Amy Jo Kim, Shufflebrain , @amyjokim
It’s easier than ever to create a new, innovative product, game, app or service. But most innovative projects never take off and reach their intended audience. What differentiates the ones that DO? What do teams who create genre-defining hits do differently? In this talk, you’ll learn 5 early design hacks that will help you find and delight your aspirational audience – illustrated with front-line stories from eBay, Ultima Online, The Sims, Rock Band, Covet Fashion, Happify and Pley. You’ll come away with a smarter approach to early product design – and 5 practical, actionable hacks that will increase your odds of success.
13. What I’ve learned
• Early product development is HARD
• It becomes faster & easier with the right
shortcuts & hacks
• 6 months of progress in 6 weeks
14.
15. Amy Jo has a refined and
effective process for bringing
early product ideas to life.
Blair Ethington
VP Covet Fashion
19. What if you could…
• Accelerate your early product development?
• Talk with EXACTLY the right customers early on?
• Turn those insights into a simple yet compelling MVP*?
• Do all of this in just a few weeks?
*Minimum Viable Product
21. Small, high-learning experiments1
To increase your chances of
success, minimize time
through the Build-Measure-
Learn cycle.
Eric Ries
Author, The Lean Startup
27. Custom Insights Funnel2
Early Adopters will put up with
cost & ridicule for innovations
that meet real needs.
Erika Hall
Author, Just Enough Research
33. • 25 fashion-obsessed women 18-40
• both gamers & non-gamers
• existing player base + Craigslist ads
WHO
34. • 25 fashion-obsessed women 18-40
• both gamers & non-gamers
• existing player base + Craigslist ads
• 10 minute screening interviews
• 3-5 revealing questions
• best subjects become paid testers
WHO
WHAT
35. Fashion Browser
stay up-to-date on fashion trends
Co-Creator
shop & dress with a buddy
Armchair Stylist
tell other people how to dress
RESULTS
3 key
activity patterns
36. Customer Habit Stories3
The chains of habit are too
weak to be felt until they are
too strong to be broken.
Samuel Johnson
Author
38. • Identify relevant habits
• Match habit to unmet need
• Look for emotional &
situational triggers
Study their daily routines
39. Capture Habit-based Insights
When _________
I want to ______________
so I can _____________
trigger
activity + goal
outcome
Job & Habit Stories
40. Fashion Browser
stay up-to-date on fashion trends
Co-Creator
shop & dress with a buddy
Armchair Stylist
tell other people how to dress
41. Fashion Browser
stay up-to-date on fashion trends
Co-Creator
shop & dress with a buddy
Armchair Stylist
tell other people how to dress
42. Fashion Browser
Existing habit
“When I’m tired after a long day at work,
I want to flop on the couch and get the escapist,
immersive hit of flipping through Vogue - but in a
game.”
44. Fashion
Browser
Habit Story
When I
need to relax after a long day at work
I want to
see gorgeous, creative outfits – made from
the latest designer fashions
Activity
Trigger
45. Fashion
Browser
Habit Story
When I
need to relax after a long day at work
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,
relaxing & playful way
Activity
Outcome
Trigger
46. Skill-building Core Loop4
In a loop, you’re learning a
skill and updating your mental
model. That’s what leads to
player delight.
Dan Cook
Game Designer
54. EscapeTime!
urge to dive into an
escapist world
Browse your
Style Feed
Rate/Comment on
Outfits
Earn $$, Dress for
Events, Collect
Ratings
Activity
Feedback &
Progress
Investment Path
Internal Trigger
55. EscapeTime!
urge to dive into an
escapist world
Browse your
Style Feed
Rate/Comment on
Outfits
Earn $$, Dress for
Events, Collect
Ratings
Activity
Feedback &
Progress
Investment Path
When I
need to relax after a long day
at work
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, relaxing & playful way
Urge or Need
Engaging Activity
Desired Outcome
Internal Trigger
56. EscapeTime!
urge to dive into an
escapist world
Browse your
Style Feed
Rate/Comment on
Outfits
Earn $$, Dress for
Events, Collect
Ratings
Trigger
Activity
Engaging
activity
satisfies an urge
or need
Internal Trigger
57. EscapeTime!
urge to dive into an
escapist world
Browse your
Style Feed
Rate/Comment on
Outfits
Earn $$, Dress for
Events, Collect
Ratings
Activity
Fashion
Browser
Internal Trigger
58. Feedback &
progress
promote learning
& mastery
EscapeTime!
