of disjointed productivity systems can, ironically enough, end up doing even more harm than good to a well-structured day. It seems that productivity today is at an all-time low, with the average American spending over 1300 hours a year on social media alone. A cohesive software solution for those looking for an easy fix to their personal productivity issues would be a massive boom in today’s world, where people are fighting to pull themselves out of the attention market.
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Solution: A business centered around redesigning software experience of phones to be productive in nature, rather than using downloading 3rd party apps that fight against the inherent designs of their platforms. Launchers are tools that can help do that exactly that by giving you control over every screen handled by the Android operating system, and its respective features like colors, icons, and menus. The core features of the software would be simple integration between the entire ecosystem of productivity: To-do lists, calendars, self-control systems, and habit trackers. While all of these are compelling reasons for making a ground up phone launcher implementation, I believe the strongest case for it lies within self-control apps. The inherent restrictions due to security on these types of apps often limit their implementations, meaning that those looking for serious solutions to the purposeful addictiveness of social media must turn to launchers. While there are competitors in this market, their implementation is still widely imperfect. Below, I highlight my experience after I tried out the only true productivity launcher I could find (Minimalist Phone).
Some of my main critiques are as follows:
Used so much memory that my alarm wouldn’t ring again after snooze
Non-appealing UI, even for a minimalist phone
Minimal customization on some settings
Fails to capitalize upon synchronization with productivity apps
Won’t carry over to my laptop
Positive takeaways to keep in mind:
Retains functionality while making my phone boring enough not to abuse
Hidden apps feature works wonderfully
The specific black and white apps feature, although tricky to set up, is genius
Still less cheap than the viral kale vs. cocaine phone method
Though, as the founder of the method rightfully points out on X, the efforts to make phones more productive rather than just outright not using them are well worth it in order to “access to the best technology of this century so far.”
Personal productivity is a budding market, usually being within the edges of the top 10 most popular app store categories for the Google Play Store, the primary market since iPhones can’t use custom launchers by default. Though, that might change with Europe’s new regulationsregarding sideloading, but I wouldn’t hold my breath. And while launchers are an even smaller subsection of the overall Android app market, they certainly have potential for growth. The most popular launcher, more focused on customization than productivity, LaunchEx, has over a 100 million downloads. That is over 3 times the current user base of Notion, a note-taking productivity business that has proven you don’t necessarily need to be a social media giant with billions of users to be a billion-dollar startup.
Monetization: A freemium subscription based model with varying tiers that unlock features such cross-platform synchronization, advanced productivity tools, and customization options
Contributed by: David Salinas