For April, I decided to go with the flow of where my attention seems to be drawnto most - COVID-19, and to address it directly by making products with altruistic abandon. It feels cringe-y every time I say that word “altruism”, but it pairs well with April, so…

Looking back, it’s crazy how productive the month had been. I went from bored to swamped, but in a good way. I realised how I tend to create my way out of a crisis. If I include the stuff I did in March - Tools For COVID19, Sweet Jam Sites COVID-19 - that’s altogether 7 products in just slightly over 1 month! For any other month this would already be a win. But to top that, this is in stark contrast to all the material and emotional challenges of living under lockdown, plus caring for a newborn. Now that’s f**king awesome by any standards. Humblebrag, I know, but hey, I think you get free pass if you’re creating like it’s therapy.  

So, wrapping up the month’s work:

? Dabao Dash - a self-help community board of offers and requests, matching hawkers and small F&Bs with delivery riders affected. This by far had been a rocket ship since launched on 9 Apr - 8.2k users, 9.9k sessions, 15k page views, over 170 total offers+requests. Newspaper journalists asked for interviews. I even applied for a $20k grant from a public institution to build more features for it. Looks like I hit on something here, as I seldom had such performance on my products, not even the ones that pay. 

?‍♂️ Majulah Belanja - another community board, but for donations-in-kind to help our migrant worker population in Singapore. They are going through a lot right now as huge infection hotspots had emerged in their work dormitories. 2.2k users, 5.2k page views. Not bad at all.

?‍? VisualAid - I was part of a group of designers who wanted to help healthcare workers communicate better with migrant worker patients. We did some guerilla field research, prototyped and did up a bunch of visual aids like illustrated posters and flash cards of important words to bridge the language gap. The website is still in the works for now, but I’m pretty proud of this product as it’s tangible, physical, and close to what the healthcare workers need.

? COVID Hiring - someone approached me (after seeing my free offer on Sweet Jam Sites) to create a ‘reverse job board’ website for him to help freelancers affected by the pandemic, so I did. It’s such a good idea, I might just borrow that and create another one for Singapore.

? WASH in SE Asia COVID Singapore survey website - an NGO approached me again after seeing my offer on Sweet Jam Sites, so I quickly made a website for their COVID survey site.

? Organised my first ever giveaway for Keto List. Brought in many new followers and users.

? FINALLY completed my 12 products challenge called #1mvp1month that started waaay back in 2018. Didn’t complete it in 12 months, but poetic full circle at least, to have completed all 12 now, of all times.

And there’s still more to come - another resource website for migrant workers, an offer by a philanthropic group to apply for a grant to update my old chat bot project, a market list website for online grocery delivery, a Product Hunt site for pandemic gear, a tech for good volunteering job board…… I brainstormed so many ideas for April, it can keep me going for a while.

If March was a disaster, then April is a f**king miracle.

Amen.