Build Mobile Apps that Stand Out (Here's the Playbook)

On this episode I sit down with indie app builder and designer Chris Raroque to break down how solo developers can make apps that truly stand out in a world of “vibe-coded” clones. Chris walks through concrete examples from his own products, Ellie (planning), Luna (budgeting), and Amy (calorie tracking), showing how small details in animations, interactions, and haptics dramatically change how an app feels. We dig into mascots and illustrations, iconography and typography, widgets and Apple Watch apps, and the design resources Chris studies to sharpen his eye. The episode is a practical blueprint for turning AI-assisted prototypes into polished, premium-feeling apps that users remember and keep coming back to. Timestamps 00:00 – Intro 03:54 – Animation and Interactions 20:50 – Illustrations and Mascots 33:57 – Iconography and Typography 37:28 – Widgets 43:04 – Design Inspiration Resources Key Points In a world where anyone can ship an AI-generated app in 24 hours, polish and interaction design are the real differentiators. Thoughtful animations, micro-interactions, and haptics can be the difference between a tweet that flops and one that goes viral. Mascots and custom illustrations give apps a recognizable personality and can transform empty states and onboarding into memorable moments. Consistent iconography and basic typography choices have outsized impact on perceived quality, yet are often overlooked by “vibe-coded” apps. Home screen, lock screen, and watch widgets act as retention engines by giving apps constant real estate in users’ daily flows. Continuously studying well-designed apps and curated UI libraries sharpens design taste and makes it easier to brief AI tools effectively. The #1 tool to find startup ideas/trends - https://www.ideabrowser.com LCA helps Fortune 500s and fast-growing startups build their future - from Warner Music to Fortnite to Dropbox. We turn 'what if' into reality with AI, apps, and next-gen products https://latecheckout.agency/ The Vibe Marketer - Resources for people into vibe marketing/marketing with AI: thevibemarketer.com Startup Empire - get your free builders toolkit to build cashflowing business - https://startup-ideas-pod.link/startup-empire-toolkit Become a member - https://startup-ideas-pod.link/startup-empire FIND ME ON SOCIAL X/Twitter: https://twitter.com/gregisenberg Instagram: https://instagram.com/gregisenberg/ LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/gisenberg/ FIND CHRIS ON SOCIAL Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@raroque X/Twitter: https://x.com/raroque Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/chris.raroque/

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Greg Isenberg?

  There are a bunch of mobile apps making 10K a month, 50K a month, 100K a month. And I've noticed that there's something in common with all of them. They stand out. So today's episode is a free course. Yes, it's free. And today, we're going to teach you about animation, interactions, illustrations, iconography, widgets, and how you can come up with ideas to make a mobile app that is well-designed, that is going to stand out, that is scroll-stopping, so that your mobile app has the highest probability of success. Today's episode is with Chris. He's a single developer and he runs a portfolio of cash-filling mobile apps.

• 0:45Greg Isenberg?

  2026 is going to be a massive year for coming up with vibe-coded mobile apps. I want to see you build one that works.

• 1:02Greg Isenberg?

  Chris Farrokey, he's back on the pod. It's been too long. Chris, by the end of the episode, what are people going to get out of it?

• 1:09Speaker 01

  Yeah, first, thanks for having me, Greg. I think the main thing I want them to get out is how to make apps that stand out. Because right now, it's never been easier to make an app. There's hundreds of apps coming out every single day. And I want to teach people how to make something that stands out from the competition.

• 1:26Greg Isenberg?

  And we're not promising you're going to make 10K a month, 50K a month, 100K a month apps. But we are seeing an increase in the amount of people, solo builders, building these apps that are generating life-changing incomes. And I think one thing that they have in common is they do stand out in some way. So, Chris, can you commit to me that by the end of the episode, you'll give us a few tips and that people can take away, so that then, when they build their own apps, they have a higher chance of success?

• 1:57Speaker 01

  Yeah, 100%. I can do that.

• 1:59Greg Isenberg?

  All right, let's get into it.

• 2:01Speaker 01

  So I'll give a really quick intro, just so people have context. So my name is Chris. I build productivity apps. I document everything on YouTube. So I've taught people how to build apps. I've also built a bunch of different apps myself. The reason I'm sharing them is it's not to plug them on the channel or anything. I just want to show that these are pretty robust apps. And one of the common reactions I get from people when they see the apps is they're like, there's no way a solo developer built these things. Like, it has to be a team behind them. And I wanted to show you guys that it is definitely possible, but it is really only possible because of all the AI stuff that's happened. There is no physical way that a single person can develop and launch these and maintain them and keep growing them without the help of AI.

• 2:45Speaker 01

  So I just wanted to share this so you guys know that I do have experience. There's, I think, the biggest one right now is Ellie, which is a daily planning app. There's a couple thousand paid users that are using this. I think around somewhere between like 7,000 to 10,000 daily active that are using this. So it's a pretty substantial app. And then right now, my newest app is called Amy, which is a calorie tracking app. And the reason I want to bring this up is there are thousands of calorie tracking apps that are probably coming out every single month. And what's fascinating about this calorie tracking app is it has actually gotten a lot of attention recently, and that's why I've decided to build it. And the reason it's gotten attention is because I have crafted it in a way that it has really

• 3:29Speaker 01

  stood out among the calorie tracking apps. And we're going to go into some of the details of why I believe it stood out and how you can apply it to your own apps. And everything I'm about to share, even if you don't have a technical background, you can 100% apply every single one of these things with AI, with no coding experience. I'm very confident about that. It might just take you a little bit extra time to learn and grasp some of the concepts, but if you take the time, you'll be able to do this stuff, too. Let's go into how I make these apps that stand out.

