010 Slow App: A Creative Experience

In a world that always pushes us to move faster, slowing down can be an edge.

The world seems to keep speeding up: from the news to our social feeds, from the expectations at work to the pace at which technology advances. We are already used to being in a state of constant change, but for a few years now, even the rate of change is constantly increasing. And it takes a toll.

If you follow the AI-related news even sporadically, you get a sense of the impact this fast-forward pace has. We don’t get a chance to experiment with one version of one tool, be amazed by it, or challenge it, or understand how it can work for us before the next latest-and-greatest model floods the internet and overwhelms us with new capabilities.

I strongly believe that the ever-growing pace we live by is ineffective. Even if the metrics are all calibrated to favor this endless acceleration, I’m not sure any of them really measure value in its deepest sense. Yes, companies make more money, applications have more users, and we have more content pushed to us than we can ever consume. But this is all fictional value. AI, for example, is on a hyper-growth trajectory, yet the vortex we are all in prevents us from benefiting from these advances. We don’t let AI deeply affect us in a positive way. When everything moves at the speed of light, we cannot grow as individuals, as a community, and as a society.

This fast-paced reality has a severe impact on our creativity. To be creative we must slow down.

When we rush forward, we don’t have time to look sideways. When we are hyper-active, we don’t get a chance to ask questions. When everything changes so fast, we don’t have the capacity to imagine.

Our brain is wired to be creative. But the human brain was not designed for the pace we are currently living at. If you have a problem you need to solve, if you’re looking for the next big idea, or if you just wish to create something, you can’t rush it. You need to slow down and allow your mind to explore, wonder, and envision a reshaped reality.

The Slow App experience is a thought experiment. It might not change your life, but it will open your mind to the possibility of doing things differently — of doing things more slowly.

We always look for apps that help us be more productive and do things faster. With the Slow App experience, we’re going to invent an app that does the complete opposite — an app that helps us do things slower. How? Well, that’s exactly the creative challenge you have to crack.

Here’s what I came up with: The Quill app.

Quill is a simple word processor. But instead of helping you type faster and get it over with, Quill is inspired by the slow experience of writing using… well, a quill. As you use it to capture your thoughts, you will notice quite a delay, because writing with a quill takes time. Every now and then, the slow flow of writing halts for a few seconds because the quill has to be dipped in ink. And if you wish to delete something, you can’t just use backspace. Instead, you have to “smudge” the last characters with your mouse cursor.

Is that efficient? Not at all. Is this the tool I use to write this post? Well, no. But this little exercise made me think: Do I lose something by typing fast? Do I miss something by being able to relentlessly type, delete, and revise with equal efficiency? Does that make me think less of what I want to say?

Now, it’s your turn. Take some time to think about something you rush through and how a strange app like the one I imagined could slow you down. You can build a demo version of the app using Claude or similar tools. Alternatively, sketch it on paper and describe its dynamics. If anything, that’s the slower way to design an app — and that in itself will be a revealing experience.