Feature image: Start of the college year in Montpellier, France.
What can I create that’s unique? That stands out for the fact that it was created. That’s not industrially shiny, but the obvious creation of a work of love.
At the company I run called Bitesize Irish Gaelic, we have that tension. We are what you could call handmade, organic, created with our users, get-it-out-there, create, make more. Yes, it’s digital, and that’s a tension in itself. The service is a way to find a true sense of belonging, by expressing yourself through Ireland’s native language, for those outside of Ireland.
Bitesize is the opposite to venture-funded industrially-made shiny software. Click click swipe, Like, Emoji, Zoom.
The tension is that Bitesize is a Wabi-Sabi organism, where I’ve tried to steer its design towards industrial shininess (without even realising), and failing at it because Bitesize can only pretend to be what only a company with full-time top-notch designers on staff can achieve.
My point isn’t to avoid creating apps with a Silicon Valley gloss to them.
My point to embrace the “smudgy bits” of creations that come from you.