S14E11 LoopedIn Crochet App with Kimberly Erni and Pei Pei Wang (Audio)
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[00:00:27] Dan: Hey everyone. I'm Dan Ivovich, director of Engineering at SmartLogic.

[00:00:32] Sundi: I'm Sundi Myint, software Engineering at Cars Commerce. And we're your host for today's episode for Season 14, episode 11. We're joined by Kimberly Erni and Pei Pei Wang, co-founders of LoopedIn. In this episode, we're talking the LoopedIn app for following tracking and even selling... wait for it... Crochet patterns.

So excited to have this conversation. Welcome, Kimberly, Pei Pei, thank you for being here. How are you doing?

[00:00:57] Kimberly: Yeah. Thank you for having us. We're glad to be here and glad to have Pei Pei with us too.

[00:01:02] Pei Pei: Glad to be here.

[00:01:03] Sundi: Great. I know no one was expecting us to say the words crochet today, so, almost want a crochet counter. How did you all have this idea of LoopedIn and can you tell us a little bit more about what it is for our audience who is not familiar?

[00:01:18] Kimberly: Yeah, so 

LoopedIn the idea kind of came to me when I was like, so I, I do a lot of crochet and then working in the tech space, I feel like you just can see where there's gaps and, and you don't like them. Like you're like, I love this. I have this hobby and I love doing this hobby. And yet the tech could be way better and it like, there's actually just not tech there for what I want to have done. And so yeah, it came to life when Pei Pei one day gave me a call and she's like, "Kim, that crochet app that you've been thinking of doing, I would love to do the UX for it." And so she's helped it come to life and made it so it's not just some idea in my head that I really wanna get going with, but something that other people can use.

So.

[00:02:09] Sundi: Cool. And then, Pei Pei from your end, what, made you interested in pursuing this concept?

[00:02:14] Pei Pei: Well, first of all, me and Kim, we have a lot of free time because we, we finish our work with the previous company. So she brought up this idea and at first I wasn't sure, 'cause I was thinking I need to focus on finding my full-time job, put all my time over there.

And then I went to her house and I crocheted a little strawberry. But, it kind of looks like lemon. When my first crochet should be a strawberry, but it looks like a lemon. And then I think I just started to do one or two. So I'm a very, very newbie and it's helpful because I can use my own app, the app that I designed to, I can be the user myself.

She can be the user herself too. And then we started to find out that crochet is, is not a boring concept. It's not something like finance or. You know, crypto or like very hard to understand idea. It's the kinda idea it's like someone else's mom is doing or someone else's sister is doing.

So it's very easy to have this conversation with people. We found it has been actually pretty fun to talk to the users. 

[00:03:22] Dan: think there's, there's always something really satisfying about integrating tech with like something physical that you can touch, you know, and like usually on this podcast, whenever we talk to somebody who's doing like Nerves or embedded work, you kinda get that like, really excited. I wanna like, do something with hardware thing.

so when life gives you crochet, lemons, you know, make an app to crochet with, right.

[00:03:44] Kimberly: I love it. That's great.

[00:03:47] Sundi: Yeah,

[00:03:48] Pei Pei: We should do like a marketing thing.

[00:03:50] Sundi: Yeah. Strawberry Lemonade themed for sure. Um, so you said it's fairly straightforward, but, for somebody who's never crocheted before, and I think in like, the scale of people who haven't crocheted the most, I'm at the bottom for this call. What even are your tools right now?

Are you currently operating out of books, reference materials, things you print off online? Are you buying things off of Etsy that are like patterns? What's the current landscape without this app? What do you have out there?

[00:04:18] Kimberly: Yeah, so the crochet world generally. There's a pretty big world out there on Instagram and everything. People have their followings for the patterns they've created, and there's designers that people buy more of their patterns than others. And then a lot of times they'll purchase it off Etsy or their own website.

But most every designer, I would say is on Etsy. And so you buy their patterns, it's on a PDF, and you just, you read the PDF pattern. And that's, that's how most people do it. So.

[00:04:48] Sundi: Cool. And Pei Pei, as a beginner, were those hard for you to pick up? 

[00:04:54] Pei Pei: Oh, I can't. There's no way I could, that's why I started a lemon. No, it's too hard. And the pain point that Kim found, the, the reason why she wanted to start is the PDF that she purchased on Etsy. It's a PDF right in your phone. But then you have to zoom in to see the stitches. Do you wanna talk about that?

