Bitesize UX

With some new trials, and a pretty good conversion rate on some older accounts - we have our first 100 users! What else is there to say?

After learning a TON from our Alpha Launch on Slack, it was time to use that knowledge to create a more scalable app/process, where challenges could be accessed by designer-in-training around the world.

A few key points about this MVP launch:

1. Challenges were packaged as PDFs that users can download. Sexy? Not really. But just as effective, and didn't box us in to any specific format for the challenges.

2. The MVP app had basic portfolio editing - just enough for members to post their submission, and share it with their network or employers.

3. We launched with no free trial - but a promo code (30 free days) that could be accessed by completing a "16 second survey". This is definitely not the most frictionless signup process, but gave us great information about what users are looking for, and what their level of experience is going in.

As an Instructor of a UX Class at General Assembly, I was CONSTANTLY coming up with these mini design challenges for my students. They proved to be really effective in helping the students learn more practical skills, and the students had a ton of fun with them.

In September, I decided to stop keeping these little challenges confined to my classroom, and to see if I could bring the value of these challenges to a larger audience.

I emailed a group of my past students, and got an Alpha group of ~20 users to join a Slack group, and pay $9/month to participate in (then) monthly challenges.

I created a challenge, and sent it out as a PDF on Slack to the group. The members loved the challenge idea, and were all really excited to start working on it.

From there, we did a kick-off video call, where I walked them through the challenge. In the coming weeks, we did more video calls to check up on the progress, and give feedback on the work-in-progress designs.

The first challenge was a success, and nearly all students created pretty awesome submissions to the challenge. The big piece of feedback was that the challenge took to long, and it was hard to find time to complete every step.

From there, we ran 2 more monthly challenges on Slack, where we accepted a few new members per month.

It was an incredibly low-tech means of launching Bitesize UX, but it was SO effective in testing the content, result, and reaction of members to the challenges.

This time in "Slack Alpha" was characterized by lots of contact with members, and building a VERY strong idea of how to craft challenges, and how to scale this to more users on the web app we would build in the coming months :)