The question behind it
There are moments when you question your whole life and keep coming back to the same deceptively simple question: What do I actually want? Where did my dreams, goals, and priorities go?
We live in a fast world shaped by work, friends, family, the internet, and social media. With so many ideas of what a successful life should look like, it is easy to lose sight of your own. I know the tension personally: wanting to invest in friendships and family while also imagining a life abroad, far from the noise and closer to nature. Those priorities can shift, which is probably normal—but it can also be deeply frustrating.
Tools such as the Wheel of Life can visualize how balanced life feels today. What I wanted to explore instead was something more fundamental: What would make life feel genuinely fulfilling? What would let you look back one day with pride and happiness about how you spent your time?
The product
wtfiwant.app is a private, 20–30 minute guided reflection. It is not another personality test and there are no right answers. Instead, it helps you work from lived experience toward a direction that feels like your own.
- Look at evidence from real moments when you felt alive, rather than choosing abstract values.
- Cut through outside noise from status, family expectations, LinkedIn, Instagram, and other inherited scripts.
- Acknowledge tradeoffs between competing versions of a good life instead of keeping every option vague.
- Find recurring patterns with AI-assisted synthesis that supports reflection without presenting itself as diagnosis.
- Use it privately without an account, advertising, or tracking scripts; progress is stored under an anonymous ID.
- Reflect in English or German through a fully localized experience.
From clarity to action
Insight alone is not enough. Jobs, stress, social media, and everyday obligations consume time and make it easy to postpone the things that matter. Sometimes you need a push to begin.
That is why the reflection does not end with a grand life plan. It turns what you discovered into a reversible experiment and one concrete next action—small enough to start, but real enough to move you forward.
Design and technical decisions
The interface creates deliberate distance from dashboards, scores, and productivity tools. Strong editorial typography, warm colors, and an orbit of outside influences keep the central question—you—visually at the center.
- Next.js provides the application foundation and localized routes.
- Responsive interaction design keeps the guided flow focused across screen sizes.
- Anonymous progress lets people pause and continue without creating an account.
- Structured AI analysis looks for patterns in a user’s answers while remaining explicitly non-diagnostic.
- Privacy-first delivery avoids ads and third-party tracking scripts.
My role
I developed the original idea from my own experience, then designed and built the product end to end: the reflection method, writing, visual identity, bilingual experience, AI-assisted synthesis, and deployment.
The guided reflection is live at wtfiwant.app.