Explain that.

[00:05:15] Kimberly: Yeah, so it's like, I just thought why are we on A PDF when we live in such a high tech world? Like, and I, I really think a lot of the tech space is not, there's not a ton of women who are out crocheting in the tech space, you know? So, so I'm sure, I'm sure if there were, they'd probably have already created this app by now. 

[00:05:37] Sundi: So then. For your vision for this app? What are you hoping to do with it that will make it easier for people to crochet?

is it interactive, is it, not a PDF, but some other image type? What exactly are you hoping to do with LoopedIn?

[00:05:52] Kimberly: so far we started with our first feature, which is, to make a crochet ball. We'll add other patterns on there too, but you can just hit next or click on the next part of the pattern and it, it moves to the next round. Generally like a ball or any, they call them Amigurumis.

They're all done in rounds. And so you just click on the next round or the next step and then you'll, just keep clicking through it. And we have it like, Pei Pei's designed it really well where you click on the next image, it shows you what that looks like. You can click on, if you don't know what a certain stitch type is, you click on the stitch type and you learn how to do that stitch type it. It shows it right on top. 

[00:06:25] Pei Pei: The, you get a video. I think for people who, like you were saying, if you don't know anything about crochet, you can rely on the app because you go through the round and you don't know how to do a stitch. Then you have a video to learn how to do a stitch. So you just follow through the video and you finish one round and you click next.

You just doing all of it, follow through it. You'll have yourself a ball, hopefully not lemon. Yeah. Yeah. 

Yeah. 

that's the idea. We wanna be able to rely on that app. I, 'cause I'm new, I, I try probably make five balls from my own app, just following through it and try to experience my app. And I realized I was able to rely on it.

Like I don't have to think. I literally just follow and I don't have to think about anything else but just crochet.

[00:07:21] Kimberly: Yeah, you feel safe inside our app. You're like, this is, this is safe. I, I, I, I need help on this little thing. I can tap this button. It feels very intuitive. I think we're really proud of how it's come together. And then the next feature that Pei Pei's designed and I'm working on building out right now.

And the AI portion of it works. So just getting it hooked up is my pain point right now. People in the crochet world, they have all these files on their phone of the patterns that they bought off of Etsy, and I wanted to be able to upload those and use our app.

And so AI does a really good job at going through and we have instruction steps, or we have the round or the row that you're on steps. And it's doing a perfect job at picking up what step type we're on and being sure to get all the different parts of whatever design someone's come up with. You can load it into our app and you can, you can buy it from one person and you can use our app to. To feel safe and to crochet.

[00:08:19] Pei Pei: You buy your PDF from Etsy and if you use our app to upload, it will turn into the step-by-step design that I was designing. So it basically, it is, make it way easier than zoom in. Zoom out on the PDF right.

[00:08:34] Dan: right. So. You know, you, you mentioned AI, it's an Elixir podcast. Kimberly, can you talk a little bit about the tech behind this? What stack are you using? How is that kind of coming together? How is it being built?

[00:08:46] Kimberly: Yeah. Yeah. So this is something like we wanted, we wanted to have fun doing this, so we're doing it in the way that feels, uh, the most fun for us. And so for me, I've, I've kind of wanted to just give vibe coding a try and I will say I have had pain points. There are times where I'm like, like uploading the PDF right now.

I'm like, okay, AI doesn't know what it's talking about. I'm gonna have to figure this out myself. But AI's actually done a really good job, being someone who primarily came from the stack of like Elixir and GraphQL at mine and Pei Pei's previous company, I actually haven't done a ton with LiveView other than the pragmatic studio and Grox.io's courses.

To take front end designs that Pei Pei gives me and then to be like, Hey, iterate on this and you didn't get this quite right. And like this scroll functionality needs to work differently. It's been fun. Jacob Luetzo calls it like, you're kinda like the captain of the ship when you're vibe coding and it's been fun to be the captain of the ship with this little thing that's my own thing I feel like 'cause Pei Pei and I are doing it together, I can kind of do it how, you know, I, it is fun for me to do it. 

