Think like a scientist, laser-focus on early adopters, and gather customer insights early are among the 5 key hacks discussed for breakthrough innovation. The document also provides 3 smart shortcuts - the MVP Canvas, speed interviews, and habit stories - to help clarify strategy, gather early user feedback, and design the product core loop based on existing user habits. A case study of the mobile game Covet Fashion demonstrates how these hacks and shortcuts were applied to successfully validate and launch the product idea.
2. 1 Section One – Introduction
Table of Contents
What We’ll Cover Today
3. 1 Section One – Introduction
Think Like a Scientist
Laser-focus on Early Adopters
Gather customer insights early
Build & test your Core Loop
Co-create a path to mastery
2 Section Two – 5 Key Hacks for Breakthrough Innovation
Table of Contents
What We’ll Cover Today
4. 1 Section One – Introduction
Think Like a Scientist
Laser-focus on Early Adopters
Gather customer insights early
Build & test your Core Loop
Co-create a path to mastery
2 Section Two – 5 Key Hacks for Breakthrough Innovation
3 Section Three – Getting Started: 3 Smart Shortcuts
Table of Contents
Clarify your strategy & assumptions with the MVP Canvas
Gather early-adopter insights with Speed Interviews
Turn insights into product design with Habit Stories
What We’ll Cover Today
10. we partner with great companies to make
smart games for a connected world
11. what can we learn from
breakthrough innovations?
Rock Band
The Sims
Covet Fashion
eBay
12. 5 Hacks for Successful Innovation
Section TwoHow I discovered these HacksCan we generate & validate innovative product ideas
Better, Smarter, Faster?
13. that lead to breakthrough innovations
5 Key Hacks
Section Two
14. Hack 1: Think like a scientist
Hack 1: think like a scientist
15. To increase your chances of
success, minimize time through
the Build-Measure-Learn cycle
Eric Ries
Author, The Lean Startup
you are here
16. Ask the hard, important questions upfront
Rock Band
The Sims
Covet Fashion
eBay
17. what do people want to do in a
virtual dollhouse simulation?
Think Like a Scientist: The Sims
18. What social systems do we need
to build trust online in a marketplace?
Think Like a Scientist: eBay
19. Can non-musicians play plastic instruments
together and feel like a band?
Think Like a Scientist: Rock Band
20. Will fashion-loving young women pay to play
dress-up with real designer clothes?
Think Like a Scientist: Covet Fashion
21. Hack 1: Think like a scientist
Hack 2: laser-focus on early adopters
22. Why focus on the early market?Ever heard of Crossing the Chasm?
Geoffrey Moore, 1992
23. Why focus on the early market?Successful innovations
delight a small early market FIRST
Innovation Diffusion Theory
Everett Rogers, 1961
24. Early adopters will put up
with cost and ridicule for
innovations that meet
real needs.
Erika Hall
author, Just Enough Research
you are here
Find & delight your early adopters
25. Gather ideas and feedback on key systems
Laser-Focus on Early Adopters: eBay
28. Hack 3: harvest customer insights early
Hack 3: gather customer insights early
29. you are here
Create a culture of iterative play-testing
There is nothing quite so
useless as doing with great
efficiency something that
should not be done at all.
Peter Drucker
31. Setup weekly interviews & play-tests
female team + fashion research crossover appeal to non-gamers
Gather Customer Insights Early: Covet Fashion
32. Expand playtests with team friends enthusiasts
Female-driven team strong appeal to female audience
Gather Customer Insights Early: The Sims
33. Hack 3: harvest customer insights early
Hack 4: build & test your Core Loop
34. What is – and isn’t - a core loop?
you are here
In a loop, you’re learning
a skill and updating your
mental model. That’s
what leads to player
delight.
