What If Yibnib Left the Island?

I have an idea.

Unfortunately, this one involves Google Play, which means I currently know approximately three things about what I'm doing.

Last week it was probably two.

Progress.

For a while now, we've had a small sensory app called Yibnib running on the Internet Computer.

It started for a very simple reason: my son.

He's autistic and mostly non-verbal, and like many children he has particular things he enjoys doing. Spinning things. Popping things. Lining things up. Colours, sounds, repetition and predictable interactions.

So I wondered if I could build something for him.

Not because I'm an app developer.

I'm not.

I just had an idea.

Then Yibnib started growing

The first version was fairly simple, but we've continued adding things as we've learned.

There are spelling activities, fidgets, fireworks, drums, matching games, sorting, colouring, planets, animals and an I Feel board designed to give children another way of communicating simple needs and feelings.

Some ideas worked.

Some needed changing.

Some were considerably more exciting in my head than they were once they existed.

That's generally how this works.

The important part has always been watching how children actually interact with it rather than deciding beforehand how they're supposed to interact with it.

And now we're wondering whether Yibnib is ready for another experiment.

What if we put it on Google Play?

That's what I'm currently investigating.

Not launching.

Not announcing a release date.

Investigating.

There's quite a lot involved in turning what we've built into something suitable for the Google Play Store, and I'm slowly working my way through what that means.

But while I've been doing that, the idea has already started getting bigger.

Because apparently I can't leave anything alone.

Instead of simply rebuilding the existing app, we're looking at expanding its world.

Yibnib wouldn't be alone anymore.

We're currently considering four main themes built around characters from the wider Woven Roots world:

Yibnib.

Ladybug.

IC Bat.

Ferret.

Each could have its own collection of games and activities, its own personality and its own little corner of the app.

The aim isn't to cram as much stuff onto a screen as physically possible. Quite the opposite.

We want to keep the individual activities simple, predictable and easy to navigate, while giving children more things to explore over time.

But wouldn't Google Play mean charging for it?

Probably.

And this is where we've had to think a little harder.

The current Yibnib app is completely free.

We want it to stay completely free.

That's important to us.

A parent should still be able to discover Yibnib, open the free version and let their child use it without encountering a subscription, an advert or a screen demanding money before something interesting happens.

So the Google Play version wouldn't replace it.

It would exist alongside it.

Our current thinking is a small, one-off purchase for the expanded version.

No subscription.

No adverts.

No pop-ups trying to sell your child something.

You buy the app.

Your child gets the app.

Apparently this is unusual enough these days that it feels worth mentioning.

So why charge anything?

Because we'd like to see how far we can take this.

Apps cost money to develop. Artwork costs money. Better sound, testing, new activities and more polished features all take time and resources.

So far, we've mostly built Yibnib because we wanted to see whether we could.

A paid Google Play version creates another possibility.

What if Yibnib could start paying for Yibnib?

We're not talking about turning it into some enormous commercial machine.

If a relatively inexpensive app found an audience, even modest revenue could be put back into development.

More games.

Better artwork.

More testing.

More accessibility.

More time spent making the things that work better, and removing the things that don't.

And potentially, improvements that can find their way back into the free version too.

That seems like a circle worth investigating.

Then there's reach

This might actually be the bigger part of the experiment.

You can build the most useful thing in the world, but if nobody knows it exists, it mostly sits quietly in a corner being useful to nobody.

Google Play puts Yibnib somewhere very different.

It gives parents who have never heard of Woven Roots, the Internet Computer, our book, our community or any of the other strange things we've made a chance to simply stumble across an app.

Maybe they download it because their child likes sensory games.

Maybe their child likes Ferret.

Maybe they eventually discover there's a larger world behind those characters.

Or maybe they use the app and never care about any of that.

That's fine too.

We're casting lines at the moment.

We don't know which fish are interested in which bait yet.

And that's really the experiment

We don't know whether we'll do it.

That's what the investigation is for.

There are still things to learn about Google Play, development, costs, testing and how we would rebuild the app properly.

Maybe nobody downloads the paid version.

Maybe it finds an audience we couldn't reach before.

Maybe six months from now I'll discover I've misunderstood something fundamental about Android development and write another blog called:

Apparently That's Not How Apps Work.

All three outcomes would teach us something.

The free Yibnib isn't going anywhere.

If anything, the hope is that building something bigger elsewhere could eventually give us more resources to make the free version better too.

For now, we're learning.

We're drawing things.

We're asking questions.

We're moving pieces around and seeing what fits.

And somewhere along the way, Yibnib may be getting a few new friends.

Which is usually how these things start.

I have an idea.