[00:09:53] Sundi: was Elixir kind of a choice of convenience because you were more familiar with it, or is there something that Elixir was specifically positioned to help you do? Or was it a mix of both?

[00:10:04] Kimberly: Elixir Elixir is my first, my first and only language that I know. And like we said, we kind of have this window of space and it's nice to, even when you're vibe coding, it's still nice to be able to read the code and know what's going, what's going in your code base.

So it is nice to know the language that you're working in. And Elixir is a great language, for all the reasons that everyone listening to this podcast knows. The thing I debated was the LiveView portion of it. I liked that we were gonna be able to have it all in one app. I knew that the PWA would work and that you could get it on to the App Store still by wrapping it in Capacitor.

So we'll still be able to get it on the App Store, but, I still don't know that I'm the most confident that what if someone's on the airplane and they want crochet? I don't know exactly LiveView's offline functionalities, but it was kind of the trade off.

For, you know, getting something up in this little time that Pei Pei and I had had together. So, like I said, she just accepted a job and I'm about to have, I'm about to have a baby, and so we were, we're just trying to, to do what we could do with the time constraints we have. 

[00:11:10] Sundi: Yeah, for sure. The ability to do a quick proof of concept in really any language you're familiar with. But I know we, we know a lot of people who love. Putting something together quickly, quick and dirty in Elixir, Elixir Phoenix, and then LiveView for sure. Flutter would've been cool.

Maybe with a little bit more time. 

[00:11:27] Pei Pei: We tried that. We tried Flutter. But it was was too big of a learning curve. 

[00:11:34] Kimberly: and then you're having to like mesh two apps together. I kind of just wanted to have my head all in one space and just, I don't know,

[00:11:41] Sundi: Yeah, for, for the size or size of your team, and just like for being in your own little space to be able to dream up something and just get it out there. I, I personally have gotten really wrapped up in the, oh, I should have done it big and I should have done it, you know, with this, this technology, and I should have used this framework where it's just like, if I'd just done the thing in the thing I wanted to do it in, I would've actually done it, you know, rather it have been a project I hung back up on the shelf. 

[00:12:08] Kimberly: Yeah, I know I did. I like, I asked my brother for advice 'cause he is like, he, he's in the tech space too, and he's pretty good at this kind of stuff. And he, I was like, I was like, do we bring a front end person on who knows Flutter or do we keep it, the two of us? And he's like, , when you're starting something, keep it as small as you can for as long as you can.

And so That gave me a little more confidence just to go forward with what I was already kind of feeling right about doing, even if it means down the road, we end up having it rebuilt in Flutter or something. 

[00:12:36] Dan: Yeah, there, there's so much value in proving out your idea. Right? And if you can churn out the functionality you need to with the tech stack. You're familiar with that? You know, that's certainly a huge advantage. So I'm curious from the progressive web app side and, and LiveView, it's not something I hear about people doing a whole lot, right?

Like people tend to make LiveView web apps and I don't see a whole lot of energy around the progressive, at least comparatively. So I'm just curious like how that has gone. Any kind of gotchas or, or lessons that you've learned in terms of making sure your LiveView is PWA compatible?

[00:13:09] Kimberly: Honestly, I haven't had too many issues with it. I, I kind of got the confidence to do that from Mark Ericksen. 'cause he is building out like a marriage app, Passion Place. And I like helped him briefly on his app. And so I think briefly working with him and seeing what he could do with it.

I, it gave me that confidence in a PWA. And actually I don't, I don't even think I'd heard of a PWA before, but I was like, oh, like this is something that I could do too. So, yeah, but I haven't had, haven't had too many issues with it. I would say. There are things where I'm like, okay, this doesn't look native when we have the little scroll thing go on, you know, like the thing on top that's like loading and so then I just take that out of the code or whatever.

But it's, that's easy.

[00:13:54] Sundi: Cool. So Pei Pei, how have you gone about, exploring what the UI can look like? And then how, how are you using resources from the internet or from physical resources, 'cause I'm sure there are a lot of books, to help inform your designs? 

[00:14:11] Pei Pei: I think a lot of time, me and Kim, we, we bounce off idea a lot. We kind of talk about, oh, I found this app, or she found some app, and then we will download them and kind of do like a market competitor research. And then. Most of the time we'll just like put together like what we, like the feature that we like the feature the user needs.