Dan Cook
Co-founder, Spry Fox Games
DESIGN
& BUILD
45. Focus on prototyping, testing & tuning the basics
Build & test your Core Loop: Rock Band
46. Create a daily skill-building reason to return
Browse your Style Feed
Browse New
Content
Show off your outfit
Raid your friend’s closet
Browse your Style Feed Accept an Invitation
Dress for the Event
See New
Invitations
Build & test your Core Loop: Covet Fashion
47. Hack 5: Create a path to mastery
Hack 5: co-create a path to mastery
48. you are here
DESIGN
& BUILD
Every artist was first an amateur.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Author, Essays on Self-Reliance
56. Think like a scientist
Laser-focus on early adopters
Recap: 5 Key Hacks
57. Think like a scientist
Laser-focus on early adopters
Harvest customer insights early
Recap: 5 Key Hacks
58. Think like a scientist
Laser-focus on early adopters
Harvest customer insights early
Build & test your core loop
Recap: 5 Key Hacks
59. Think like a scientist
Laser-focus on early adopters
Harvest customer insights early
Build & test your core loop
Co-create a path to mastery
Recap: 5 Key Hacks
60. 5 Hacks for Successful Innovation
3 Smart Shortcuts Section Three
to turbo-charge your Customer Discovery
63. Think like a scientist
Laser-focus on early adopters
Harvest customer insights early
Build & test your core loop
Co-create a path to mastery
Shortcut #1: the MVP Canvas
64. Section Two
5 Hacks for Successful Innovation
1. MVP CanvasClarify your product strategy
65. Section Two
5 Hacks for Successful Innovation
1. MVP CanvasIdentify strengths, values & success metrics
66. Section Two
5 Hacks for Successful Innovation
1. MVP CanvasPrioritize your highest-risk assumptions
68. Think like a scientist
Laser-focus on early adopters
Harvest customer insights early
Build & test your core loop
Co-create a path to mastery
Shortcut #2: Speed Interviews
70. Ask just a few revealing questions
Needs & Desires
Daily Habits Beliefs & Ideas
71. Section Two
5 Hacks for Successful Innovation
1. MVP Canvas
I’m in the
background, taking
notes and
categorizing patterns
I’m answering
questions
I’m asking
questions
Interviewer Subject Note-taker
Interviewer + Note-Taker Pairs =
Better, Faster Pattern Recognition
72. Section Two1. MVP CanvasIdentify 5-7 Enthusiastic Early Adopters
Early
Adopters
Identify Early Adopters + Collect
InsightsCustomer
Insights
73. Section Two1. MVP Canvas
When
trigger
I want a
activity + goal
so I can
outcome
Shortcut #3: Habit Stories
74. Think like a scientist
Laser-focus on early adopters
Harvest customer insights early
Build & test your core loop
Co-create a path to mastery
Shortcut #3: Habit Stories
75.
76.
77.
78. habits, ideas, unmet needsHabit Story =
existing habit + unmet need Job Story
When _________
I want to
_____________
so I can __________
trigger
activity + goal
outcome
+
79. habits, ideas, unmet needsPiggyback your Core Loop
onto an existing habit + unmet need
+
83. Covet Fashion BEFORE
Young women 18-30
who play mobile
fashion games
Aspirational dress-up
in designer fashions
PLUS advice from a
celebrity stylist
84. Covet Fashion BEFORE
Young women 18-30
who play mobile
fashion games
Aspirational dress-up in
designer fashions PLUS
advice from a celebrity
stylist
F2P co-op game with
real-world fashion
content & hot trends
Vogue alternative -
stay up-to-date on
fashion by playing –
not just looking
85. Covet Fashion BEFORE
Young women 18-30
who play mobile
fashion games
Aspirational dress-up in
designer fashions PLUS
advice from a celebrity
stylist
F2P co-op game with
real-world fashion
content & hot trends
Vogue alternative -
stay up-to-date on
fashion by playing –
not just looking
like/dislike metrics
via interviews with
hard-core fashion
gamers
F2P game experience
Existing, addressable
audience for fashion
games
86. Covet Fashion BEFORE
Young women 18-30
who play mobile
fashion games
Aspirational dress-up in
designer fashions PLUS
advice from a celebrity
stylist
F2P co-op game with
real-world fashion
content & hot trends
Vogue alternative -
stay up-to-date on
fashion by playing –
not just looking
like/dislike metrics via
interviews with hard-
core fashion gamers
F2P game experience
Existing, addressable
audience for fashion
games
Young women want a
mobile game based
on real-world fashion
PLUS access to a
celebrity stylist
87. Speed Interviews
WHO we spoke with
• 15 young women 18-40 who play mobile fashion games
• Recruited from existing player base & craigslist ads
88. Speed Interviews
WHO we spoke with
• 15 young women 18-40 who play mobile fashion games
• Recruited from existing player base & craigslist ads
WHAT we asked them to do
• Spend 5-10 minutes answering 3-5 questions
The best interview subjects became paid testers
89. Speed Interviews
WHO we spoke with
• 15 young women 18-40 who play mobile fashion games
• Recruited from existing player base & craigslist ads
WHAT we asked them to do
• Spend 5-10 minutes answering 3-5 questions
The best interview subjects became paid testers
WHEN & WHERE we ran these tests
• Via phone & Skype, over a period of 2 weeks
90. Research Results: 3 Key Patterns
Fashion Browsers want to immerse themselves
in a beautiful aspirational world that keeps them
up to date on fashion trends
Co-creators want to “do fashion” with a buddy –
a friend or relative they can dress with, shop
with, and borrow from.
