Your App Idea: Some First Steps

I gave this talk at the 14th St. Apple Store in NYC about how we approach new app ideas at FreeLab (a product innovation lab inside FreeAssociation). The talk covers specifically ways to immediately begin evaluating an idea to reduce risk with lightweight research and a strategic pilot.

Transcript

1. Your App Idea: Some First Steps
2. Kyle Truscott @keighl Director / Lead Engineer
4. Discover the best pizza in your city curated by our professional pizza explorers and by hungry people like you. Pizza Hunt
5. Kind of risky…. Spend a few months in “stealth mode” designing and engineering it? Can you be confident your idea solves a real problem? Is it the right solve?
6. Start evaluating your idea through some research and a pilot.
7. Research Pilot Measure
9. Identify your assumptions. Are you solving a real problem? Is this the correct solution?
10. • People value good pizza, but have trouble finding it. • Bad pizza makes people upset! • People have strong opinions about what makes a pizza good.
11. Interview the people. #behaviors #emotions #motivations
12. • What makes a pizza good, in your opinion? • Describe the most recent time you bought some pizza. • Why did you go to that pizzeria? • OK, can you now think of a positive experience?
13. Poll the audience. #distribution #frequency
14. How do you feel about really great pizza? Choose one Eh, pizza is pizza. I appreciate pizza, but have never gone out of my to get it I have travelled many miles for great pizza How do you find good pizza? Mark all that apply I ask my friends I read reviews on Yelp, Foursquare, Zagat, etc. I’ve never tried to find good pizza specifically Other? ______________________
15. Watch out… It’s easy to coax subjects into affirming your assumptions.
16. Would you use an app that gives you great NYC pizza recommendations? Yes No Would you use an app that let’s you go on dates with celebrities? Yes No
17. Analyze your results.
18. You won’t prove any of your assumptions. But… you will hopefully see directional trends It seems like people generally value really good pizza, don’t like to eat bad pizza. But we didn’t hear much about finding good pizza as a problem. They mostly use Yelp. “
20. • Honors the core of your idea, but isn’t everything • Can be built quickly (< 1 month) • Can be used with a small user sample (< 20) A pilot is a materialization of your idea tested with a slice of real users.
21. So many approaches!
22. • Concierge service / Human Computer • Email newsle ers • Public spreadsheets • Do it live! Pilot your app without an app…
23. Weekly email that features pizza shops in the NYC area, curated by you.
24. Want to write code?
25. Leverage existing technology as much as you can. Don’t work too hard!
26. 26 - (void)signup { PFUser *user = [PFUser user]; user.username = self.usernameField.text; user.password = self.passField.text; user.email = self.emailField.text; [user signUpInBackgroundWithBlock:^(BOOL succeeded, NSError *error) { if (!error) [self userAuthenticated:user] else [self presentSignupError: error]; }]; } t at’s it! Now you have an authenticated user. No server side code!
27. Again, analyze your results.
28. Did the pilot bring any value to the test users? Focus on engagement and retention. A small sample size can still provide insight to your assumptions. Stopped using the pilot
29. Make a choice…
30. MVP Tweak the idea, and do another research/pilot/measure cycle…. Build a viable version of your app, and go to market
31. Recap… Research Pilot Measure
32. Thank you.