urge to dive into an
escapist world
Browse your
Style Feed
Rate/Comment on
Outfits
Earn $$, Dress for
Events, Collect
Ratings
Feedback &
Progress
59. EscapeTime!
urge to dive into an
escapist world
Browse your
Style Feed
Rate/Comment on
Outfits
Earn $$, Dress for
Events, Collect
Ratings
Feedback &
Progress
Armchair
Stylist
60. EscapeTime!
urge to dive into an
escapist world
Browse your
Style Feed
Rate/Comment on
Outfits
Earn $$, Dress for
Events, Collect
Ratings
Investment Path
Investment
& triggers
pull people back
Engaged
Trigger
Check your Stats
61. Check Updates
urge to connect with
your team
Read & Respond
to Updates
No More Updates
Need Attention
Customize your
channel &
expressions
Activity Chain
Feedback &
Progress
Investment Path
Internal Trigger
Core Loop
62. Check Updates
urge to connect with
your team
Read & Respond
to Updates
No More Updates
Need Attention
Customize your
experience
Activity Chain
Feedback &
Progress
Investment Path
Internal Trigger
When I
need to check on my team’s
progress
I want to
see everything in one place
So I can
stay on top of what’s
happening with less friction &
more pleasure
Core Loop
Job Story
63. Check Updates
urge to connect with
your team
Read & Respond
to Updates
No More Updates
Need Attention
Customize your
experience
Trigger
Activity
Engaging
activity
satisfies an urge
or need
Internal Trigger
Core Loop
65. EscapeTime!
urge to dive into an
escapist world
Read & Respond to
Updates
No More Updates
Need Attention
Customize your
experience
Investment Path
Investment
& triggers
pull people back
Engaged
Trigger
Check Notifications
Core Loop
66. BreakTime!
urge for a quick
social “hit”
Read & Respond
to Updates
Check
Notifications
& Stats
Collect faves, RTs &
followers
67. BreakTime!
urge for a quick
social “hit”
Read & Respond
to Updates
Check
Notifications
& Stats
Collect faves, RTs &
followers
Activity
Trigger
Engaging
activity
satisfies an urge
or need
Internal Trigger
68. Feedback
& progress
promote learning
& mastery
BreakTime!
urge for a quick
social “hit”
Read & Respond
to Updates
Check
Notifications
& Stats
Collect faves, RTs &
followers
Feedback &
Progress
69. Investment
& triggers
pull people back
BreakTime!
urge for a quick
social “hit”
Read & Respond
to Updates
Get Notifications,
Check Stats
Investment Path
Engaged
Trigger
Check your Stats
Collect faves, RTs &
followers
70. PartyTime!
urge for a fun
social activity
Play a Song
Together
Get your Score,
Accolades, $$
get better, play
harder songs &
bigger venues
Core Loop
Feedback &
Progress
Investment Path
Activity
Internal Trigger
Beat the Song
Engaged
Trigger
73. Lightweight weekly play-tests5
There is nothing quite so
useless as doing with great
efficiency something that should
not be done at all.
Peter Drucker
Author
74. The power of play-testing
• Find & leverage early customers
75. The power of play-testing
• Find & leverage early customers
• Source & test ideas quickly
76. The power of play-testing
• Find & leverage early customers
• Source & test ideas quickly
• Get high-value input for your MVP
77. Amy Jo helped us
create our MVP in
record time. An invaluable
investment that’s still
paying off.