Armchair Stylists love telling other people how
to dress – they want role-play a celebrity stylist,
and get credit for their fashion sense
91. When I’m tired after a long
day, I want to flop on the
couch & get the escapist,
immersive experience of
flipping through Vogue –
but in a game.
The Fashion Browser
92. When I
Login to the game
I want to
see gorgeous, creative outfits –
made from the latest designer
fashions
so I can
stay on top of fashion trends in a
fun and relaxing way
When I’m tired after a long
day, I want to flop on the
couch & get the escapist,
immersive experience of
flipping through Vogue –
but in a game.
The Fashion Browser
HABIT STORY
93. Patti told me to put these
shoes and belt together
with this outfit – I would
never think of that, but it
TOTALLY works. I need
her advice all the time!
The Co-Creator
94. When I
Need to dress up for an important
event
I want to
raid my friend’s closet and get her
feedback on my outfit online
so I can
have her accessorize my look and
help me feel confident - just like in
real life :-)
Patti told me to put these
shoes and belt together
with this outfit – I would
never think of that, but it
TOTALLY works. I need
her advice all the time!
The Co-Creator
HABIT STORY
95. I LOVE the idea a game
that lets me rate my
friends’ outfits & tell them
how to dress better – like I
do before every party
The Armchair Stylist
96. When I
Login to the game
I want to
see gorgeous, creative outfits –
made from the latest designer
fashions
so I can
stay on top of fashion trends in a
fun and relaxing way
I LOVE the idea a game
that lets me rate my
friends’ outfits & tell them
how to dress better – like I
do before every party
The Armchair Stylist
HABIT STORY
97. Covet Fashion AFTER
Young women 18-30
who play mobile fashion
games
Skews older – women
18-45 like the game &
older women spend
more $$
Aspirational dress-up
in designer fashions
PLUS advice from
aspiring player-
stylists
F2P co-op game with
real-world fashion
content & hot trends
Vogue alternative -
stay up-to-date on
fashion by playing –
not just looking
like/dislike metrics via
interviews with hard-
core fashion gamers
F2P game experience
Existing, addressable
audience for fashion
games
Young women want a
mobile game based on
real-world fashion
PLUS access to a
celebrity stylist
98. Covet Fashion AFTER
Young women 18-30
who play mobile
fashion games
Skews older - women
18-45 like the game &
older women spend
more $$
Aspirational dress-up in
designer fashions PLUS
advice from aspiring
player-stylists
F2P co-op game with
real-world fashion
content & hot trends
Vogue alternative -
stay up-to-date on
fashion by playing –
not just looking
like/dislike metrics
via interviews with
hard-core fashion
gamers
F2P game experience
addressable audience
for fashion games
Young women want a
mobile game based on
real-world fashion
PLUS access to a
celebrity stylist
99. Covet Fashion AFTER
Young women 18-30
who play mobile
fashion games
Skews older - women
18-45 like the game &
older women spend
more $$
Aspirational dress-up in
designer fashions PLUS
advice from aspiring
player-stylists
F2P co-op game with
real-world fashion
content & hot trends
Vogue alternative -
stay up-to-date on
fashion by playing –
not just looking
like/dislike metrics via
interviews with hard-
core fashion gamers
F2P game experience
addressable audience
for fashion games
Young women want a
mobile game based on
real-world fashion
and will spend $$ on
a game based on
real-world fashion
Young women want
access to a celebrity
stylist – AND to up-
and-coming stylists
103. Is this you?
My team is creating an innovative project
We’re in an entrepreneurial organization
startup, incubator, accelerator, enlightened co.
