Word Vault

Never Forget a Word Again

Inspiration

As someone who reads a lot of books on my phone, I encounter many new words. And I found that whilst I could easily look up a word using Apple's lookup feature, I'd end up forgetting the definition soon after. So, I realised that to help me retain vocabulary, I needed a way to easily look up and save words.

What it does

Word Vault is a dictionary app that helps you stop forgetting new words by easily allowing you to look up words in 3 main ways: searching in the main app, sharing a word from another app using the Share Extension, and running a Siri Shortcut (this is easiest when you add it to the Control Centre). You can then easily save the words you search, which adds them to your practice sessions, so you can practice them to embed them into your memory. The app also tracks every word you search and provides analytics for your search history.

How I built it

The app's development went through three main iterations. First, I built a proof of concept MVP, where I just determined whether it was even possible to build the app. After I proved it was, I then built the MVP 2.0, which was a polished version suitable for use. I then added Revenue Cat's SDK and sent the app off to beta testers on TestFlight. I then implemented their feedback and worked on some finishing touches, like backend security and testing, to create the app that I published to the App Store.

Challenges I ran into

As the app consists of three main parts, sometimes if I looked up or saved a word in an extension, it wouldn't be present in the other extension or the main app. So I needed to synchronise the data across all my targets to provide a seamless experience for users.

Another challenge I ran into was processing the dictionary data. I am grateful that Wiktionary provides a dictionary. However, I was unable to add the raw data to my app, as it wasn't formatted for my use case. So I needed to restructure the data to enable easy lookups, caching and manipulation.

Accomplishments that I am proud of

I am proud to have published the app to the App Store after over six months of building!

What I learned

Perfection is the enemy of good. I realised very quickly that to build my MVP, I needed to focus on the larger picture and not obsess over small details, based on my assumptions about what users would want, as my goal was to build out the core idea.