My own product
Focusverse
A study app that runs in your browser. Live since spring 2025, free, and mine from the roadmap down to the code. This is the short version of how it got here.
- Role
- Product, design and code
- Started
- April 2025
- Built with
- React, Tailwind CSS, Figma
- Runs in
- The browser, best on a laptop
- people focusing at once on a normal day
- 20 or more
- user requests I have turned into features
- 8
- locations across ten universes
- ~500
01
Why I started
I work best with a good background and some instrumental music, and some cozy rain or a fireplace on days when that helps. The sites that did the atmosphere well had productivity features that broke. The ones with a solid system looked like a spreadsheet. This kept me switching tabs all day.
So I went through what existed. Pomofocus had the timer right and no atmosphere at all. LifeAt put the basics behind a paywall on day one. StudyStream had the people but nowhere to be. Then Studyverse, the one that came closest, shut down, and reading what its users said they missed made it clear the gap was real and fairly specific.
02
The version I threw away
The first build was called FocusHub. A timer and a task list on a dark page. It worked fine, and it was exactly the kind of tool I had been trying to get away from. The environment had quietly become a background colour. I stopped adding to it and started again, this time with the room as the product rather than the decoration.
03
What I decided, and what it cost
-
Free, with no account in the way
You can be in a session seconds after landing on the site. Accounts arrived a year later and are still optional. They add cloud sync, statistics and a profile. Nothing the base app needs to work sits behind them.
What it costs: no revenue and less data logging.
-
The interface hides itself
Panels are translucent and everything folds down to small buttons. Settings show up when you go looking for them, not before.
What it costs: new features are harder to find, so anything I add has to earn its place on screen.
-
Focus and break are different places
Focus locations stay still and quiet. Break locations are allowed to be busy, so a break feels like one instead of like the same screen with a different number on the timer.
What it costs: every location has to be sorted and the picker gained one more thing to explain.
-
Requests have to earn their place
Requests land on a roadmap anyone can read, sorted into what I'm working on next, what I'm dreaming about, and what has shipped. Eight have made it into the app so far.
What it costs: saying maybe in public means people can hold me to it later.
04
Requests, and what I did with them
Built
- Birdsong
- A centred timer
- Your own music streams
- A Lord of the Rings universe
- Public shared rooms
- A floating focus window
- Night sounds
- Next week in the week planner
Not built, yet
- A jazz cafe, being built now
- Cameras, for people who want to share a desk
- Voice chat, as long as it stays optional
05
How it grew
- Spring 2025
- The first focus space. Full page video locations, a universe picker, a timer.
- Late 2025
- Music and soundscapes, the task list, more universes.
- Early 2026
- Shared sessions, a quiet sense of who else is around, the first statistics.
- Spring 2026
- Accounts and cloud sync, avatars, profiles, the community directory.
- Summer 2026
- Notepad, draggable tasks, a week planner, guided and public rooms, chat, a floating focus window.
- August 2026
- A pass over the interface, tidying up what the previous months had piled on.
- Fall 2026
- Chat reactions and message editing, Community Rooms, night forest and wind sounds, last and next week in the week planner.
06
What I still don't know
There are people in Focusverse most of the day now and the feedback form is being used, so whether anyone wants this is no longer the question. What I don't have yet is a proper study. I know what people ask for. I know much less about what they do once they are in there, especially the ones who never sign in.
In the app itself, next up are more locations and seasonal touches, the jazz cafe, and more ways to study together. Further out are things like gentle break reminders, and optional cameras and voice chat. The whole list is on the public roadmap.