Which Way Now? Finding our Feature Set

 

The big picture is always pretty easy.
We want our child to remain connected to family and friends who are far off (in a fun way).
Presto-chango – FINAL APP!

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Right?

Wrong. It’s the details that are hard. How do you get from that idea to a real product and EXACTLY how does that product work? What goes into it? What falls to the cutting room floor? What are we saving for later?

FEATURES MY FRIENDS, FEATURES.

Here are our big features we’re definitely including:

  • Ability to record and send videos to others (your granddaughter, nephew, or neighbor-kid)
  • Ability for kids to watch video doors in a simple, safe environment

Other bonus features that would be nice but which ones??

  • Ability for people to record “guided” educational content. Grandma sings the ABCs, Aunt Laura teaches you colors
  • Ability for kids to watch video doors of content that isn’t a person. Doors of race cars, doors of kittens, etc

We do think its important for kids to jump straight into being able to use the Little Doors without waiting for Aunt Carol to record her video. Or having new things to play with and discover once they’ve run through their family doors and for this reason we think “bonus feature number 2” might make it into Version 1.0.

We also love the idea of having Little Doors be not only fun and familliar but also educational, however getting parents and family to learn how to record custom, guided content in addition to regular doors might be asking a bit much straight off the bat. Cool but complicated “bonus feature number 1” might be bumped to Version 2.0.

Making these decisions is hard. Everything is a good idea for someone, the real question is which is the BETTER idea and the MOST beneficial. Weighing development and audience and interest is a hard scale to balance. We hope with a mixture of surveys, consulting friends and family, and some targeted Facebook ads we’ll be able to deduce if this feature set is the winner.

What do you think? Go here and tell us. Really!

[trx_button bgcolor=”accent1″ type=”square” style=”filled” size=”medium” bg_style=”custom” align=”center” link=”http://goo.gl/forms/5eTuSg39Ho” popup=”no”]FEATURE SURVEY[/trx_button]

 

We didn’t even begin to talk about other features and tweaks that didn’t make the initial cut at all…

  • What if we could organize the doors?
  • What if we could customize the door color or photo?
  • What about recording the kid’s reaction?
  • What about having multiple kids accounts?
  • What about saving doors to share with others?
  • What about responding to doors?
  • What about themed door for holidays and events?
  • What if we could add images and filters to videos?
  • What if we could have shared family doors?

Great ideas for another day.

Validating our Idea

So we have the idea. Check.
And WE think the idea is good. Check.
And our friends seem to think the idea is good. Check. 

But what do kids think? What about those adorable 2, 3, 4, and 5 year olds?

Sounds like it’s time to build a prototype. 

A prototype is a quick and fast way to build a rough version of your app without the polish or complete features of the final product. Prototypes allow you to verify assumptions about design or features without spending the time and money on something user’s may not want.

Our first prototype had the following:

  • There was a single screen with doors
  • The doors could wiggle
  • There were pre-recorded videos behind the doors.
  • When you tapped a door it would play the video then return you to the door screen

I had to call upon my days as a preschool teacher to record those awkward pre-recorded videos in our office conference room. Pig noises, crossed eyes, zooming around: I packed that app with everything my former three year olds loved.

 

It was pretty rough. Luckily kids are pretty forgiving.

Now to see if kids actually played with and liked the basic concept of Little Doors. Do we have a product? Or should we return to the drawing board?

First we rounded up our family and friends who volunteered their kiddos to be the very first testers of the app. We sent them the app and waited to see what they thought.

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And what did they think?

We’ll let you tell them yourself….

“Lydia loved seeing a person talking to her or doing something funny. She wanted to listen to them over and over again.”

 

“Avery really liked watching the videos, it kept her entertained.”

 

“Easy to use for both my 18-month old and 33-month old to navigate. Fun to see what surprise video was behind each door.”

 

LITTLE DOORS “the idea” IS A SUCCESS.

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Now for the hard part. What features to include…

Coming up: How we create and pick features.