This autumn we will be giving buddhify a major new content refresh which will effectively double the amount of meditations available in the iOS app – while of course the Android version will launch with this new content. Currently the app has 42 meditations and when the new tracks are added, there will be 83…so that’s quite a big increase. And the good news is that if you already have buddhify 2 for iOS all these tracks will be added to the app for free because we’re more interested in rewarding our early adopter community and giving you as great an experience as possible.
All the tracks have been written and recorded and are now in the process of being edited and so now is a great time to tell you a little bit more about what is in store. When deciding on what new content to make, we’ve effectively had two type of information. The first is the enormous amount of data and analytics from the app which tells us which content is most popular (and least popular). And the second type of information is direct suggestions our users have sent through the app and other channels of what they’d like to see – and we’ve had over 2000 of these. Yes really.
From the data: the most (and least used) content
There are some very clear favourite sections on the app so far. These are (in order of usage):
- Going to Sleep
- Feeling Stressed
- Can’t Sleep
- Just Meditation I
- Being online
- Walking in city
- Just Meditation II
- Work break
- Waking up &
- Traveling
And the least popular content sections are:
- Exercising
- In the Park &
- In Nature
From our users: the most requested types of new content:
- Dealing with difficult emotions
- Working with pain or illness
- Household activities
- In the bath
- Coming home from work
What we’re doing with this information
The first and most obvious thing to do is to create more content for the existing popular sections, so you can expect several more tracks related to those top ten popular sections, with new tracks filling in the ‘gaps’ in those activity sections. So for those of you who’ve been using some of the same tracks over and over again – such as for sleep and work – then there are some fresh tunes coming!
And most critically we are creating three new sections: Difficult Emotions, Pain & Illness and At Home (with the latter containing meditations designed for bathroom and coming-home as well as household activities). And given that we are keeping the same overall shape of the content wheel that means making some space for three sections. And how we’re doing that is a) is taking out the Your Suggestions section since people can still email us through the app but we need that real estate that it’s taking up b) combining In the Park and In Nature since they are relatively similar and c) removing the Exercising section. And don’t worry, we will make the exercising tracks currently in the app available on our site for free for those of you who love using them.
And the rest
In a later post we shall talk about the suggestions in more detail and what didn’t make the cut and why – the suggestions we’ve had have been really appreciated and we’re sorry that we can’t include them all but to maintain a navigable and beautiful interface – which is something users really connect with – sometimes less is more…although 83 tracks is still a lot!
And the eagle-eyed amongst you will notice that there are 16 sections with room for 6 tracks in each section – meaning a possible total buddhify library of 96 tracks. And with the content refresh taking that the app up to 83 tracks that still means there will be space for 13 more tracks in the future.
Thanks again for your support and we look forward to sharing more about our ongoing developments and the ideas behind them again next week…including news on our new guest writers/voices.