• 4:00Speaker 01

  So the first, the first thing, there's a couple of things I'm going to share. But the very first one, which I think is probably one of the most important ones is animations and interactions. And this is stuff to make the app feel more dynamic because, again, coding has never been easier. Anyone can spin up an app in 24 hours and people are doing that. So that's why there's a flood of these apps. But a lot of them are very static. Like you can kind of tell that they're AI-generated, they're vibe-coded, just like you can tell when an image is, you know, an AI image or a video. Consumers and users are also starting to spot when something was just a 24-hour vibe-coded app. And so to stand out, and one of the tells of that is, or one of the

• 4:42Speaker 01

  tells that you can, one of the things that you can see that an app is probably vibe-coded is it's very static. It doesn't usually have a lot of life to it. And so a way to combat that is by having more animations and interactions. So I'll show you an example of what I mean by that.

• 4:57Greg Isenberg?

  Sam Altman, the co-founder of OpenAI, just said that it is the era of the idea guy and he is not wrong. I think that right now is an incredible time to be building a startup. And if you listen to this podcast, chances are you think so too. Now, I think that you can look at trends to basically figure out what are the startup ideas you should be building. So that's exactly why I built idea browser.com. Every single day, you're going to get a free startup idea in your inbox and it's all backed by high-quality data trends. How we do it, people always ask. We use AI agents to go and search, what are people looking for and what are they screaming for in terms of products

• 5:40Greg Isenberg?

  that you should be building? And then we hand it on a silver platter for you to go check out. We do have a few paid plans that, you know, take it to the next level, give you more ideas, give you more AI agents and more, almost like a chat GPT for ideas with it. But you can start for free, idea browser.com. And if you're listening to this, I highly recommend it.

• 6:04Speaker 01

  So this is my calorie tracking app, Amy. And the way it works is it's kind of like Apple Notes, where you just type what you ate, just like you would in Apple Notes. And then on the right, an AI is actually going to search and try to calculate the calories for you. And so, again, this is a very interesting take on calorie tracking. But when I tweeted out this concept video, it absolutely blew up. There were so many incredible designers who were praising it. There, I think, about 800 people joined a waitlist that I put up just from a single tweet. And that was after like 20 hours. I just forgot to put the waitlist up, like put the link for the waitlist. So even just on the tail end of that tweet, 800 people joined the waitlist, which again is kind of crazy for a calorie tracking app,

• 6:49Speaker 01

  because there are so many calorie tracking apps. It's like the stereotypical AI app to build right now. But this one did stand out, and I think it was, again, because it was a bit of a novel concept, this pattern of Apple Notes meets calorie tracking. But also, it's the animations and just the feel. When people saw this, it really did stand out to them. Now, I want to show you a concept that I tweeted the day before of the exact same app. This one had like 1,000 plus likes on it, like almost, I think, 300, 400,000 views. This one had like seven likes on it. It's the same exact thing that I tweeted the day before. Same concept, you know, you just type in like Apple Notes, you see the calories on the right.

• 7:32Speaker 01

  But there just wasn't as much attention to detail and the animations and interactions compared to the first one. So you can kind of spot the difference here. Like if we go back to the first one, you can see on the right, it was a very conscious decision to have it, say, searching. There's that little animation with the gradient. The sources come down. All of that stuff is available on the right. I just didn't take the extra time to do it. But here it just says calculating and it kind of shows. There is a little bit of an animation where it kind of subtly, there's like a little tint as well in the calculating, but it's just not as subtle, or it's just not as good. But that is the difference between, you know, a tweet that went pretty viral, from my perspective. Versus one that didn't, even though it's the same concept.

• 8:15Speaker 01

  And the difference between these two screens was about like, it was literally 24 hours, like less than 24 hours, actually. I think I made the changes in like, probably six hours. And again, just all vibe coded, not a single line of code was written for this. But I think this is a prime example to show what happens when you go an extra mile with the animations and interactions. Here's another one for my budgeting app, Luna. This is actually, oh, sorry.

• 8:40Greg Isenberg?

  Real quick on the calorie tracking one, I gotta be honest, Chris. When I saw you tweeted this and I saw that you were going to the calorie tracking space, I was like, don't do it, Chris, no. You know, having seen, you know, so much competition, you have the Cal AI guys doing like $3 million a month and so many people copying it. But then I watched the video and it was just a like, it was a, it was a breath of fresh air. That's what it was. And I think that that's sort of the lesson I, I took from this, which was, even if you have a highly competitive space, like hyper competitive, you picked literally the most competitive space. If you can figure out a new way from a UI and interaction perspective to showcase

• 9:26Greg Isenberg?

  that information and allow users to interact with it. Sometimes it's, you know, it can go viral, TikTok, X. And that essentially becomes your MVP. Like you don't even need to, like here you were actually building this app, but like you could have theoretically just, you know, created the video, posted on X, see if people liked it and then went build it, built it.

• 9:51Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, 100%. I think you said it correctly, like there's so much competition here. And this is a really good way to validate it. The funny story is this was actually me validating it. So I, I didn't even plan on building the app completely. I just kind of posted the concept. This was just me from actually a, a throwaway project in 24 hours for me to play with Apple's Liquid Glass. So I was kind of testing some things and it just so happened that people really resonated with it. Where I was like, okay, I guess I actually have to go build it. But yeah, that's exactly what I would do too, is just if you have concepts, just throw them out. You'll be so surprised. But the thing that does make things, these type of things stick out, it is the interactions, the animation, those details, that's what's sticking out because anyone can code now, like anyone can do it. So these details do matter. Do you want to move on to the next one? Yeah. Okay.

