Darao

Your creative dumping ground - Darao is a digital notebook cum moodboard that allows you to build on the inspiration in your camera roll and stay creative in small pockets of time.

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About Darao

I built Darao as a way to keep working on my creative projects, in small pockets of time, while on the move.

As a result, Darao is an app for busy professionals who want to create more in their free time, but find it hard to know where to start. The app helps keep you warmed up creatively in small pockets of time, so that when a bigger chunk of time presents itself, you know exactly where to start.

Darao does this in 3 ways:

  1. Piles: a visual representation of what you're working towards, built by sorting through your own photos, using an intuitive Instagram feed style scroll interface
  2. Notes: ideas and thoughts you can jot down as notes/comments attached to the inspiring photo/video itself, while scrolling through, to build on your thinking
  3. Logs: attached to each Pile, this is a place to dump your thoughts and worries as you go through the creative process, giving you the space to journal and coach yourself through the uncertain and difficult parts of the creative journey e.g. when you're stuck or coming back after a break

Of course, life is the ultimate creative process, so we also recommend creating a new Pile whenever you feel like you’re entering a new season of your life. This allows you to stay creative even before you have a specific idea.

Monetization

Darao is free to use. Premium today is customisation through stickers next to certain components: since the closest real-world analogue is a notebook, and notebook lovers care about making it feel like theirs.

Next: more Piles beyond the free limit for people with a growing history, and additional features such as cross-device support.

Process

Inspiration

I was inspired to build Darao when I noticed that people often revert to their photos app in moments where they want to have something to do, but don't have network (e.g on the tube).

I had been wanting to find a way to build something digital and easy to access that gave me the same feeling as the feeling I get when I sit down to work on a project (cosy, focused, curious), so I was intrigued to see if this insight could be an entry point for this.

I paid more attention the next time I was on my photos app and noticed that mine is full of things that inspire me: photos, screenshots and clips I saved with some thought or action in mind. But they're scattered between pictures of daily life. Each time I stumbled on one I got a spark of excitement, then the moment passed, because a camera roll isn't built to help you develop a thought. I ended up more frustrated at my lack of progress.

So this specific point of friction became the jumping off point for what Darao might look like.

How we built it

Darao has been built slowly, through iteration with users, and in close collaboration with AI.

I was learning JavaScript and React Native as I went, so I started tiny: a photo-swiping app, to get comfortable with hooks, components and screens.

With a real photo gallery behind it, I realised swiping felt taxing on my brain. Because I'd taken time to understand the code, I swapped the interface from swiping to scrolling in a single prompt. That change made the Piles feel like mine. Then I felt stuck in my thinking, with no room to develop ideas, which is how Logs were born.

Darao references your photos rather than copying them, so I spent several iterations on performance so older photos and large libraries load without friction. Everything runs on-device and offline to make sure to cater to the specific moments of the day users are likely to use it, during a commute, when network might be limited.

I also started user interviews from the very first week to get a sense of how other people used their native gallery apps and started noticing some strong common themes which ended up informing features on the app, from the first 5 interviews. This continued throughout the build, as I started to talk to users with a more and more fleshed out app.

Challenges we ran into

  • Starting from a feeling, not a defined problem. The path was unpredictable, but keeping the feeling as the north star let users shape a product better than the one I'd have designed on day 1.
  • Being a solo builder. After years in large teams, momentum was hard to find. It pushed me to share early and often, which brought in ideas I'd never have had alone.
  • Performance given that Darao currently does not duplicate the data.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

  • This is my first native app so deploying it to the App Store felt like a big win!
  • Iterating fast and working through 5 releases in 3 weeks, following the initial release
  • Getting better at talking to people about what I'm working on, even before I have fully polished the product and how I present it, to get feedback and ideas!

What we learned

  • Almost everything here was new to me: design patterns, deployment, privacy policies, event tracking.
  • Talking to even a few users gives surprisingly clear signals on what delights them.
  • Building through conversations surfaces details no one would think of alone.

What's next for Darao

  • Getting involved in creative movements like Peachtober, Inktober and NaNoWriMo, so new features are shaped by what people there actually want
  • Optional cloud backup, with offline-first remaining the default
  • More thorough automated tests

Award Categories

  • #BuildinPublic Award
  • RevenueCat Design Award

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