VocaSmart part 1
Anyone who has worked on their own hobby projects knows how hard it is to bring them to completion. Most remain unfinished and end up somewhere in the depths of GitHub (or never even leave the local disk), not necessarily because they were bad ideas. That's why I recommend team projects - you don't have to handle everything yourself, everyone has their specialty and can do what they enjoy - this probably reduces the chance of abandoning such a project.
Team project
The VocaSmart app is being developed by a small team. The original concept was learning English using flashcards, a spaced-repetition algorithm, and generative AI, but between the first production version and the current release, we took about a year-long break from updates.
Why such a long break from updates? You could say the app and its concept were "maturing." We completely changed the UI, added new game modes, and the ability to learn languages other than English.
Additionally, you need to somehow retain users in the app, and interesting and diverse game modes plus daily notifications still aren't enough to make most users come back to the app - you need gamification, leveling, XP = dopamine delivery mechanisms.
VocaSmart 2.0 will be a complete application where a user wanting to learn a foreign language will have plenty to choose from and will be constantly motivated to learn!
What counts as success for such a project?
Of course, I'm speaking for myself, how I perceive it - success will be bringing the project to a "satisfactory state" - this is obviously a relative concept. I wanted to write "to the end" but that's not the best term either because app development might not end anytime soon. But generally yes - "satisfactory state" - where firstly, I as a developer feel that the app can already deliver real value to someone (a learning tool or even a short game for entertainment while waiting in line somewhere), and secondly, when I look at the app I think "well, quite a few features have accumulated and there's actually stuff to do, I guess it's not bad"
Where can I download the app?
I encourage you to test it and send any feedback to my email Contact me