• 10:36Speaker 01

  So, the next thing is my budgeting app, Luna. Again, an insanely competitive space. The budget tracking space is so competitive, but people really liked the app that I built because I spent a lot of time on the interactions, the feel, just everything. I'll play a short clip of just some of the interactions throughout the app. But if you kind of get a sense that there is some motion here, it does feel a little bit different. I wish I could also convey there's a lot of haptics going on. So that's when the phone kind of subtly vibrates when you're clicking things. There's some page swipes there. All of this stuff is really minor. And even when you're watching this video, it probably just doesn't look like a lot. You're just probably thinking, oh, this just looks like an app.

• 11:18Speaker 01

  But I'll show some specific examples of the little details that went into this that I think really did add up and make for a better experience because people could have chosen another budgeting app. There's so many out there. But the reason people stick with this one and the things that I'm hearing over and again, over and over again from users is this just feels different. This doesn't feel like a normal budgeting app. So here's an example of the level of detail I'm talking about. And it's something that, again, you could totally just vibe code and do yourself. It'll just take a few minutes. So, one thing I did was when you look at a lot of normal Apple apps and just default apps, when you transition between pages, usually it's just kind of an instant transition. Like if you're on your Contacts app and you click between the pages, it's just going to instantly appear.

• 12:03Speaker 01

  Something that I wanted to do was add a little bit of motion when you're changing between the pages. So if you look closely here, you can see that the pages are actually swiping left and right. And it's really subtle. So a lot of users probably won't even notice that this is happening. I'll slow it down here so you can see exactly what I mean. But when you transition between the pages, there's this little bounce and the pages are kind of shifting over. That minor detail was something I saw in another app. I don't even remember what the app was. But I remember seeing that and I thought to myself, why does this just feel different? Like this doesn't, something about this is just so nice. And I spent a lot of time trying to figure it out. And then when I, I literally had to record my screen and slow it down. And I was like, Oh my God, the pages are transitioning. Like, that is amazing.

• 12:47Speaker 01

  So, this, this is just one example of something in this budgeting app that I did. There's so many other things that I did here that kind of add to create this experience. This is the level of detail I'm talking about, that I, I think anyone can do. And again, the way that I did this was, I literally just was dictating into Claude code and I, I just told it, "Hey, can you make it so when we transition between pages, have it slide over?" And then I just had to do a few more prompts to tweak it, to tweak the speed, the bounciness, but all in plain English. This is something you can totally do as long as you know how to describe it. Another example is dictation. So this is my daily planning app, Ellie. We actually have this AI assistant and you can actually dictate commands to it.

• 13:27Speaker 01

  And something that I did was I added the ability, I added a little bit more animation to the dictation. So now when you click this icon, you'll see that the, the background turns black and kind of expands from the microphone. The icon here actually rotates from the send button to the checkmark button. It's so small and subtle and like, it needs to be slowed down to see it. But again, it's one of those things that when a user sees it and feels it and then compares it against another app, they will, they might not know exactly what's happening, but they'll be like, "Why does this just feel better?" And again, you do this across a hundred different things in your app, it will add up. People will remember these things. They'll, they'll remember the feeling of using your app.

• 14:13Speaker 01

  And I think that, that this is just another example of a small detail. And same thing here. All I did to do this was I just told Claude code, "Can you make a black background come from the microphone icon? And can you rotate the send button into the checkmark?" I think this one was actually done completely in, in one shot, in one prompt. Like this one, I was actually very surprised that it got it. But it's because Claude code, for example, is very well trained at interactions and animations, which might surprise a lot of people. Like, it is very, very good at this stuff. Apple has a great animation library that's very well documented. And so it can actually do these custom animations if you know how to describe it.

• 14:51Greg Isenberg?

  I think, going back to that one, I think, uh, I think you're totally right on, in the animation. Like, it's smooth and it's fresh. But I also think there's a few other reasons why this resonate, this whole concept resonated with people. One is you created a mascot, which we're seeing that as a huge trend right now, which is like especially with AI first apps, like people see it as like an animal, a person, you know, someone they're talking to. So having that, you know, I think helped one. Two, it's voice first. It's a voice first app. And I think that's it. There's a huge opportunity

• 15:31Greg Isenberg?

  to look at, you know, I'm sure, I'm sure there's a ton of planning my day apps, but you know, how many of them are legitimately voice first? I don't know. So I think you did that. Well, third is you didn't, you didn't just have a text box that said, ask anything. You had contextual buttons, you know, to get people to actually engage. What's next? Plan my day, et cetera, et cetera. And I think that's important because when users are looking at a blank screen, they don't know what to do. They, there's a reason why Google has the I'm feeling lucky button on Google search, right? It's because they know that sometimes people show up to Google or whatever, and they're, and they just don't know what to type in.

• 16:15Speaker 01

  Yep. Yep. 100%. I think that's something that if you're especially someone who's kind of just vibe coding for the first time or making an app, it's one of those things that's really probably overlooked. Like they probably would not put the chips here or understand the significance of this. But yes, that this is like a lot of thought went into putting these chips here. When I coded this, a lot of thought even went into what specifically should I put in here? So I did study a ton of like ChatGPT, Claude, I studied all of these apps to figure out what are they doing? Why are they doing it? But yes, these details, like it does actually, not even for the feeling, it has a direct impact on the usage. Like people will probably click these things. And there's just a higher chance that they'll, they'll use it more properly if you

• 16:58Speaker 01

  have this. Yeah. Yeah. Anything else on this one, Greg?

