Ophelia Au

Product leader by day and games enthusiast by night. Take a walk with me as I embark on a journey where product meets personal passion.

2 minute read

Once you have a product idea that you think people would use and like, it’s important to test that hypothesis as soon as possible. Poor product-market fit is one of the major reasons that startups fail. Don’t invest everything you have into an idea that hasn’t been tested!

I’ve now developed a prototype that has most of the essential features of the app. Some parts of the app, mostly parts that are unnecessary to the customer experience, lead to dead ends. This includes email signups, advanced logic on the clue distribution system, and most importantly, the murder mystery itself is just placeholder text.

For UNRAVEL, I needed enough to demonstrate that the target market is willing to play a murder mystery game through the app. Testers should be able to see how game information is presented to players, how game rounds will work, how clues will be distributed, how voting will work, etc. These features are what I focused on.

I aimed to invest a balanced amount of time into the prototype. The investment shouldn’t be too high in case the idea flops and shouldn’t be too low that testers can’t understand the potential value of the product. I spent about one week developing this prototype using a no-code app builder, Bubble.

As I was wrapping up my prototype development, I gathered some of my network to test the basic functionality of the app and the concept. I’ve developed a list of questions to ask.

  1. How likely or unlikely would they be to play a(nother) murder mystery through this app, and invite their friends to join them?
  2. Does the information architecture and navigation make sense?
  3. Does anything distract them or get in their way?
  4. When they explore the app, do they become confused at any point?
  5. How would they describe this product using their own words?
  6. Would they consider playing a murder mystery through UNRAVEL with their friends as an option when deciding on a group activity?
  7. Was there anything that they expected to see on the prototype but did not?

If this testing succeeds, I’ll move onto the next phase - MVP development. This means getting a game up and running so that it is truly playable. At this point, my net of testers will widen considerably, as I expect many people are willing to try out this kind of game for free (and I can start hosting games with my own network).

I’m eagerly anticipating the outcome of the prototype testing this week. I’ll give an update once I have some answers.