Put together a design wire frame first. And then do like a mid-fi, mid-fi is between wire frame to a finalize, do a mid one and then do prototype. And then we send out to users on social media, TikTok, Reddit, Facebook, or in person crochet group, that we show people, Hey, what do you think about this? Is this, is it easy to use?

How do you feel? And get feedback from people. So you're doing like pre-app user research or user studies or case studies kind of. Right. Cool.

Mm-hmm. Yeah. And as a designers, like we are supposed to do that. It's actually saving company's money. If I'm in nine to five, I'm actually saving companies money to figure out the user first before building it. 'cause if you build it and then, and then you have user to say that's not good to use, then you have to spend more time to fix it.

Right. So it's spending more money.

[00:15:27] Sundi: Yeah. I do wish more people thought about that. 'cause a lot of people think like, oh, developer time is free. I know like Dan time at SmartLogic has really taught me like that is not true. And so if you spend, if you send a whole team to work on a feature for two weeks, that could be upwards of 50 to $200,000 depending on how much money they make.

And uh, that is definitely a smart move to kind of do that research upfront. What has the general response been?

[00:15:57] Pei Pei: Mm. General response. Um. Um, I'm trying to think a lot of responses. Uh, we, well, maybe you wanna talk, I can't think right now, but.

[00:16:10] Kimberly: Yeah. I, I feel like for the most part, we've had people excited for us. It's Something that people are like, oh, I would love to keep testing this out, or. I would love to keep, like, like keep me looped in on, looped in on, on the next feature that you have and I'll give it a go.

So I, I think it's been, overall, it's been been fairly positive and I think, When we kind of talked... Pei Pei and I went to a crochet group that she in her neighborhood together and it was fun to just kind of share our ideas with them and have someone be like, yeah, that's a feature I would use.

Like, if you got that going, I would totally use that. And someone else be like, oh yeah, I really am more casual in the way I crochet. So that like wouldn't be something I would use. So it's, it's been good. Yeah.

[00:16:55] Pei Pei: Yeah, the, the general response, I thought you were talking about when I asked them about pain points. There are a lot of pain points, but then after gathering all the pain points, when we listed out like the priority, priority will be things that we think it's the most painful for them, and we kind of came up with like.

5, 4, 6, and we, we talk together and see which, what are the ones that is feasible because some are easier to code, some is not. And it's always easy with design. So I have to check with Kimberly and then we, we implement that, we have prototype and then when we send out the prototype from the feedback that they give us of send out the prototype, and most of them are like liking it and they really like the video portion of it too, which is really helpful.

[00:17:40] Sundi: Yeah, I can see as somebody who doesn't know how to crochet, I can see how the step-by-step and video portions would be useful. I use what I imagine is a similar app for working out and when you don't know how to do a certain movement, having a gif or a video that kind of auto loops to show you how to do something in a certain amount of time feels safer. Safer in a different way. But yeah, I, I definitely have appreciated that kind of like repetition in an app form. So I can, I can totally see that. So when users actually kind of help indicate what a next step feature might look like , Kimberly, how do you go about building out that feature in a way that is manageable for you in a, as a small team, I'm, I'm calling a small team. I know it's basically like you're writing the code, but, how do you decide what to write? How do you balance that? Like the simplicity of the feature versus like how fast you want it out there? How are you managing that?

[00:18:37] Kimberly: Yeah, so I mean. First I wanted to tap, I wanted just to touch on the fact that you said you did the work, the workout thing. 'cause that actually was what sparked my thoughts on LoopedIn is I was like, this is so nice to go through this workout app. I would love this for crochet. So it actually was a workout app that actually got my mind thinking in that direction.

But let's see. So how would I go about implementing the features once we kind of have decided how they work. Is that what you said? Like how, how do I manage my time and

[00:19:09] Sundi: if Pei Pei is handing you a feature set, I, I know how this would work in like a traditional company. Where you figure out, okay, are we doing this this week or next sprint? Are we, is feature like the, is the ROI of this feature would be X, Y, Z thing? And then we're gonna spend this much time building it out just to test it.

Like there's a whole, there's a whole development process and you are in the sweet spot where you can just do what you want, which is great. Love that for you. Appreciate that your time. How do you decide what features to build and how quickly to build them and how to balance the simplicity of what you want versus the scalability of it.