• 17:03Speaker 01

  We're good. Cool. Okay. Sweet. Cool. The next thing, I'm glad you actually brought up the mascots and illustration because that is going to be the next thing we're going to talk about to make it really feel like a more premium and just a different app. But one, two more examples on the animations interactions. In the day, in the color tracking app that I'm building, another thing that I added was this streaks feature. So this is where you can build a habit. Gamification exists in Duolingo, even in Snapchat and a lot of different apps. Gamification is a very powerful way to build habits and increase retention. I decided to actually add a streaks feature here. And then for fun, a little badge that you can actually unlock as you start increasing your streak.

• 17:46Speaker 01

  And these are hand drawn by my fiancee, so very fortunate. But I'll also show you how to make mascots like this using AI because that's what I was doing originally. But something that I coded, which a lot of people were surprised that I didn't write a single line of code for this was when you unlock the badge, you can actually click it. And it's, they're based off of cat memes. But you can actually drag along kind of like, it's like a holographic sticker type thing. It's kind of based off of like Pokemon or just these holographic stickers that you can unlock there. This was completely done by Claude Code as well. And all I did was tell it, can you recreate a kind of holographic sticker where I can move my finger around and I can drag along the sticker? And I was so surprised that it was able to get this.

• 18:31Speaker 01

  And I think two prompts. Again, because Claude is very well trained on Apple's technology. Like this was using something called Swift Metal, but it is very well trained on this. So it can make these really cool interactions. But I just don't see a lot of people doing it, which surprises me because I think, I think people assume that it can't get it because this stuff does look very complex. But if you know how to say it, if you know how to break it down in plain English, it is able to get these things. So this was another really cool example that I think stood out to a lot of people. Last one I'll show on the animations interactions is actually one that was created. I was not using Claude Code or Cursor for this. There's another platform called Anything. So it's, I think.

• 19:12Speaker 01

  CreateAnything.com. I wanted to show that even if you're not using a tool like Claude Code, you can do this in stuff like Anything and Lovable and B0 if you know how to prompt it correctly. So this was just a fun 24-hour concept that I made. It was another food tracking app, purely built with CreateAnything.com. And I added a bunch of custom interactions and animations here. So here's one that appears. This date picker that appears, that bounce, that modal, completely custom. This little sheet that says "Take Photo Gallery" and "Enter Text", these are not components that CreateAnything has. These are fully made by the AI. And the animation of it popping up and kind of having a little bounce and a shadow,

• 19:57Speaker 01

  that was fully custom. That was something I completely told it to do. And it was me trying to push it and see what it's capable of. Another thing very subtle is I have this mascot of my dog Luna looking at these foods. It's very subtle, but you can actually see that it's bouncing up and down a little bit. So that's another very subtle animation I was testing. But it doesn't matter what platform you're using, you can do this in all the other platforms. But the important part is just understanding how to break this down in plain English. That's the important part. But I'm pretty sure all of the platforms are capable of doing stuff like this. So that's the animations and interactions. This is probably the number one thing that makes apps stand out. And again, if you're going to record demos or concepts,

• 20:40Speaker 01

  that is what shines in these demos and concepts. Like again, it's the difference between this tweet blowing up and then this one not. Is just, do you add a little bit more polish? Is it a little bit more dynamic? To go on to the next thing that really makes apps stand out, it is, as you mentioned Greg, illustrations, mascots. This is something I started doing in my apps because of AI, because I'm able to generate these things. And we actually talked about it in the other episode that we recorded before. And I have a whole video on my channel documenting how I build these things. But right now, what I'm using primarily is ChatGPT. I've noticed for some reason it's very good at making these kind of illustrations. And I think with the newest models with, I think ChatGPT 5, once it started with that. It got really good at following instructions for mascots.

• 21:25Speaker 01

  But my pro tip, if you want to make mascots, and here, for example, is this AI meeting assistant app that I was working on, and it had this mascot that people just absolutely loved named Lily the Ghost. And what's cool about having mascots and using AI, you can make almost infinite generations and iterations on the same mascot. So here I took Lily the Ghost and I made a variation where she has a magnifying glass and she's searching. So you can kind of see how in your app, even in empty state, so this is like a state where typically there's nothing going on. It just, it probably for most user or for most developers, they would probably just put a looking glass icon or something. And it would just say, type something to search or no results found.

• 22:07Speaker 01

  This is a great place to put custom illustrations to really give your app a lot more personality. So that's what I did here and I just generated this in GPT five. But my pro tip for anyone who's doing this is actually to bring on or hire an actual artist to generate the first version or some sort of concept. And then use that and feed it into ChatGPT or whatever you're using to generate as a reference and say, hey, can you kind of riff off of this style? And that's actually what I did to generate Lily the Ghost. I didn't just directly say, can you make a ghost mascot with a flower on her head? Not, I didn't do that. Instead, what I did was I fed in this, this was a hand drawn illustration that my fiance did of our dog Luna.

• 22:52Speaker 01

  And I told it, okay, can you use this as a reference and now make me a ghost based off of this? It didn't actually follow the illustration style that closely, but I did notice that there were some elements that kind of was retained, like some of the shadow is kind of very similar. But that is something that, that's a little trick that I've learned is just if you pay someone for some original art, there's a high chance that the iterations that you get will just be a lot more unique because everyone is doing this right now. Like I'm now seeing a lot of people using AI for illustrations, like this is now becoming a more common theme. So to stand out, you will have to either be really creative with how you're generating these.

