A good feeling about this
I think it’s important to say this out loud. People are different. Not in the obvious ways, like how tall you are, what you look like, how you style your hair, or what kind of shoes you wear. That stuff plays a part, sure. But it’s not the whole thing. It’s not even most of it.
What makes you different from everyone else is in your head. In how you think. In how your brain handles things. In what you notice. What you ignore. What makes you pause for a second and think.
You could take two people who dress the same, look the same, talk the same. Sit them in a room. Ask them both how they’d add two numbers in their head. Even something simple. A clean little math problem. What you’d get back is how they’d explain it, how they’d show it. And it'll never be the same. One of them will round the numbers. The other will count backwards. Someone will reach for pen and paper. Someone will see the answer in their mind like it’s written on a wall. Different methods. Same result.
And that’s just addition. Think about that. Something so basic. So shared. So taught.
Still different.
So now take that and apply it to everything else. The way someone handles stress. The way they fall in love. What they want out of their life. What makes them cry. What makes them bored. What they’ll never admit to anyone, even when it eats them alive.
No one thinks like you. And no one feels like you either.
This is the one thing we all have in common. Feeling. Everyone feels. Everyone sees something and reacts. A photo. A voice. A short sentence that reminds you of someone you miss. Feelings arrive. Whether you want them to or not.
But the way you feel is yours. Nobody else’s.
You can show someone a song you love. They’ll listen. They’ll like it. They’ll say it made them feel something too. But it’s not the same thing you felt. It can’t be. You are not them. They are not you.
And that’s not bad. That’s not a flaw. That’s the point.
This difference in emotion is what separates us. But it also connects us. We try to describe our feelings. We try to understand others. But we’ll never get it exactly right. And still, we keep trying.
Put those thoughts and feelings together, and what you get is a personality. Yours. One of one.
And what do we do with it? We pour it into everything. The way we talk. The way we act. The things we make. Even when we’re not trying, it shows up. And when we are trying? That’s when the good stuff happens.
But here’s the problem.
Modern software, the kind you use every day, the kind that’s on your phone right now, does not care about this. It doesn’t care how you think. Or how you feel. Or how you’re different from the next person. It’s not made to spark anything inside you. It’s made to work. To behave. To feel familiar. To feel acceptable. That’s it.
It’s all starting to look the same. Same shapes. Same fonts. Same gradients. Same buttons. Designed not to move you. Designed to keep you moving. Designed to get out of your way. Designed to make you stop caring.
And maybe that’s the scariest part. That it works. That we’ve all agreed to keep using the same lifeless tools because they’re good enough.
There’s a reason it’s like this. The companies who make our devices want everything to follow their rules. And it’s not just suggested. It’s expected. So, if you’re building something, you fall in line. You play it safe. You color inside the lines. Because anything else starts to feel wrong.
But safe is boring. Predictable is boring. Conforming is boring. And most software today feels like a copy of a copy of a copy. Built for scale. Not for people.
Now, making something that breaks from all that is hard. Not just technically. Emotionally. You worry it’ll be too weird. Too loud. Too different. People might not get it. They might laugh. They might ignore it. And that fear stops a lot of things from ever being made.
But some people still try.
And once in a while, you’ll find something that works the way you expect it to, but still surprises you. A little detail. A small moment. Something that didn’t need to be there, but is. That’s when you feel it. That’s when you remember that someone made this. Not a system. Not a pattern. A person.
That’s what we want to make. Software that doesn’t just help you do something, but makes you feel something while you’re doing it. Not in a gimmicky way. Not in a “look how different we are” way. Just in a way that feels a little more alive.
We don’t want to throw out the rules. We just want to leave space between them. Enough room to breathe. Enough room for people to show up in the things they build.
Most of what you use now does its job. But it doesn’t make you care. And maybe that’s fine for some things. But not for all of them. Not for the stuff you use every single day.
It doesn’t have to be massive. It doesn’t have to change your life. It just has to remind you that it was made with feeling.
That’s what we’re after.
Something that doesn’t hide who made it. Something that makes you want to stay for a little longer. Something that sticks in your head, not because it yelled, but because it whispered something that felt true.
Software, with a personality. Software, with a little bit of you in it. Software, that remembers how different we all are, and makes space for that.
Because that’s the part that matters.
And it always has.