[00:19:46] Kimberly: Yeah. So I mean, this next feature, this next feature, we kind of, because, because we got the groundwork where we're like, okay, this is, this is how someone can follow a pattern, right? And now we can kind of build off of it. And so after that it was okay. How can we actually monetize this? If I was someone, what would I say? Oh yeah, I'll go pay money for that. And I was talking with, with Jacob Luetzo, and he was telling me that like the hardest product you can build is where you're the middleman.

When you're the middleman. That's the hardest product. So if you have crochet designers and then people buying crochet patterns, that's the hardest market to tap into cause then you have to get two people on your platform. So I think our thoughts was just like, what's something that actually brings value, that users can get using our app, kind of start enjoying it while we still build out that community of crocheters.

So that's why we first went with some little thing to monetize it of like charge, we're still figuring out what we'll charge, but charge whatever so that they can upload their, the patterns they've already purchased, and get them kind of hooked on our app. And so Pei Pei built out those designs.

And we've just been meeting, like we talk a lot. Pei Pei and I talk a lot, so we meet on Mondays and talk through kind of what we would hope to get done for the week, and what her next steps are, what my next steps are, what the business goals are next, and then hopefully we get through everything we were wanting to get through.

And if it doesn't work out that week, there's the next week. And we're, we've been flexible with each other, so I, so it's been good.

[00:21:22] Sundi: Cool. At the top of the episode talking about how AI has been helpful. And one thing that you know, everyone's talking about is just like where AI is helping to improve our developer workflows and make us faster and their like different integrations forgetting all of their names, the things that you help, help you code, that you put them in your.

[00:21:46] Kimberly: Cur cursor. Or Claude

or I was like, it starts with a C. They all start with C. Are you using anything like that to help you? Is it, is it helping you speed up the process or is it slowing you down? 'cause it's all wrong. Like, what's your experience with there?

probably both. So I've been using, I've been using Cursor and I, I think for me, I find a lot of joy in getting something done. Some people really enjoy Thinking through how to write code and everything. And I do like, I do enjoy that if, if that's what the assignment is. But if the assignment is let's get this thing out the door, I am like, how can I do this in the way that's most productive? And so I, for me, Claude has been really helpful. But there have been times, like this morning I probably fought with Claude to try to get it to do a file upload. Like for an hour and I'm like, what am I doing? Like maybe if I read the docs and understood them better myself, like maybe this would be working by now.

So I mean, there is, there is that, you know, where, where it's, it can just be be frustrating 'cause you're just like, you're still wrong and you're still wrong. So, uh. 

[00:23:01] Dan: what's the state of the product right now? Like where, where are you all in in bringing this to the world? You know, can anyone check it out? What's next?

[00:23:09] Kimberly: Yeah. Anyone can check it out and we can send a link for how to do it, but you can download the PWA and you can learn how to crochet off our app right now. 

[00:23:17] Pei Pei: Do you want to try to work on a ball this weekend? We'll send you the link and you can really start, you just have to have a yarn and a hook.

[00:23:27] Dan: I mean, I, I've got yard Saturday, so if it's ever slow I can, just try try to make a ball shaped ball. 

[00:23:34] Pei Pei: I have tell you, you make something, you know, like a hook and a yarn and you can make something out of it. It is actually, you feel really like good about it. Like in the end, like I made something, you know? it's actually rewarding.

[00:23:48] Dan: Yeah. 

[00:23:49] Sundi: I, I really, Dan, I think we do need a miniseries of the post recording Dan tries the thing sometimes we'll like interview somebody and Dan's like, I wanna try that technology out

[00:24:00] Dan: my, my, my drawer full, full of Nerves equipment, uh, you know,

[00:24:06] Pei Pei: Oh, wait, your, your question about where we are at at the, the app, right? So right now we, I think for design part, the part I still need to work on is like the payment part, like how to do the UI on that one. And then some refining and some onboarding.

Onboarding screen, the beginning, just something simple, three swipes, and then they can go into PDF upload. yeah, it's my part. What about you, Kimberly?

[00:24:37] Kimberly: Yeah. So, we have that first feature built with being able to crochet a ball. And then, Pei Pei has designs for me for the home screen, which I've implemented. And then I've implemented like the AI side of when a user wants to upload a, a PDF, and now it's just getting the Phoenix portion to, to actually send that file through and do it.

