After winning the WWDC’19 scholarship I’ve decided to fully commit to developing apps for Apple platforms. Ever since high school I was fascinated with the capabilities of natural language processing. The idea that we may interact with a machine using something so core to a human being as voice or text continues to amaze me.
I knew that whatever project I end up completing, it had to be powered by NLP. I’ve attended WWDC’19 thinking about an app I’ve internally called Calpiece - an all in one calendar, reminders and notes with natural language input as a primary method of interaction. After developing it for a while I couldn’t help but notice that it started to become a scaled-down version of a personal assistant like Siri. It didn’t feel unique, I myself didn’t see a reason why someone would use it over a preinstalled, system provided solution.
Scrambling for a new idea, I’ve once again asked myself the same questions. What app is missing from the App Store? What app can I make that I would enjoy developing and use myself?
At that time I have been attending personal therapy. I was really satisfied with the impact it had on my life, but few things about it were continuing to bother me. Being time-limited and so regularly scheduled, sessions with my psychologist felt quite disconnected from every other relationship I ever had. Fifty minutes, at the same time every week - there wasn’t much room for spontaneity. I couldn’t just call my therapist and say what had been occupying my mind. Feelings change and observations get forgotten over time.
Being a developer with so many incredible tools at my disposal, I've wanted to solve this problem by helping people capture whatever matters to them. That’s how Mindpiece came to be.