Ranan Lachman
CEO, Pley
82. How can you benefit from these shortcuts?
Accelerate your design & development process
+
Identify & leverage the right early customers
+
Use game thinking to build a simple, compelling
MVP
Welcome! I’m glad you’re here. Today, I’m going to show you five proven and powerful design hacks that will skyrocket your early product design efforts and super-charge your MVP process
I’m Amy Jo Kim - social game designer, entrepreneur, and startup coach. Early product design is my specialty: I’ve helped dozens of teams bring their innovative ideas to life.
[friend] So what about you? What brought you here today?
Do you and your team struggle to accelerate the pace of your early design and development process?
Is it challenging to filter all the feedback coming at you - from all sides — and identify the right handful of people to listen to?
Do you struggle to turn your engaging product vision into a simple, stripped-down MVP?
maybe you’ve felt this way…I know I have on many projects
In the next 20 minutes, I’m going to share actionable techniques for creating a better product in less time. These techniques have been road-tested with numerous clients, who’ve achieved massive results. Now it’s time to find out what they can do for you.
But Before we launch into that I’d like to tell you my story -and perhaps you’ll find some links from my journey to yours
As a chid, I couldn’t keep my hands off the piano. I loved to play. When we’re ride in the car, I’d hear Beatles songs on the radio - and then go back and pick out the melodies on my beloved piano by ear. So my parents got me music lessons - which I loved - until…
My piano teacher said “You’re so talented - you should compete in the Regionals.” So I entered competitions - and HATED it. ISo much so that I quit playing music for many years.
Perhaps you’ve had an experience like that to?
and then one night… on a beach in Greece… I was sitting around a campfire etc. was one of those “aha” moments - have you ever had one of them?
And it turns - refer to audience
I’m Amy Jo Kim -
The Climax - my star moment - helping to create a breakthrough hit that turned everyday people into musicians
That experience taught me how a top-notch, high-functioning game team builds their product. They blah blah blah refine Core Loop blah blah blah (pause after asking a question)
Since then, worked on genre-defining hits like Rock Band, The Sims, eBay, Ultima Online, Covet Fashion, and Happify.
After working with many successful teams – and also some LESS successful teams – I’ve learned that the best teams share certain habits - and Incorporating these habits into your culture can dramatically increase your odds of success.
Let’s face it: early product development is hard. Really hard. I’ve done it many times – and it’s always a challenge. Its tough to know how to test your ideas quickly – and even more challenging to figure out the winning recipe for a hit game or product.
I’ve also learned that having access to the right design shortcuts & hacks can make this process MUCH faster and easier.
So often, I’ve had client come to me wanting to make six months of progress in six weeks. And by leveraging smart shortcuts and time-saving design hacks, that’s exactly what we’ve been able to accomplish together.
Let me show you how two successful products come to life: Covet Fashion, a mobile coop game, and Happify, a personal healthcare app.
Covet Fashion is a hit game where you can dress up in the latest designer fashions - and then buy those clothes in real life. It was created by Crowdstar - a mobile games studio.
Crowdstar needed to connect with the right early customers - their aspirational market - and quickly test their innovative ideas. Using smart design hacks, they were able to design and iterate a product that delighted this aspirational audience. Today - three years later - Covet Fashion is a highly profitable evergreen hit with with over 3M monthly actives - AKA happy customers. And it all started by making 6 months of progress - in the first 6 weeks.
Now let’s take a look at how Happify — the brainchild of two brilliant entrepreneurs from the gaming industry. They came to me with an exciting idea for a digital happiness service - based on their own transformative experience with science-based happiness exercises.
We identified their early passionate customers, and used those insights to iterate the product. We learned that our customers wanted something that felt like Pinterest – with the motivational pull of a game - so we built a product that delighted and hooked them - and in doing so, carved out a new niche in health services. Happify is now the market leader in digital happiness, with thousands of paying subscribers who are getting happier every day.