• 23:31Speaker 01

  Or again, I would recommend commissioning an artist, getting some sort of first version done because then at least you know it is unique. And it's actually cheaper than a lot of people would think. I think you can probably get an artist to do a very first version for you for like two, $300 or something. But then, and then obviously, once you have the actual mascot, you can make infinite iterations, just like I did. So, oh yeah, sorry, go ahead.

• 23:53Greg Isenberg?

  Can we try something? I know this is sort of off script, but.

• 23:56Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 23:58Greg Isenberg?

  Can we go to chat GPT? And if we gave it, if we gave it a reference image of, say, the, you know, Snapchat ghost, um, you know, the logo, the Snapchat ghost.

• 24:11Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 24:13Greg Isenberg?

  I wonder if, you know, let's just say, you know, we want to create a, um,

• 24:21Greg Isenberg?

  actually with, maybe with the, the tongue, the tongue sticking out, because it has a little more personality. I always, I always found this was pretty decent.

• 24:29Greg Isenberg?

  Terms of like the brand. And so let's just say we're, we're developing an app. Um, and, you know, we want to, we're inspired by this. We want this sort of vibe, but we want more of like a 3D. You know, kind of like how you had it, like yours, it feels, well, is yours 3D? Would you say it's 3D?

• 24:50Speaker 01

  Uh, it does have some shadows, so it does, it's definitely not like fully 2D. I think it's a little closer, like it has some depth.

• 24:57Greg Isenberg?

  Okay. So maybe we say like, we like this snap logo in terms of like, it's youthful, fun, fresh energy.

• 25:07Greg Isenberg?

  But I want to do like maybe a banana as a mascot. Let's say, you know, I'm creating a, a, a mobile app, and I think a banana for whatever reason is interesting. And I wonder, yeah, I wonder just how you would prompt it to, to get the most out of it.

• 25:26Speaker 01

  I think what I would do is I would say, can you create?

• 25:29Greg Isenberg?

  Just follow the same vibe as the original image.

• 25:32Speaker 01

  Yeah. And let's just see what it does here. Um, typically I do have to do this a few times. So I think to get the ghost mascot, I think it took maybe like. Ten to fifteen different prompts, and I think I had to tell it things like, can you make it less cartoonish? Can you make it more cartoonish? Can you remove these elements? So we'll see what this comes up with. I have no, I've never actually tried 5.1. This is, I think, new as of this week, so I'm kind of curious how good it is. It might surprise people, but I've found also that for coming up with novel mascots, ChatGPT is actually better than Gemini, better than Nano Banana from Google. I think Nano Banana is very good if you want to make iterations, so when you have the base mascot.

• 26:14Speaker 01

  But I am still finding myself making actual mascots, like the first version, in ChatGPT. Okay, let's see what it does here, and then let's see what it copies. I also, another pro tip, when you're using ChatGPT for image generation, the more you ask of it, the harder or the worse it usually gets. So it starts deviating, and then you start getting that kind of ChatGPT style that you see in a lot of ChatGPT images. If you ask it to just do one thing really well, it's way better at following instructions. So, okay, let's see. It did come up with a banana. I think it did kind of, it did keep some of the shadowing that's here.

• 26:54Speaker 01

  For sure, it kept the tongue. It actually kept also really the same style as the eyes, even the lines.

• 27:00Greg Isenberg?

  Yeah.

• 27:00Speaker 01

  Are pretty similar. So I think it did a good job of keeping the style, because that, this is what we gave it. So it's like, it does seem like it's kind of similar. But yeah, I mean, we could keep riffing off of, there's like a, there's so many things you can keep riffing off of it, like if I say.

• 27:15Greg Isenberg?

  Let's, let's do one more.

• 27:16Speaker 01

  Yeah, what, what do you want?

• 27:17Greg Isenberg?

  One more prompt and see what happens. I, I also like, I, I kind of feel weird that we gave it like the Snapchat image.

• 27:22Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 27:23Greg Isenberg?

  Their brand and likeness, but it was a place to start. So what would you do to make it like different, but also, you know, unique and better?

• 27:32Speaker 01

  I think what I would do, again, my, my advice is to, if you can use original art somehow, or a combination, if you use like, like, actually, let's just see what happens here. If I just feed in, I have no idea what it's going to do if I do this. Like, if I feed in both this hand-drawn illustration of my dog and the Snapchat mascot, of both the ghost and dog mascots.

• 28:02Speaker 01

  I've noticed also when you do combinations, you get very interesting results. I literally have no idea what it's going to do here, but it'll be cool to see because we at least know what's going to happen if we just did the ghost. Let's see what happens if we do both. But this is actually a way to, because I think something that I'm really worried about, when I made a video explaining how I do this stuff, I explicitly was like, do not try to copy someone's style one for one. Like, you need to be original here. So definitely, if you're going to do it, make sure you just iterate a ton, so it looks very different. Or, again, use original art. Or mash like three or four things and get the elements that you like from it to get something unique. That's probably what I would do. Because I know that if someone's going to do this, the first thing they're going to do is just probably throw in the Duolingo owl

• 28:46Speaker 01

  or some logo that they really like. Oh my god, what is this?

• 28:53Speaker 01

  It's very different.

• 28:56Speaker 01

  Okay, I see that it's, okay, it's more 3D already.

• 28:59Greg Isenberg?

  Yeah.

• 29:00Speaker 01

  It looks like a lot more, like you can tell it has a lot more depth. It's probably because it now has two references of something with a little bit more depth. Like, this has like some more shadows here. Wow, that is insane. And it kept the bow. So now it has the tongue and it has the bow from my dog.

