Episode Details

This story was originally published on HackerNoon at: https://hackernoon.com/i-built-a-sleep-app-for-myself-my-first-review-was-1-star.
I built Sleep Island to fade out sleep sounds after I fall asleep. A 1-star review pushed it toward snore recording and sleep reports.
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This story was written by: @ethan. Learn more about this writer by checking @ethan's about page, and for more stories, please visit hackernoon.com.

I built a small iOS app because fixed sleep timers never worked for me. It started as a simple “play sounds, detect sleep, fade out” tool. Then my first App Store review was 1 star because the app did not record snoring, so I added snore and sleep-talk recording. The biggest lesson: small personal problems can become real products when you use them yourself and listen carefully to blunt feedback.