So that's where, that's what I get to figure, figure out. But um, yeah, so it's, it's coming along and yeah, like, like I said, later on, we'll add the ability for other designers to post their stuff to sell. So

[00:25:18] Dan: Yeah. You kind of mentioned the, like it's very comfortable, right? For somebody who's new and this, you know, the, to make the ball and it, you feel safe in the app. Are there considerations for people who are more seasoned or like, how do you kind of walk that line between very clear and also like somebody who's maybe much faster?

[00:25:36] Kimberly: yeah, Pei Pei, do you wanna talk about that?

[00:25:39] Pei Pei: Like When you say faster, you mean like people who are more advanced?

[00:25:42] Dan: Yeah, More confident. Yeah.

[00:25:44] Sundi: Doing it for a few years.

[00:25:46] Pei Pei: Yeah. Like Kim. Yeah. How long have you been doing it Kim? Five years. 10? 

[00:25:51] Kimberly: Yeah, like five or six. Yeah.

[00:25:52] Pei Pei: Yeah. I, yeah. I think those people, they can, so they can get as complex of a crochet pattern from Etsy and they can upload into our app. I think that will be their advantage.

Then people who are learning, they can just learn about crochet a ball. Our next things that we're gonna have, like a free pattern for them is the axolotl.

[00:26:19] Sundi: little like rare sea creature thing. 

[00:26:24] Kimberly: It's a request for my niece.

[00:26:26] Sundi: Yeah. That got weirdly popular with kids recently and I just barely know what it is. 

[00:26:32] Kimberly: and just adding to what Pei Pei had to say is Beginners might really wanna mark where their stitches are at. And so we have a little thing to toggle on and off when they hit the end of the round, like to, whereas people more advanced, they sometimes really just, they kind of have it in their head so they can toggle that off.

But I think really any crocheter would appreciate just being able to kind of click on the next round rather than look at a pdf. So,

[00:26:55] Dan: So, so the, the help is there if you need it, but you try to not get in the way if you don't need it, so kind of fits everybody.

[00:27:01] Kimberly: Yes.

[00:27:03] Sundi: So I'm, I'm kind of picturing this, so it's like if I'm a beginner and I download your app, I'll probably go through the how to crochet a yarn ball, kind of like crochet ball. But I'm like a 10 year experience person, I could go in, upload my own pattern that I got from Etsy or somewhere, and then hopefully the AI is working and it like generates the steps step by step like videos or like interactive whatevers to figure out how I can get instructions.

So then I'm not zooming into that PDF, is that kind of the

vibe?

[00:27:34] Kimberly: Yeah, 

yeah. And it's, and the AI is working really great. I'm impressed with ai so.

[00:27:39] Pei Pei: Yeah. I feel like I'm excited because when I get better in crocheting, I can go to Etsy and then upload PDF into our app, and I can try it, try to do something a little bit harder. You know, instead of just a ball or axolotl.. So like it's, flexible for any level because we have the PDF uploading tool.

[00:28:01] Sundi: Cool. I have to say that the, I like early, early career, my dad would always say, you have to make the next app, you have to make the next Facebook. And it took me so long in my career to figure out that you really don't make anything successful until it's you making something for yourself. Something that is a gap.

In the industry or the space that you like, recognize is something you would use every day. So I do see this being successful in that this is like clearly something you both really care about and you wanna see, in the world. You mentioned market research and market competition. is there nothing like this, like even on non Elixir, but like nothing else in the technology space?

Is it truly just like PDFs and things like that?

[00:28:48] Kimberly: there is some stuff I, the best one that I have found, they call it the crochet app. And that is the best one that I've found. But I. I, I found that it, so they have just like some patterns that they put on there. And I was actually really excited to find it 'cause I was like, oh, someone's doing, like, at least it's something, you know, like someone's doing something.

But it's still like, I would say not as, as fleshed out and easy to follow as ours is. Pei Pei has done a really good job on our UX and making it very intuitive for users to go through. So

[00:29:22] Pei Pei: and the Crochet app only let you upload a PDF into their app. So it, you are still looking at a PDF right?