• 29:20Speaker 01

  That looks insane.

• 29:23Speaker 01

  Greg, if you use this, I think, I think you might get sued or something. This looks, yeah, but that's interesting. Oh, this is not, no, this is not it. Oh, no, here we go.

• 29:33Greg Isenberg?

  Comment banana, you know, on YouTube, if you like this logo.

• 29:37Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah. If anyone wants to use this as their logo, please feel free. You have my blessing to do this. But it is interesting to see the difference here when you feed in one versus two. It's, it is already, yeah.

• 29:52Speaker 01

  I don't know if it's better, but it is noticeably different. It's noticeably different. Like you do, we got something way more unique when we mash these two together. So that's my recommendation is just use GPT-5.

• 30:02Greg Isenberg?

  Right.

• 30:02Speaker 01

  Just throw it in, get really creative with it. Try to find something that feels like you. But again, don't, don't copy, just don't directly copy anything. Like try, try to come up with a unique style that fits the app.

• 30:12Greg Isenberg?

  Okay, we can move on to the next thing, but I will say you were speechless when, when, when that banana came out.

• 30:16Speaker 01

  Yeah. Yeah, that was, that was something, that was something.

• 30:20Greg Isenberg?

  Yeah.

• 30:20Speaker 01

  Yeah, feel free to, anyone who wants to use it, feel free to use it. Um, okay, on a note for a, a good mascot or a mascot that, that there was a lot of thought into it. So this one was not generated by AI, but I did also want to show the power of when you get a good mascot, what it can do to the end experience. So this was something where, um, we actually applied the mascot, uh, myself. And then again, my fiance is the one who hand drew these illustrations and she animated them in Procreate. Um, we threw them into the onboarding for my new calorie tracking app. And you can just tell that this onboarding has so much more character and life to it. And I have never gotten so much praise about an app onboarding. Like that's not a normal thing.

• 31:05Speaker 01

  People hate onboarding, but people, after I, I, I think I've on boarded about 500 testers at this point. I've been working on the app for a month. This is the most praised part of the app. Every time I invite someone, they're like, that was such a good onboarding experience. And there was actually one person who signed up twice. They told me, hey, I signed up twice because I, I wanted to see it again. I hope you don't mind. And I was like, okay, that's insane. Like I've never heard of anyone signing up twice. But again, imagine, just imagine this onboarding if it was just static images or if there was no images. Cause that, that's what a lot of people do. Sometimes they just don't have anything because they're, they just don't want to put in the time to, to make custom illustrations for each of the steps. But it does really add a dimension where when you see these, you're kind of like, man, what is the next one going to be?

• 31:49Speaker 01

  Like, I'm so curious, like, these are so cool. Um, here's another tip that I'll give if, because I think the thing that made this stand out was really the, the animation or just like how it wasn't just a static image. This is actually something you can achieve through AI. Uh, and specifically something that I've seen people do is they use Mid Journey for animations. So that's something a lot of people don't know. A lot of people just think of Mid Journey as just pure image generation. This is the logo for Amy the cat. And I wanted to show. What this could look like if you animated it. So I just fed this into Midjourney and I'll show you what that looked like. But here's an animated version that it just did in one go.

• 32:31Greg Isenberg?

  Wow.

• 32:32Speaker 01

  Like completely. And just imagine you're on the login screen or the splash screen and instead of just seeing a static Amy the cat, imagine if this is just looping. And this is just moving. Already that just feels like a whole, that just does not feel like a vibe coded app. This feels like something way more premium. And so let me show you actually kind of what this looks like and how you do it. So people don't know this, but when you're in Midjourney, and this is what the Midjourney UI looks like. You can actually feed in images as a starting frame or an ending frame. And so what I did was I just fed in this image of Amy the cat. And then I think I just said, actually, I don't even think I typed anything. I think I just, I think I just like, just clicked go.

• 33:16Speaker 01

  And then I was curious what it would come up with. And this, it did kind of get some, there was some weird stuff that came out of it the first time I did it. But then this fourth one was actually really good. Like I, I think I would actually use this now in the login screen. So when you sign up for my calorie tracking app, you might see this in there. But this is a pro tip that I've not seen anyone talk about. It's using Midjourney to animate very static characters or mascots. It's actually pretty simple. I don't know how new this feature is, but when I discovered this, I was like, okay. More people are going to take advantage of this for sure. This is a really cool one. But yeah, that's it on the illustrations. I don't know if you have any thoughts Greg or any questions or anything.

• 33:53Greg Isenberg?

  No, let's, let's go to iconography.

• 33:56Speaker 01

  Nice. Okay. So another thing, the next thing is iconography. This is something that I see all, it's just that this is a huge tell for vibe coded apps. Because usually when you vibe code an app, you don't really think too much about the icon style. But it has a huge impact on the app's feel. So I'll give you an example. This is my budgeting app Luna. This is the best way to illustrate this. Look at the tabs on the bottom. I chose specifically lined icons, which means that they're not filled. These are filled icons on the right here.

• 34:30Speaker 01

  There is a difference between these two and it's very subjective. Some people would prefer the left, some people would prefer the right, but. The key rule, though, that I see a lot of apps making is they love to mix and match these things unnecessarily. So here's on the right where we mix lined and filled icons. So this is a lined icon and then the others are filled icons. It's really small and subtle, but it is one of those things where if you look at all three of these, again, it's subjective, some people actually might prefer this one on the very right, but personally, I really prefer the one on the left. And then the tab that's actually selected can have a filled icon instead. So these transition to the filled icons when they're clicked.