104. Is this you?
My team is creating an innovative project
We’re in an entrepreneurial organization
startup, incubator, accelerator, enlightened co.
We want to validate ideas faster & smarter
105. Is this you?
My team is creating an innovative project
We’re in an entrepreneurial organization
startup, incubator, accelerator, enlightened co.
We want to validate ideas faster & smarter
We have the bandwidth to focus for 4 weeks
106. validate your product idea with game design smarts
TEAM program LEADER program Custom Packages
MVP Design Hacks
107. Testimonials from startup founders
This program gave
me a framework for
turning my startup
ideas into concrete
reality.
Megan Berwick
Founder, Stealth Startup
Testimonials
108. Testimonials from startup founders
This program gave
me a framework for
turning my startup
ideas into concrete
reality.
Megan Berwick
Founder, Stealth Startup
MVP Design Hacks
gave me the skills
and confidence to
quickly validate my
ideas & build a
product that our
customers love and
need.
Amanda Pouchot
Founder, Stealth Startup
Testimonials
109. Testimonials from startup founders
This program gave
me a framework for
turning my startup
ideas into concrete
reality.
Megan Berwick
Founder, Stealth Startup
MVP Design Hacks
gave me the skills
and confidence to
quickly validate my
ideas & build a
product that our
customers love and
need.
Amanda Pouchot
Founder, Stealth Startup
Fantastic
methodology –
the ROI you’ll
see is a no-
brainer.
Ofer Leidner
President, Happify
Testimonials
110. Testimonials from startup founders
This program gave
me a framework for
turning my startup
ideas into concrete
reality.
Megan Berwick
Founder, Stealth Startup
MVP Design Hacks
gave me the skills
and confidence to
quickly validate my
ideas & build a
product that our
customers love and
need.
Amanda Pouchot
Founder, Stealth Startup
Fantastic
methodology –
the ROI you’ll
see is a no-
brainer.
Ofer Leidner
President, Happify
This program
was invaluable in
helping us
connect ideas &
prototypes to the
needs of a real
audience.
Ori Ratner
Co-founder, Pedago
Testimonials
111. Testimonials from startup founders
This program gave
me a framework for
turning my startup
ideas into concrete
reality.
Megan Berwick
Founder, Stealth Startup
MVP Design Hacks
gave me the skills
and confidence to
quickly validate my
ideas & build a
product that our
customers love and
need.
Amanda Pouchot
Founder, Stealth Startup
Fantastic
methodology –
the ROI you’ll
see is a no-
brainer.
Ofer Leidner
President, Happify
This program
was invaluable in
helping us
connect ideas &
prototypes to the
needs of a real
audience.
Ori Ratner
Co-founder, Pedago
We created and
tested our MVP
in record time.
An invaluable
investment that’s
still paying off.
Ranan Lachman
CEO, Pley
Testimonials
112. Take the Next Step
schedule your complimentary
15-minute coaching session
Click here or go directly to
http://amyjokim.com/schedule
Editor's Notes
Thanks for joining me today. We’re going to talk about what it takes to do breakthrough product innovation – and take a peek under the hood of some genre-defining blockbuster hits.
We’ll start with an introduction – then
reveal the 5 key Hacks that set you up for Breakthrough Innovation –
Amd close with three smart shortcuts you can use right away to super-charge your early product development
If you’re an entrepreneur, an innovator, or a maker– you already know...
that everything starts with a hunch.... an exciting idea to explore...
A hot area to pursue, a vision for a product game app or device you’re itching to build.
But until you’ve developed and tested it, your idea is only a hypothesis. How do you know if today’s idea is the right one to pursue? What markers can guide your way as you explore and shape your ideas?
I’m Amy Jo Kim game and product designer specializing in early-stage innovation.
At Shufflebrain, we’ve had the pleasure of working with many great companies and teams – all trying to build something innovative and new. Some were more successful than others.