[00:29:29] Kimberly: Yeah. Yeah. They let you upload a PDF and look at the PDF on the app and use like a little counter for it, but they don't have the feature where you can

[00:29:38] Pei Pei: You can step by step going through. 

[00:29:40] Kimberly: go through whatever pattern you want through.

[00:29:42] Pei Pei: that's, why we are, that's what we are special for because we have that tool that we designed different. 

[00:29:52] Kimberly: And ours keeps, like the round that you're on is always like, you click on the next round and it's just right at the top you can have a picture for each round if you want and also the thing that the crochet app doesn't do, like I get out of the app and back in and then I've lost my place, whereas our app does keep track of the state where you were at before. So there, there are things that were not only does it look better, but also is functioning better. So.

[00:30:17] Pei Pei: crochet is like. I think I didn't know too much about it until lately, right? Because I'm designing it. I realized there are patterns, there are project you can take weeks, there are project you can take 45 minutes. So like having them to be able to come back and know exactly where they are at they were at, it's really helpful.

It's all from the user testing and researching. It was really, really helpful. Yeah.

[00:30:43] Speaker 6: You. You said something just now, Kimberly, that actually made me think, well, actually, you both just said something that made me think about this. If you are a user who is working on like, maybe multiple crochet projects at the same time, so I have an axolotl over here and a cat over here and a owl over there.

Can I, or is this something you've thought about where you would need to be able to, for a single user, track the state of each project that they're working on? And if so, like how, how are you approaching state management in LiveView?

[00:31:12] Kimberly: Yeah. Um, I, that it's something I'm gonna have to solve.

[00:31:17] Sundi: Okay.

[00:31:18] Kimberly: but,

[00:31:19] Sundi: future Kimberly 

[00:31:20] Kimberly: But, but it is, it is in the design. So Pei Pei has it designed really well, where like, not only do you have each pattern, but each pattern has different parts. If you're gonna crochet a little lion or something. You have the lion's head and it's tail and you'll have all the different parts and Pei Pei's designed it on the main page, it'll kind of show you where your progress is at for each part.

So we will need to keep track of all the parts states and all the patterns state as well. So, 

[00:31:49] Dan: we've, we've built some, you've got a lot on the roadmap. It sounds like a lot of things to still kind of sort out. I think a, a recurring theme to this has been both the use of AI in building the product and then AI features within the product. So I wonder, as we start to move to wrap up, could you talk a little bit about that workflow and, for developers who are listening who maybe haven't done a lot of vibe coding or Claude assisted coding, Kimberly, what's the experience like for you?

How does it compare to a normal developer workflows you've done before?

[00:32:16] Kimberly: So yeah. At Travel Pass, well, Pei Pei and I were at a company called Travel Pass together, and I kind of got my start not really knowing AI yet. Like AI was something that came in. So I've been in the Elixir space for three years now and, and I remember like AI coming in and, and me being like, wow, I can kind of ask it to do portions of my code, so I'm, I'm very grateful that I understand how all the pieces work together, because now going into building a whole app and it's essentially all been vibe coded. It's very good to know what you're doing. It's very good to know what the AI is doing and be like, okay, it's putting this here and it's updating the database or it's, you know, like whatever it's doing.

Like I know what it's doing . And kind of like proofing it a little bit is good. And yeah, so I'd say , I just ask it to do it. I see what it's doing. I probably should be proofing it more than I'm proofing it. I should really know what's going in there. So I'm like, I don't know.

I was, I was listening to something from Jacob Luetzo and he's like, yeah, like all of our junior engineers. Who are like, you know, getting good at coding, the issues that they're facing are very different than the issues that we're gonna have to be going back in and fixing the issues that AI may created.

So I'm like, right now I'm like, yeah, it works, but I'm like, oh, I hope it, I hope it all works down the road. 

[00:33:40] Sundi: I think there are a lot of memes about that. I of like two already in my head. Like the, yay it works. And I don't know why one, at least, at least two or three actually that popping up in my brain. So that, that seems typical. ,

[00:33:53] Dan: Whether human 

written or AI written, sometimes it works and I don't know why.

[00:33:59] Sundi: I know there isn't as much out there for, for UX like Figma. I know that like there's kind of experimenting with some AI tools, but Pei Pei, are there any AI tools that are helping you out right now?