• 35:10Speaker 01

  Very, very subtle thing, but iconography is one of those things where when you choose really good icons, it really does elevate an app. But more importantly, if you choose bad icons or you incorrectly matching them or using different ones that don't match, they're from different sets, it really does decrease the quality of the app. So this is another one that I wanted to point out that is such a quick fix for people. And for people who are like, okay, well, where do I get these icons? These are three really good resources to check out. Personally, I'm using Hero Icons for this set, so I'm pretty sure these are all from the Hero Icon Set, completely free to use, I believe. Font Awesome is another one that has really high quality icons. And then there's another one called Nucleo that someone put me on to, and it has a really good quality icons, too.

• 35:53Speaker 01

  So if you're vibe coding and you're just getting started and you're like, I don't know what to do, like, I'm just using the default ones that Claude is telling me to use. Seriously, just try these. You will notice a tangible difference if you just swap out all the icons, make them consistent. It'll feel very different. So that's another, that's another, another small one that actually has a big impact.

• 36:12Greg Isenberg?

  And also typography, very important. Similar thing, small, but big impact. The sizing of titles and headers and subheaders, obviously the font you choose or fonts, right?

• 36:28Speaker 01

  Exactly, exactly, yeah. The readability, legibility, 100% if you're just starting out and you've never done any of this stuff, just read, just watch a five-minute video on typography and when to use certain weights, when to use certain colors, how they mix and match, how to make something more legible. It goes a long way because people are going to be looking at your app thousands of times a month, hopefully. And so this stuff will, it will actually impact their experience. They'll feel the difference.

• 36:53Greg Isenberg?

  I mean, there's the famous example, I think, of Steve Jobs going to calligraphy class, right? At Reed College. And that's what influenced.

• 37:06Greg Isenberg?

  The Macintosh whole font choices. So I think to me, I put iconography and typography in sort of the same boat, which is like, it's an afterthought, but like, it's such, people notice it. So thanks for bringing it up.

• 37:28Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah.

• 37:29Greg Isenberg?

  Let's see what widgets.

• 37:30Speaker 01

  Yeah, for sure. Okay. Then the other thing is widgets. The reason I bring this up is because with AI, it has never been easier to create widgets or even an Apple Watch integration. It's never been easier to do this. And I'm actually doing this for all of my apps. And this is the widget for the calorie tracking app, Amy, that I have. So we have a home screen widget. And again, this illustration was hand drawn by my fiance, but you can totally go generate this with AI. But again, it does really draw your attention to the widget. It's a, it's a really nice illustration to have here and it makes it stand out. Same thing too, if you notice there's some background sketches there. Also just hand drawn on an iPad, but you can just generate these things. But in general, something that I'm surprised I don't see a lot of developers

• 38:15Speaker 01

  taking advantage of is making widgets. Because when you have them, number one, users are always very delighted when they see that. They're like, oh, amazing. They have a lock screen widget, home screen widget, or an Apple Watch app. I mean, think about the apps you use every day. You were probably so excited when you were like, oh, thank God they have an Apple Watch app. Like, oh, thank God they have this. It's one of those things that it's a, it's a signal that this is a high quality app when the developers invested in a lock screen, home screen, or an Apple Watch widget. Same, the other thing though, that's a bonus, if you are a developer for your widget, is people don't understand what a retention boost having a widget is. Because when a user is using your app,

• 38:57Speaker 01

  And they open their phone, there are a thousand other apps that are trying to get their attention, especially through notifications, through other widgets. Having a widget and taking up this much real estate on a user's device is literally a cheat code. Because now anytime someone opens their app, I mean, just, I, I, it's overpowering the other apps. Like, I don't even look at the watch app or the fitness app. Like, I'm very drawn to this. So if you are able to pull it off, get a widget on someone's home screen, the chances of them opening your app increase substantially, which increases your retention, which increases the chance of them building a habit. And then even further, if you can do a lock screen widget, this is the ultimate cheat code. Because only four apps max are allowed to be on a user's lock screen.

• 39:40Speaker 01

  And if you can get one of those positions, you're basically going to, they're gonna see your widget like at least 150 times a day. Every time they look and they look at their lock screen, they're probably going to see your widget. And then when they tap it, it'll do a deep link and open. It's just such a retention cheat code. So it's a, it's a win-win. Basically, it makes your app feel more premium when you have it, but also it just increases retention dramatically. I, I've applied it to all my other apps. So my daily planning app, we have this widget that shows how many tasks you have left. Again, custom illustrations done for all the widgets. And then same thing for my budgeting app, Luna, to see how much you're spending. There's a lock screen widget. When I implemented these things, retention, I think it more than doubled, I'm pretty sure, because of this, which, which makes sense in hindsight.

• 40:25Speaker 01

  It makes total sense, like people are just reminded of your, of your app's existence. But huge, huge one that I would do. And then the reason you can do it now is it took me probably four to five hours to make this, these two widgets for this app because of Claude code. It used to take me, I think this one is the only one I did without any AI assistance, because I did it so long ago. I think it took me like, maybe a whole week, maybe two weeks to do the widget. It was kind of painful, to be honest. With AI, it's just, the AI is so well-trained on Apple's documentation. Like, people have been doing widgets forever, so it can actually do these in less than a day. So there is no reason not to do it. Take the extra time to do it. It's just a win-win all around. Yeah. I don't know if you have any questions on this one or any thoughts?

• 41:10Greg Isenberg?