A handful of my early-stage clients went on to become massive, genre-defining hits. What set these breakthrough innovations apart?
Can we identify habits and behaviors that reliably lead to better, faster, and smarter innovation?
I think we can – and today, I’m going to share with you 5 key Hacks – in focus and outlook– that drive the behavior of teams who create successful breakthrough innovations.
The first Hack is foundational: Think Like a Scientist. Successful innovations start with small, iterative experiments designed to answer the most important questions.
This is consistent with a Lean Startup approach – where the path to success involves moving quickly through the build/measure/learn cycle
The most striking pattern - shared by ALL the breakthrough innovations I’ve worked on – was the ability to ask the hard, important questions upfront, and seek the answers experimentally
The team behind The Sims – led by Will Wright and Chris Trottier -- spent years experimenting with different approaches to bringing a virtual dollhouse to life, finally settling on a design that became the highest-grossing PC franchises of all time.
The early team at eBay – led by Pierre Omidyar, Mike Wilson & Mary Lou Song – experimented with a variety of social systems for building trust among buyers and sellers, at a time when online shopping was a niche activity.
The Rock Band team faced a daunting product challenge: could non-musicians – playing plastic instruments – make music together and FEEL like a band? Answering that question was fundamental: – without a resounding YES, nothing else mattered.
The Covet Fashion team had created several mobile fashion games – and hit a wall. To create a breakthrough hit, they needed to reach a broader audience of fashion-loving women Using a disciplined, experimental approach –the team iterated their way into Crowdstar’s biggest success to date.
The second Hack characterizes how successful innovations get started – by focusing on and delighting a small, passionate group of early adopters. They don’t always look like Segway-riding rock stars – your job is to recognize the right early adopters for YOUR project
Have you ever heard of Crossing the Chasm – by Geoffrey Moore? This influential book talked about the difficulty of marketing innovative products to a mass market - and opened people’s eyes to the key differences between early adopters and early majority.
Moore’s book was based on work done three decades earlier -- Everett Roger’s Innovation Diffusion Theory is a data-driven model of how new products spread through existing communities.
If you want to innovate successfully, – you NEED to find & delight your early adopters – These are the people who will put up with cost, inconvenience and and ridicule because they’re LOOKING for what you’re offering – it solves their problem, or meets some real need.
Your early adopters can add value in many ways. Pierre Omidyar – the founder of eBay - was the original customer support rep for the service – and during a support interaction, an early user came up with the idea for eBay’s reputation system
Will wright – the genius game designer behind The Sims – cultivated relationships with an active, highly creative group of super-fans who provided a rich source of ideas, user-testing and content creation long before the game ever shipped to paying customers.
The Rock Band team knew that social dynamics could make or break their ambitious multi-player music game – so we focused on understanding the needs and habits of avid social gamers and non-musicians, which helped to create a massive crossover hit
The third Hack is about process and attitude. Successful innovators are tinkerers and experimenters – they don’t fall in love with any one idea, but instead they test and refine many ideas – and include their customers in an iterative feedback loop from the start.
If you embrace lean methods – and want to set your team up for success – one of the most powerful things you can do is to create a culture of quick, iterative, high-learning play-testing in your team and organization.
Testing can start before you’re designed or built a thing. Early in the Rock Band project, we interviewed dozens of casual gamers, and gained early insights that helped to shape the game.
The Covet Fashion team was blessed with a savvy in-house researcher who setup weekly interviews with fashionable young women, gamers and non-gamers alike – those weekly sessions morphed into user testing once the game was playable.
The Sims developed an iterative playtesting culture early among the team – and grew those tests to include an enthusisastic, content-creating fan community.
This brings us to the fourth Hack: focusing on testing and tuning the most important part of your customer experience FIRST.
A Core Loop is a gaming concept that describes the interlocking activities, progress markers and rewards that a player experiences during a gaming session. As game designer Dan Cook says, skill-building and learning are an essential part of what makes games compelling fun.
When you’re validating your product ideas, be careful not to fall into the trap of testing your marketing message – and thinking you’ve validated your core loop.
A fake landing page will help you shape your message – but it’s NOT going to help you shape or test your core product experience.