[00:34:09] Pei Pei: So, the latest one that I found out from, I think from the social media in China, they have this social media, kinda like TikTok called Little Red Book, and it's all, you know, counted in Chinese. But I really enjoying that and so I was like scrolling through it and I saw this thing called.

Love, love art. So this is the same thing. You can like write down what you want and put, you know, attach a photo and say, Hey, have ChatGPT write all the prompt for me for different states that I want. Hey, do a Rabbit because our mascot in our app is a rabbit. So I say, Hey, come up with like 20 prompt on different states, like success rate or like 404 or all that, and I put the pictures of the rabbit in it with all the prompt that ChatGPT generated for me.

Which is super nice, I don't have to think too much. And then, then generate, and then generate all the pictures with rabbits. In the, you know, the states that I want. Oh my gosh. So nice. Because, because I don't draw, it's, I don't really do, you know, illustration things, but it can help me to do it.

So, yeah. And like within like 10 minutes I have all the states with the pictures. The, the image is ready and I can just send it to Kim and she can just put all the different states for me.

Yeah.

So Nice.

[00:35:38] Sundi: Okay, both getting assistance.

[00:35:40] Dan: Great. So I think you know something that's come up. A bit over here and as we kind of move to close, the two of you have found this passion project and you know, have been able to leverage AI and Elixir and PWAs to like bring this concept to life like really quickly. Any advice the two of you would like to share for just anyone who's got that, that niche love that they would like to put some technology behind.

[00:36:06] Kimberly: I think we all have an idea. I think all of us do. And I would actually love, with how much AI there is out there, I would love to see people finding their people to create with. I think there are some people who are really good at, you know, creating on their own.

Mark Ericksen did a lot with his app that I was very impressed with, how, how much he was able to get done on his own. But I think, I think we need other, I think a lot of times we need other people that they like, keep us going. They excite us. You know, like they're like to, to find someone like Pei Pei who is excited to jump on board and be like, yeah, crochet's awesome, you know, is, is really fun.

And so I think. I don't know. I'm like, I thought about that. I'm like, if there was an app out there that even just let like, like, you know how on Mutual you like connect with or not Mutual Mutual's the dating app for in my area, but most people use like Tinder or what, what do people use? Hinge. You know, you're like Bumble, there's like dating apps out there.

You know, people swipe and meet people. I'm like, it'd be so nice like, have people be able to just meet their missing piece 'cause like. Because UX is something I don't have the skill at, but like finding someone who does and is passionate about the thing that I'm doing is really fun. So, yeah.

[00:37:25] Sundi: Cool. So, grab a buddy then.

[00:37:30] Kimberly: Yeah.

[00:37:32] Sundi: Awesome. Well, this has been such a fun time. I wanna say, I wanna pick up this app at some point just to try it, just so I can say I've tried it. My husband might kill me for picking up another hobby that I'm not gonna finish learning about, but whatever. That's fine. Do you have any final plugs or asks for the audience?

Or any, anywhere. We, they can find you on social media if they have any questions or if they want to get involved in any way?

[00:37:58] Pei Pei: We have the LinkedIn, the LoopedIn LinkedIn that people can join. I think people can always message us on LinkedIn and we, if they wanted to try to do a crochet ball, we can send them the link. We have the link ready can send out to anyone to try so.

[00:38:14] Sundi: Yeah, we can probably put that in the show notes for sure.

[00:38:17] Kimberly: Yeah. That's awesome.

[00:38:19] Sundi: Awesome. Well, thank you both for your time. It was so nice to see you both. Thank you for Yeah. 

[00:38:25] Dan: Yeah. Thanks for coming on and sharing how you're using Elixir to really make something cool, come to life.

[00:38:31] Kimberly: We're grateful for it. We're grateful for the Elixir community, so thank you. Well keep calm and crochet on.

We'll see you. 

[00:39:13] Yair: ​ Hey, this is Yair Flicker, president of SmartLogic, the company that brings you this podcast. SmartLogic is a consulting company that helps our clients accelerate the pace of their product development. We build custom software applications for our clients, typically using Phoenix and Elixir, Rails, React, and Flutter for mobile app development.

We're always happy to get acquainted even if there isn't an immediate need or opportunity. And, of course, referrals are always greatly appreciated. Please email contact@smartlogic.io to chat. Thanks, and have a great day!