What if you could do that in just a few weeks? You and your team would save time and money - and avoid a lot of wasted effort. Let me show you how.
Remember the patterns of success I talked about earlier? here are 5 design hacks - or shortcuts - that put those patterns into practice. Let’s dive right in.
The first shortcut is to design and run small, high-learning experiments. That’s the best way to minimize time through the Build/Measure/Lean cycle - and maximize your odds of success.
The most striking pattern - shared by ALL successful innovators I’ve worked with – is a willingness to ask the hard, important questions upfront, AND THEN seek the answers experimentally. Although this can be emotionally difficult, it turns out to be the fastest way to move towards product/market fit.
The Happify team, for example, knew first-hand the power of science-based happiness exercises.What they didn’t know was whether people would pay for guided exercises within a convenient and game-like service. That was the hard important question they needed to answer
To create their breakthrough hit, the Covet Fashion team knew that they needed to reach a broad audience of fashion-loving women - and test their game idea with this new audience before plunging full-on into game development.
Successful innovations start with tinkering and disciplined experiments. To streamline this process, we’ve developed a tool called the MVP Canvas to help our clients make smart, strategic decisions about how to pursue their MVP.
The output of this tool is a prioritized list of assumptions - those hard, important questions that need testing up-front. So before you polish anything, make sure you’re building the RIGHT thing by testing your highest-risk assumptions right up front.
The next design hack is about finding and leveraging your Early Customers. These are the people who need and want what you’re dreaming up — who’d get the most value from it. After working with dozens of teams, I’ve learned that identifying the right Early Adopters can make or break your early product development process.
Have you ever heard of Crossing the Chasm, by Geoffrey Moore?
This influential book explored the difficulty of marketing innovative products to a mass market - and popularized the term “early adopter.” These are the people who’d be willing to make a personal sacrifice to help you create your product.
To innovate successfully, your need to find and delight a few passionate early customers before you scale and grow.
Well, that’s easier said than done - and that’s where the Early Customer Funnel comes in. Using techniques like targeted screeners, speed interviews, and MVP testing, you can quickly identify and filter a handful of people who are vetted early customers for the specific thing you’re creating.
This filtering process can take awhile - so I’ve developed a great shortcut for speeding things up. If you ask people just a few revealing questions - carefully-chosen to surface the needs, habits and ideas of passionate early customers - you can learn a lot in a short period of time.
To see this shortcut in action, let’s take a look at how the Covet Fashion team created their Early Customer Funnel.
Using a combination of craigslist ads and emails to their existing player base, the team recruited a few dozen fashion-obsessed young women - both gamers and non-gamers
We screened these fashionistas remotely, via phone and Skype – and then invited the best interview subjects into the office for paid testing sessions. Within 3 weeks we’d identified a handful of vetted early customers - along with some crucial insights about their habits, needs and desires.
From these sessions, three key patterns emerged that shaped how we approached our MVP. I’ll delve deeper into these patterns in a moment. For now, I want you to notice how taking the time to identify, screen and interview early customers can yield both great test subjects - and highly valuable product insights.
After all, the ultimate goal of doing research is to collect insights that will impact your product design decisions. That leads us into the third design hack I want to share with you today - a technique I call Customer Habit Stories. These stories can turn your research results into actionable design decisions - and help you focus on that crucial habit-building phase of your product experience.
If you’re looking for shortcuts to customer engagement and satisfaction, the smartest thing you can do is to piggyback your product experience onto an existing habit – while solving a problem or unmet need that goes along with that habit.
It all starts by asking the right questions. - and paying close attention when your potential customers tell you about existing habits that are relevant to the product you’re working on.
Once you’ve identified relevant habits, look closer to see if there’s an unmet need associated with that habit - some dissatisfaction with the current state of affairs. That’s where opportunity lies.
