This post was made in response to the AppSumo lean challenge.
At Spoondate, we've been taught and advised from day 0 to be Lean. We started at Women 2.0 FounderLabs where speakers like Eric Ries and Steve Blank preach about concepts like Customer Development and Lean Startup methodology - we listened. HARD.
Almost every day, we test features, ideas, or copy in front of at least one random human being (other than us). Our iteration cycles range from 3 minutes to 3 days. We use the Think-Make-Check cycle - come up with a hypothesis, build a prototype to test, then test and use it to refine a new hypothesis.
This process has been carried over to every stage of our development thus far - from testing the acceptance of the core concept and branding (ex: logo, catchphrases, and color scheme), to paper prototypes, to digital mockups, and finally to code prototypes. At every stage, this fast iteration has resulted in thousands of small, incremental improvements and it shows.
At the concept testing phase, we used Ask Your Target Market. This allowed us to get opinions from a diverse range of demographics all across the USA. We identified several "turn-offs", what worked and what doesn't. Our company name choices were down to BrieHarmony and Spoondate, Spoondate turned out to be more memorable, more unique and much less likely to cause a lawsuit. A lot of people we meet say they love our brand, this is why it's so polished.
At 500 Startups, we went through the INTENSIVE 3-day Design Bootcamp hosted by Janice Frazier from Luxr (which is AMAZING btw) in collaboration with the Stanford dschool. From that, we were shown the magical efficiency of paper prototypes. We built paper versions of our ideal website, people could click on links with their finger and by moving things around and thus the "site" could be interactive. We were able to test our initial prototype with real people this way. We identified something like 30 pain points for users in the signup flow alone. The idea of testing our concept with REAL users using JUST paper prototypes was so foreign and impossible to us before this. Now it is natural and easy. It has saved hundreds if not thousands of development hours so far.
For digital mockups, we started with GoMockingbird. This allowed us to create clickable mockups that we could share digitally for testing purposes. Digital mockups allowed us to map out all of the interactivity at a larger scale and then allowed us to share with people who weren't physically near us. User testing extended to anybody on the internet. GoMockingbird works really well until you need to export to PDF - the interactivity is lost. For future mockups, we're moving towards Keynotopia - all of the interactivity works even if you export to PDF. Keynotopia lets you create fully interactive mockups using JUST Powerpoint or Keynote (these mockups work on every platform that supports .ppt including Windows, Mac, all iOS devices, etc).
For code prototypes, our code has been designed from the beginning to be flexible. Our database is schema-free without side effects - adding or removing fields on production is as easy as adding or removing a line of code. We're not at 100% unit test coverage yet, but when we get there, Spoondate will be using Continuous Deployment - then, even a VC can push live code. With everything in place, we can turn on a dime - even at scale!
Here at Spoondate, we don't just read or talk about Lean. We live it.