Building Tools for Family: When "Users" Have Names

Someone I love missed three assignments in their first semester of college.

Not because they didn't care. Not because they didn't try. This young adult has autism and ADHD. They don't process syllabi the way neurotypical students do. A wall of text with dates scattered across five pages doesn't become a mental calendar. It becomes noise.

I tried the apps. Reminders. Calendar sync. Task managers with notifications. Nothing stuck.

So I built something that would.

The Problem with "Universal" Tools

Most productivity apps assume a neurotypical brain. They assume you can read a list and remember it exists. That a notification will prompt action instead of anxiety. That "just add it to your calendar" is a helpful suggestion.

For them, reminders get dismissed without processing. Calendars become visual clutter. To-do apps require the executive function they're supposed to support.

I know this person responds to gamification. That they need escalating urgency, not just notifications. That they can photograph a syllabus but won't manually type due dates. That rewards for completion work better than guilt about forgetting.

No app on the market knew any of that. But I did.

Signal: Executive Function Support

Signal is a mobile-first app that helps a neurodivergent college student manage school assignments. Here's what makes it work:

None of these features are revolutionary on their own. The magic is in the combination — and in building them for exactly one person whose brain I understand intimately.

Rythm Home: Family Household Management

Signal was for one family member. But household chaos affects all of us.

Rythm Home is the house management system I built for our whole family. Multi-user task tracking, inventory management, shopping lists, travel coordination. It knows who's responsible for what, when things were last done, and what's coming up.

Five family accounts. Everyone sees their tasks. I see everything.

Could we have used Notion? Probably. But Notion doesn't know our house has three floors or that we have specific inventory zones. It doesn't generate shopping lists based on what's running low. It doesn't track task completion patterns and suggest better schedules.

Rythm Home does all of that because I built it for us.

Building for People vs Building for "Users"

Twenty years of product management taught me to think about personas. Fictional composites. "Sarah, 35, works in marketing, needs efficiency."

Building for family is different. These aren't personas. They're real people I love — one who forgets to eat when hyperfocused, another who needs specific notification timing, a five-year-old who needs everything to be simple.

You can't A/B test with three users. You can't optimize for conversion rates. You just watch people you love use the thing you built, and you iterate based on whether it actually helps.

What Building for Family Taught Me

You Can Build This Too

I'm not a developer. I'm a product person who learned to collaborate with AI to build real software. The tools to build personalized solutions for the people you love are more accessible than ever.

Start with a problem you understand deeply. Someone whose needs you know intimately. Build the smallest thing that might help. Watch what happens. Iterate.

You don't need to launch. You don't need users. You just need to make something that works for someone who matters.