Lab Elf update - optimizing for beta launch, according to user asks

I have lots of scientist friends. Doing a PhD in molecular bio has left me with a big network of fellows nerds who love sciencing as much as I do, and who know the academic research world inside out.

I have been bothering all of them for the last week, getting feedback about the Lab Elf app concept and what features would turn this into a useable tool. The input has been incredibly helpful - things I didn't think of (shared departmental equipment signup sheets - super important!), things I planned to include but wanted confirmation it was useful for other people too (push notifications for an incubation timer ending), and also feedback from people who didn't really see this as a useful app for them personally. This last one wasn't the most fun to hear, but did make sense when I thought about it.

I think that it's really connected to personality; there are some very organized people who prefer total control over their weekly schedule, and the idea of an app giving them the framework for an experimental workflow doesn't sit well. I did notice that the chemists I interviewed seemed more enthusiastic about the app idea than the biologists; in biology the feedback seemed more cautious and tended towards concern about how the app would handle situations where an experiment doesn't go as planned. (My conclusion - people who like predictability should not go into biology. But that's a discussion for another time 😅)

I am hopeful that with time, and real beta tester feedback when I make the app live, I can finetune it to maximize the user base that will find it helpful. This has been my first experience making something using actual user requests as the input, and I feel much more confident about it than with other products I've shipped just based on my own reading and background research of potential gaps.

More updates soon, hopefully launching for beta testing this week.