Back in my corporate days, I didn’t always give feedback the attention it deserves. But building poketto.me as a solo endeavour has reminded me just how crucial it really is.
Working alone has its perks: you can move fast, make bold decisions, and follow your own vision. But it also comes with pitfalls:
➡️ You get blindsided by your own past choices
➡️ You can waste time iterating on suboptimal ideas
➡️ You miss what’s obvious to others
Fortunately, I’ve had some amazing people provide feedback along the way:
📰 A thoughtful tech journalist who’s considering writing about poketto.me shared early impressions—and in doing so, surfaced UX issues I was totally blind to. The tagging dialog? Made perfect sense to me—but wasn’t intuitive at all to fresh eyes.
📱 Florian Mayr, the first real power user of the Android app, flagged a ton of tiny mobile usability quirks I’d never have noticed on my own. Total gold.
💡 Reinhold Degenfellner brought in deep, critical thinking on the entire project. Several of his ideas are now shaping new features that go way beyond the original “Pocket clone” concept.
*Takeaway:* Even (especially!) for small, indie projects: get feedback early. Get it often. Don’t get stuck in your own head.