  I mean, I'm a huge fan of this. I think a lot of people. Build apps, mobile apps, and they're like, yeah, I got the 50k MRR, 70k MRR, but like their retention is so bad. And so, you know, you said it best, like, you know, these are, this is a retention hack in so many ways. It puts, it puts your app as a part of someone's daily workflow, daily use case. And I just think that for me, the first widget that really got my attention was the Lockit app.

• 41:46Speaker 01

  Hmm, yeah, yeah.

• 41:47Greg Isenberg?

  Um, it's just super well-designed. Um, producer Rafa can put it up on screen so people can see it. Um, and then also like Jack Fricks's new app.

• 42:01Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 42:01Greg Isenberg?

  What's it called?

• 42:02Speaker 01

  Lovely. Yeah, lovely. Yeah, that's a really good one.

• 42:05Greg Isenberg?

  That's a really good one. Um, and so you're starting to see this resurgence of, of the widget ecosystem. And, and I think people are more and more open to downloading widgets now, which I think is also a big, a big deal. Um, I actually, while you were talking, I took a note of a startup idea that I want to create for that, that, one of those four slots.

• 42:30Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah.

• 42:31Greg Isenberg?

  Like, there's, there's like, there, there's probably so few widgets that are, that are accessible to that, you know, I just think there's a lot of opportunity in a lot of different verticals there.

• 42:43Speaker 01

  Yeah, 100%. Yeah, and again, it's so much easier to build a widget. Like, it sucked building a widget. It actually sucked. So this was such a, if any reason to use AI, it's just to speed stuff up like this. Like, this is the difference between shipping something like this and not. So if you're on the fence about using AI to do this stuff, please do it, just so you can ship stuff like this.

• 43:04Greg Isenberg?

  Sounds good. Did you have one more category?

• 43:06Speaker 01

  I did. So the last thing is just, um, the most important thing, I think, if you want to level up your design and level up, just the, your ability to polish your apps is to be constantly exposed to good apps. So I just wanted to share some of the resources that I'm using when I'm, just to get more design inspiration, understand it. Um, so Mobin is a big one that I use. So basically, it's this massive design library where, oh, here. Um, they just have so many screenshots of different apps and

• 43:35Speaker 01

  I'm constantly just looking at this and I'm just trying to get inspiration because there's just such so many cool interactions and animations and little things. You can also get a good sense of like if you're on the fence of what icon should I use? Should I use thick or should I use the filled or should I use the lined or the filled icons? You can just go here and just see what are other apps doing? Does it look good? Does it resonate? Does it have the vibe you want? So this is probably my number one design resource. It is paid. I have a code. I don't have a lot to share it, but I have a code if you want to use it for like I think 20% off the free of the year plan, but 100% just browsing this. It's inevitable that you'll level up your design sense because these are just such good apps. Another one is called 60 FPS. This has really good interactions. So if

• 44:20Speaker 01

  you're trying to figure out interactions, animations, different things like, I mean, I just love how just looking at this like you can tell that when you tap things, the gradient changes. I've never seen an app do that. So now I'm like, okay, maybe I'll go experiment with that in my app. And then the last one is called Spotted in Prod. It's the same kind of concept as 60 FPS. It just has a lot of really good animations from the top apps. And this is where I'm looking to get inspiration. And that's probably the number one question I'm getting is just what am I consuming? How am I leveling up my design? It's just these three websites. Like that's the only thing you need. And then the last thing, the last resource that I have, which it's actually for screenshots. And that's kind of my last piece of advice. So there's a Twitter account called Screenshot

• 45:03Speaker 01

  First Company. They basically just curate and show really good apps for screenshots. And they kind of show like, here's a nice before and after. Like this is what most app store screenshots look like for actually, this is actually not that bad. But this is how most app store screenshots look like for vibe coded apps. Typically for vibe coded apps, the app store screenshot is it's like the last thing anyone wants to do. You're like, I just spent, you know, a month or two months coding this app. I don't want to do these screenshots, but People don't understand how big of a deal the App Store screenshot is because it is the first impression that a user has with your app when they go to the App Store. And if you don't have a good first impression, that's the difference. There's no point in increasing retention if they're not going to download it.

• 45:46Speaker 01

  For anyone who's doing YouTube, I equate this to the title thumbnail. It's literally the equivalent of if you have a bad title thumbnail, no one is going to watch your video. So any YouTubers or anyone doing content will understand this analogy. But level up your App Store screenshots. So this is a great Twitter account. I don't know of any websites that showcase App Store screenshots like this, but this is a really good one to follow. So those are the four resources. This is the main stuff that I'm looking at.

• 46:10Greg Isenberg?

  Also, startup ideas, someone go build that.

• 46:13Speaker 01

  Honestly, yeah. Yeah, that would be, I would pay for that. I like genuinely, I think I pay for all of these services, like even Mobbing. Like I have a discount with them, but I literally still pay for them out of pocket because it's such a good, such a good resource.

• 46:27Greg Isenberg?

  I love it.

• 46:29Speaker 01

  Cool. So that concludes, this concludes the, you know, how I make apps that stand out. It's really just a culmination of all these things.

• 46:36Greg Isenberg?

  Chris, thanks so much for coming on. I need a, I feel like I need, I need more of you, so maybe we'll record another episode. I want to know about your AI workflow. I want to know more about it.

• 46:48Speaker 01

  For sure.

• 46:49Greg Isenberg?

  I'll include links to where you can follow Chris on social in the show notes. And Chris, thanks again for spilling the sauce on the show.

• 47:00Speaker 01

  Yeah, absolutely. Thanks so much for having me, Greg. Appreciate it.