An operant conditioning loop – such as the Habit Loop (from the Power of Habit book) or the Hooked model – gets you closer to a Core Loop, because it’s based on feedback and rewards.
What’s missing, though, is any notion of skill-building or personal empowerment. Skinner Boxes and operant conditioning loops can shape behavior – but they won’t lead to player delight or true long-term engagement.
For that, you need skill-building. People enjoy getting better at something they care about. The process of learning and mastery is deeply, intrinsically motivating.
To create a robust Core Loop,
Combine compelling feedback with the skill-building power of games.
Create repeatable, engaging activities that are triggered by an existing urge or need
Build a feedback loop that promotes learning and skill-building
close that loop by giving people compelling and meaningful reasons to return – and cues to remind them
Breakthrough innovations spend lots of time up-front getting this core experience loop right. The Rock Band tea, for example, created a War Room for protoyping and testing early versions of the game – and didn’t add features or polish until the feel of that early play experience ROCKED.
The Covet Fashion team experimented with a number of Core Loops – tweaking and iterating until they found the right combination of features and systems to delight and hook their early players.
The fifth Hack builds on all the previous ones – and is directly connected to building long-term engagement with your customers.
teams who produce Breakthrough innovations recognize the importance of early adopters – and find ways to co-create with them – empower them - learn from them, and leverage their skills, knowledge and passions to bring the full product vision to life.
You can engage ALL your customers with progressive skill-building...
And encourage your best customers – your early adopters, enthusiasts and passionate advocates – to stay involved and contribute by giving them the tools, powers and rewards of mastery.
In true eBay fashion, the idea for the star system came from a group of early power-sellers who wanted a shorthand way to communicate trustworthiness to potential buyers. Through their actions & feedback, these power-sellers helped tune & shape the overall system.
The Sims team leveraged their fan community by giving them powerful customization tools early in the development process – and then learning from their experiments and questions.
For Rock Band, the mastery systems were built around the Rock-N-Roll fantasies of social gamers and non-musicians – something the team absorbed through interviews & early testing.
And Covet Fashion was created from the ground up around rating systems that naturally bubble true fashion expertise among the players.
So there you have it –
5 key Hacks that lead to breakthrough innovation.
To maximize YOUR chances of success
try making these Hacks – in your thinking and practices –
and see what happens.
Now let’s switch gears, and take a look at 3 smart shortcuts you can start using TODAY to turbo-charge your customer discovery process.
Which we’ll bring to life with a deep dive into the early design process behind Covet Fashion, the breakthrough hit from Crowdstar.
The first shortcut is the MVP Canvas – a 1-page document, similar to the Business Model Canvas, but highly targeted to the needs of early stage product development.
the MVP Canvas helps you think like a scientist by giving you a clearcut way to generate hypotheses and prioritize your highest-risk assumptiosn,
First you clarify your product strategy by forming hypotheses about your early customers, unmet needs, solution and value prop.
You identify your team’s strengths, value and passions – and the early metrics you’ll use to measure success
You’ll then list and prioritize your most important, high-risk assumptions – and use that list to focus your prototyping and testing efforts.
The second shortcut is the Speed Interview – a great technique for generating early product insights & excellent testing subjects.
Speed Interviews help you identify and leverage your early adopters through rapid pattern recognition.
You conduct 10-15 quick interviews with potential early adopters – who you can find & filter in a variety of ways –spending 5-10 minutes on each interview
You ask just a few revealing questions - carefully-chosen to surface the needs, habits and ideas of true early adopters
You can speed things up by using inteviewer/note-taker pairs for better faster pattern recognition
And once the interviews are complete, you’ll identify 5-7 enthusiastic early adoptees who would make great testing subjects.
The third shortcut is Habit Stories – a variation on Job Stories, or Jobs-To-Be-Done
Habit Stories help you harvest the most actionable product insights from your customer interviews and testing sessions
If you’re looking for shortcuts to customer engagement and satisfaction, piggyback your product experience on to of an existing habit – amd solve a problem or unmet need that goes along with that habit.
If you’re looking for shortcuts to customer engagement and satisfaction, piggyback your product experience on to of an existing habit – amd solve a problem or unmet need that goes along with that habit.