Also pay close attention to the cues, emotions and reminders that drive customers into that habitual behavior. Pay special attention to the situational triggers - the transitions, rituals, and events that structure someone’s daily life -- and identify the ones relevant to your project.
Now comes the punch-line: you’ll craft a Habit Story - or Habit-based job story - that captures these observations and insights.
Simply put, Habit Stories are a design hack for harvesting the most actionable product insights from your customer interviews and testing sessions.
A well-crafted Habit Story contains the keys to driving product adoption and engagement. Let’s bring this to life by drilling down on those Covet Fashion research results.
One key Fashionista habit we called the Fashion Browser -
someone who loves to escape into Vogue after a long day at work, and wants a more compelling experience. Here’s an actual quote from a test subject that summarizes this POV.
And here’s how we crafted a Habit Story from these research insights. First, we identified the motivational trigger - the urge that she’s seeking to fulfill
Next, we summed up the activity that she’s seeking in general terms, to help us think creatively about how that activity could translate into our application.
Finally, we articulate the outcome she’s looking for - focusing NOT on specific details like reading Vogue, but on her personal goals and emotional state. And that’s how you build a design-ready Habit Story that captures the key motivational and situational aspects of your customer experience.
Once you’ve identified a few key Habit Stories, you’ll need to translate those into a compelling design. That’s where the next design hack come in.
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. This powerful concept is at the heart of gaming - and can be applied broadly to all kinds of game-like experiences.
So what exactly IS a Core Loop - and how does that come into play when you’re validating your product ideas and building your MVP? First off, be careful not to fall into the trap of testing your marketing message – and thinking you’ve validated your idea.
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.
So - to create a robust Core Loop, you need to combine engaging activities - and compelling feedback - with the skill-building power of games.
Le’s take a look at the Covet Fashion core loop.
And connect the dots between this design and our research-based Habit Story
The heart of any Core Loop is one or more repeatable, engaging activities — triggered by an internal urge or need. For Covet Fashion, the urge is to escape into a immersive world of beautiful, aspirational clothes - and one engaging activity is browsing a personalized style feed…
…filled with gorgeous designer fashions.This taps into the habits and desires of the Fashion Browser - that key pattern from our early research
To promote learning and mastery, you punctuate those engaging activities with feedback and meaningful progression. Like many games, Covet Fashion drives engagement with several interlocking progression systems. The simplest one is rating and commenting on other player’s outfits. right in the Style Feed.
This lightweight action provides crowdsourced feedback to other players about their fashion choices - and engages the Armchair Stylist - another pattern from research — the type of person who LOVES telling other people how to dress.
Finally, you close the Loop giving players compelling and meaningful reasons to return – and cues to remind them. There are many ways to drive investment — collect, earn, spend, and expressing your personal style and taste. Covet Fashion uses all of these techniques to drive investment. By rating each others’ outfits, players earn virtual currency - which they use to purchase virtual designer clothes and dress up for glamorous events - so that others can rate THEIR outfits and continue the cycle. Once you start expressing your style, and collecting ratings - checking your stats becomes an irresistable trigger. That’s a good place for a product designer to be.
Le’s take a look at the Covet Fashion core loop.
Le’s take a look at the Covet Fashion core loop.
The heart of any Core Loop is one or more repeatable, engaging activities — triggered by an internal urge or need. For Covet Fashion, the urge is to escape into a immersive world of beautiful, aspirational clothes - and one engaging activity is browsing a personalized style feed…
To promote learning and mastery, you punctuate those engaging activities with feedback and meaningful progression. Like many games, Covet Fashion drives engagement with several interlocking progression systems. The simplest one is rating and commenting on other player’s outfits. right in the Style Feed.
