Lucky Number App
A culturally localized iOS app I built to help Singapore Pools lottery players get latest results and discover their lucky numbers. Try here 🔗
This was not a great project, and these are some of my learnings.
"Existing apps are ugly. I can fix that"
Consider:
- Why are these apps so outdated and uninspired in design, yet have so many reviews?
Along the way, I realised the target audience, older people who would use these apps, probably don't care because they aren't the type to obsess over our standards of user experience - apps simply have to be functional. They aren't likely to find alternatives and switch over to a new app too, as long as their current app works.
"I found a niche. I can win"
I knew that it would be futile to try to win the possibly hundreds of lottery result apps in the App Store. This led me to think of a lottery player's journey - where and how could I serve them?
From my experience, I know that many lottery players rely on more than chance - they draw inspiration from dreams, license plates, family birthdates, or seek guidance from temples and fortune-tellers to select "lucky" numbers. I saw an opportunity to digitize this behavior.
But I didn't manage to crack how to really sell this to users. I believe that for older, more traditional audiences, a digital experience can never replace the ritual of visiting temples or human fortune tellers. While I wanted to reinterpret the cultural logic behind it in a lightweight, accessible way for a mobile context, I never really validated that people, regardless of age group, needed it.
- Older users are probably less likely to use a mobile app for lucky numbers, due to accessibility and tradition
- Younger users that are more mobile-native, are probably less likely to demand a ritualistic/superstitious way of getting 'lucky' numbers
That said, it was a good experience building and launching an iOS app for the first time. I also made $12 as of press time, so you could say I am now an internet entrepreneur.
Even though I knew this app was doomed, I thought this was a good opportunity to have my own product to apply some of my learnings from the Reforge Growth Series, I experimented with:
- Acquisition Loop: Shareable number cards designed to spark conversation and virality (e.g. "My lucky numbers for the $12M TOTO draw"), with the app name and logo attached for viewers to find the app
- Engagement Loop: Timely, contextual push notifications aligned with jackpot events and cultural dates (e.g. $12M draw today! Get your lucky numbers now")
Did these work? I'm not sure:
- Shareable number cards: Usage rate was low (<10%)
- Push notifications: The user base was low so the reach of my notifications was naturally low too. I wouldn't analyse too much into notification open rates, app usage rates on notification days etc., as it's just not statistically significant.
Update 25/09/25
I finally tried integrating a LLM. It was a great learning experience - I always envisioned it as just getting the API key and calling it whenever. But in the course of integration, I thought about cost, which led me to discover the world of fine-tuning and evals. I think I did a terrible job because my app AI gives random '5D' suggestions sometimes. I really don't think you can buy that from Singapore Pools but what do I know.
Another interesting exploration was how to handle context, which made me better appreciate consumer-facing LLMs like ChatGPT. I had to find a way to remember context while optimising for cost as well, so that users could have meaningful conversations that did not in essence reset every message. This was particularly difficult but I eventually settled for a lightweight, low cost approach for cheap testing. I never got around to improving it though - usage was also at a bare minimum (though thankfully covered the costs) and logs didn't provide particularly useful usage insights.