If you’re looking for shortcuts to customer engagement and satisfaction, piggyback your product experience on to of an existing habit – amd solve a problem or unmet need that goes along with that habit.
A habit story is a special type of job Story – one that’s built around your customer’s existing habits and unmet needs.
If you’re looking for shortcuts to customer engagement and satisfaction, piggyback your product experience on to of an existing habit – amd solve a problem or unmet need that goes along with that habit.
Let’s look at how Covet Fashion used these techniques – the MVP Canvas
Speed Intervierws and
And Habit Stories – to super-charge their early product development,
Covet Fashion came about because Crowdstar saw an opportunity to expand the fashion gaming market by integrating with real-world fashion brand, Our initial product strategy involved letting fashion gamers play dress-up with real world brands – and get advice from a well-known celebrity stylist.
Our initial product vision was a free-to-play co-operative mobile game tied to fashion trends and real-world events. We wanted to offer people a replacement for Vogue” – something beautiful to flip through and play with that keeps you up-to-date on fashion trends.
Our unfair advantages are 1) extensive F2P experience and 2) an addressible audience for testing and marketing the game. Out early metrics were subjective responses drawn from weekly interviews.
Our key assumption was the basic premise of blending real-world fashion cycles with a F2P mobile game. We also wanted to understand the value-add – or not – of a celebrity stylist.
For the speed interviews, we spoke with young fashion-loving women – both gamers and non-gamers
We did the interviews as phone screening – with paid testing as a followup for the best interviews.
We completed the first round in 2 weeks, which gave us useful customer insights and testing subjects to work with.
From these early sessions, three key patterns emerged that corresponded to different types of fashion gamers.
The first is the Fashion Browser – someone who loves staying up to date on fashion trends, and immersing herself in the beautiful aspirational world of Vogue,
WE translated these research insights into design decisions by creating a Habit Story around her existing habits and unmet needs
The second pattern we identified is the Co-creator – someone who likes to dress, shop and primp in co-op mode, with a buddy
Writing her Habit Story helped us see the need for a Shared Closet – which became a much-loved feature of the finsihed game
The third pattern we identified is the Armchair Stylist - Someone very opinionated about fashion, who loves to tell other people how to dress
Her Habit Story helped us get inside the mindset of a wanna-be stylist, and create a in-game rating system to empower and highlight these people
We updated our MVP Canvas to reflect what we learned. Our hypotheses were largely confirmed – and our age targets tweaked a bit.
The F2P game we’d envisioned looked like it could be a hit with fashion-loving young women who own smartphones and tablets
SO we validated our initial assumptions, and generated NEW assumptions to guide our next round of testing.
And that’s how a solid start in low-fidelity, high-learning playtestiing helped Croiwdstar create their largest hit to date.
Now that you see how these ideas work together, I encourage you to try our these shortcuts and techniques for yourself –just click anywhere on this slide, or goto MVP DESIGN HACKS DOT COM SLASH SHORTCUTS – or click anywhere on this slide
If you and your team aspire to create an innovative product
If you’re working in an entreprenurial organization that supports fast-moving, iterative innovation
If you’re eager to learn shortcuts, best practices and smart ways to get further – faster
If you can focus on turbo-charging your customer discovery for a few weeks...
Check out MVP Design Hacks – our 4-week programs for TEAM and product LEADERS who want to turbo-charge their customer discovery
... And get amazing results. We’re proud of the entrepreneurs we’ve helped to succeed – and we’d love to do the same for you.
... And get amazing results. We’re proud of the entrepreneurs we’ve helped to succeed – and we’d love to do the same for you.
... And get amazing results. We’re proud of the entrepreneurs we’ve helped to succeed – and we’d love to do the same for you.
... And get amazing results. We’re proud of the entrepreneurs we’ve helped to succeed – and we’d love to do the same for you.
... And get amazing results. We’re proud of the entrepreneurs we’ve helped to succeed – and we’d love to do the same for you.
If you/re ready to turbo-charge your customer discovery with game design smarts, let’s setup a short, complimentary coaching session. I’ll answer your questions, discuss your project, and together we’ll decide if MVP Design Hacks is right for you. Thanks for listening – I hope to hear from you soon.