Finally, you close the Loop giving players compelling and meaningful reasons to return – and cues to remind them. There are many ways to drive investment — collect, earn, spend, and expressing your personal style and taste. Covet Fashion uses all of these techniques to drive investment. By rating each others’ outfits, players earn virtual currency - which they use to purchase virtual designer clothes and dress up for glamorous events - so that others can rate THEIR outfits and continue the cycle. Once you start expressing your style, and collecting ratings - checking your stats becomes an irresistable trigger. That’s a good place for a product designer to be.
Although it’s much simpler, Twitter’s Core Loop has the sample basic dynamics. What elevates this loop above a simple Skinner Box is that there’s something to get better at - writing compelling tweets and building a following - and the system gives you skill-building feedback that helps you improve.
It starts with an urge for a quick break and “hit” of social news & personal sharing
As you engage and share, you get notifications and your basic stats go up
which leads to investment as you collect faves, RTs, and followers and learn how to write engaging content in 140 characters. Over time Twitter’s feedback systems have grown more sophisticated - and more useful for skill-building.
Breakthrough innovator spend lots of time up-front getting this core experience loop right. I was on the original design team for Rock Band - here’s our basic core loop. Notice that the trigger is social - we knew from the start that this would be a party game, played in groups. We spent at least 6 months early-on protoyping and testing this basic loop – and didn’t add features or polish until the feel of that early play experience ROCKED. So to build YOUR core loop, think about what skill your customer is building - what they’re getting better at - and design your experience to support that journey.
So in summary - if you want to drive long-term engagement, your through-line is really about skill-building - about making your customers better than before
And it starts by building a strong core loop that helps your customers become more skill-ful, and get better at something that matters
Finally, I want to share with you one of the simplest - but most powerful - design hacks I’ve discovered. If you want to super-charge your efforts. It’s critical that you put your ideas to the test with the help of your early customers. and include them in an iterative feedback loop from the start.
In practice, this activity can easily fall off the radar. The best teams make this happen by setting up light-weight weekly play-testing sessions right from the start. This simple habit will dramatically speed up your ability to find and leverage your early customers - even before you’ve built anything
lightweight playtesting is a great way to source and test ideas quickly - and avoid going down those expensive cul-de-sacs we all regret.
and when you’re struggling to turn your compelling vision into a stripped-down MVP, play testing low-fidelity concepts with early customers will help you decide what’s important - and what to leave out.
For a great example of how this works in action, let me tell you about Pley -
a fast-growing digital toy rental service. The Pley team wanted to connect with (and leverage) their rapidly expanding member base by building a community.
They had a good business case – but no idea if members actually wanted to participate.
We clarified their product strategy - and put some metrics behind their business goals for the project. We then found the right customers to interview, and spoke with parents and kids together via Skype - which yielded great insights around their daily habits and unmet needs.
Guess what? We learned that Pley customers has NO desire to participate in a digital community — but they DID want educational, family-friendly videos to extend the value of their toy rentals. So Pley decided to launch a Youtube channel as their MVP, which was a big success. The company recently raised their Series B, and are now leveraging those early insights by building video sharing into their core product.
So there you have it - 5 design hacks to super-charge your MVP. If you’re familiar with — or actively using these hacks, that’s fantastic! I hope of these ideas are inspiring to you - and even more so, I hope that you’ll try them out for yourself.
Each of these hacks is useful in isolation - but it you put them together into an integrated program, you will see MASSIVE acceleration in your path to product/market fit.
you’ll quickly and effectively find the right early customers to validate your ideas and by running low-fidelity, high-learning playtests you’ll learn what your customers want -and get solid insights about what should - and should NOT - go into your MVP
So if you’re in the early stages of designing your product or game, and want to dramatically accelerate your design and development process, that’s our sweet spot - we can help you out
Welcome! I’m glad you’re here. Today, I’m going to show you five proven and powerful design hacks that will skyrocket your early product design efforts and super-charge your MVP process
I’m Amy Jo Kim - social game designer, entrepreneur, and startup coach. Early product design is my specialty: I’ve helped dozens of teams bring their innovative ideas to life.