Sprinting towards validation — our “Keto App”
I have been overweight for most of my life. This year I found a diet that works for me and have started losing weight. That diet is Keto.
In short, you try to avoid carbs at all costs. To do so, you need to know what is in what you are eating to quite some degree of detail and that information was not always handily available. The idea for our “Keto App” was born. A simple application listing ingredients and what they contain: breaking down their macronutrients.
I assumed that there were more people out there with the same need and that a mobile app could solve this small problem elegantly.
Internally at Viable, we assembled a small team to create a product rapidly. The group consisted of myself as Product Owner and two of our mobile developers, George (Android) and Razvan (iOS). The goal: Create an MVP in 4 days. Starting with the idea and ending with a first install by someone not on the team.
What we designed and built were native applications for both Android and iOS. The feature set of the apps was limited, but we integrated feedback loops and tracking to start validating our assumptions. The team nailed the task, and after starting with the concept on Monday morning, we had submitted the apps to the stores on Thursday evening already. Success.
You can take a look at the apps on the App Store (Apple) and the Play Store (Android).
To be so efficient, we had to be smart. We used a minimal design based on native elements, we did not use a self-built back end but used Firebase (with the added benefit that it starts free), and we were thinking hard about the scope leaving away unnecessary features such as a login, etc.
Validating with feedback loops
To track engagement, we added feedback loops that had varying degrees of friction.
- If people did not find a specific food, they could submit their search term with just one click
- People could send in ideas or feedback
- They could recommend the app to a friend
- We allowed them to subscribe to a newsletter.
All the actions above triggered an email except for the newsletter subscription which was added directly to MailChimp. We also added tracking for most activities in the app to know what was happening.
The idea here was to see if people interact with the app and if they are passionate enough, so they are willing to spend some of their time to help us improve the product.
The result
Firebase gives us a detailed look at how people use the app. In the past 24 hours (13.11.2018) 125 users used the application, most of them on Android — the Play Store seems to work better for us.
Over the past 30 days, 1,191 people installed the app, 27,813 food searches were made, 309 different additions to the food database were suggested by 141 different people, 46 people recommended the app to a friend, and 14 people subscribed to our newsletter. This amount of activity with basically no promotion of the app from our side stunned me. We also saw that the feedback loops were working and showed quite some engagement. Food requests kept on trickling into my inbox. What a motivator.
We are now thinking about how we can take this app one step further and maybe turn it into something even more useful. Let us know if you have a suggestion!
