Joy Labs
This is a place where we experiment. We test strategies for pre-launch marketing, we play with onboarding processes, and we explore creative ways to embed virality so that an app markets itself.
In part because of our origin story, it’s important for us to keep ourselves in our clients’ shoes.
Through Joy Labs, we build our own ideas and act as our own client. This allows us to note any ways we can improve the WLCM experience and make upgrades. And critically, it ensures that we don’t lose sight of your stakes and your perspectives as they come to bear on the full process of app invention and launch, including and beyond the actual software.
By building our own apps, we stay keenly aware of all the pieces that need to come together to make a product successful, not just from the point of view of an experienced practitioner, but from the point of view of someone who has something to lose if we’re wrong. By getting out of the armchair and upping the ante on the work, we push ourselves to test, learn and grow.
Joy Labs is a place where we experiment. We test strategies for pre-launch marketing, we play with onboarding processes, and we explore creative ways to embed virality so that an app markets itself. We also push the envelope with interaction design. We explore topics we find interesting and challenging and that we feel are vital to an app’s success.
At WLCM, we don’t just want to build your app. We want your app to succeed.
Who Farted?!
By creating apps that are fun for us and for others, we make joy in the work, through it. We’ve always been intentional about taking on projects that support non-profits and serve the underserved. As an American-Ukrainian team now living in a post-Russian-invasion world, our definition of what’s good for society has expanded a bit to include… pure joy.
When the world is literally crumbling, we have to turn our faces to the light somehow. We can’t survive otherwise. With Who Farted?!, we’re creating lightness. For ourselves, for our toddlers, and, hopefully, for you.
Our Founder discussed the project with Inc. magazine, who featured the story of Who Farted?! on the front page of their website on the first anniversary of the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
The App
A lactose intolerant seal, farting aliens, spinning socks — Who Farted?! is a storybook app featuring characters and tales designed to make your kiddo laugh out loud.
Read by an Emmy Award-winning cast of comedians and actors, including Mandy Patinkin, Rebecca Gayhart, and Dan Bucatinsky, these rhyming stories aim to transport and thoroughly entertain.
That Thing I Told You About (TYA)
That Thing I Told You About is a place to make and share your lists of favorite things, and it’s the place to get recommendations you trust from people like you. It’s an ambitious project that we’re building because we want to use it ourselves, and also because of the myriad and varied challenges it presents. Among them:
TYA relies on the network effect, a notorious challenge for any app. Until a big enough community joins, its value to you is virtually zero. The app needs to become habituated behavior. It must be the place where you talk to your friends about recommendations. TYA needs to provide valuable discovery. It’s not enough to discover within your existing network; the app needs to successfully matchmake so you can find friends you haven’t met yet, and it needs to skillfully filter out the people and things that aren’t going to be a good fit for you – a review is only trustworthy if the person who wrote it is like you.
This nice little cornucopia of challenges covers some of the toughest hurdles apps need to jump in order to succeed. In the process of tackling them, we’re testing, learning, and bringing back more strategic knowledge to our clients’ projects.
The App
That Thing I Told You About (TYA) is a place for you and your people to make and share lists of your favorite things. It’s the place you go to discover new products.
You can ask your people, you can find other people like you, and you can trust the reviews.
TYA is currently in beta, and we’d love for you to join us.