Validating My Next Product Idea With NO CODE

When I started researching ideas for my first product (Logo Package Express) back in the summer of 2018, I uncovered a major problem for designers. The process of handing off final logo files to clients SUCKS! The problem was two-fold. One — It takes forever to export final logo files. There are a ton of files if you’re doing things the right way. Two — clients very often don’t know what to do with all of those files. When should they use a PNG vs. a PDF? A designer can be as organized as they want with their file naming and folder structure. At the end of the day — whether it’s a folder on the client’s local drive or shared with them on Dropbox, Google Drive, etc. — there is just no way to preview all the file types visually.

Problem one is history. Logo Package Express makes exporting, naming, and sorting all the logo files an automated breeze.

Problem two remains to be solved, and I want to be the one who cracks it.

So that’s the back story. Now, how did I validate my solution for problem two — the client-facing side of logo file delivery — without writing any code?

Here’s the outline:

Step 1
Prototype the solution in Figma. I LOVE Figma, and I’ve used it to demo product ideas in the past. Making something look real and giving it the illusion of being a working tool is far better than making something that works in HTML, but looks like shit — ESPECIALLY when you’re trying to sell the concept to lay-people.

Step 2
Interview your top customers about the prototype. I get reviews on my Facebook page for Logo Package Express. I also often have friendly correspondences with people who email in support tickets. Anyone who goes out of their way to say something nice about you or who you have interacted with personally is probably going to be willing to give you the time of day.

I interviewed 25 of these core customers. I got them on a zoom call, asked a few primer questions, gave a demo, and asked follow up questions. The questions you ask in this step are obviously important, but the two that mattered most to me in this phase were:
“Would you use this tool?”
“Would you pay for this tool?”

About 70% of my core customers said yes to both of those questions, so I decided to move on to the next step.

Step 3
Survey your entire audience. Knowing that your core customers are on board is excellent, but I’d like to get a broader sample size for a few reasons.

1. Are people who aren’t customers excited (they might become customers).
2. More voices will bring the biggest problems with your concept to the surface.
3. The more people you survey, the more realistic your validation becomes.

I have about 4,500 people on my mailing list. The list is composed of customers and newsletter subscribers (people who have downloaded my lead gens). I was honestly expecting to get about 100 responses. I had two audiences, so I took a two-pronged approach. To entice customers to take the survey, I offered up beta access for survey completion. For the non-customers on my list, I offered a 20% discount on my existing product.

It worked.

Too well…

After receiving 350 responses, I had to stop the survey. Parsing all the feedback alone was overwhelming.

So how did I set this survey system up?

I created a survey in Typeform. The survey asked the same primer questions as my customer interviews. This time, Zoom demos were not an option, so I created a video walkthrough that I could add to the Typeform. This video was again just me clicking through my Figma prototype, but I had refined the presentation based on feedback from my core customers. After the demo came the qualifying questions.
“Would you use this tool?”
“Would your clients use this tool?”
“Would you pay for this tool?”

I LEARNED A TON from this survey. It helped me establish the core feature set for the new tool, the pricing strategy, and more.

And similarly to my core customers, about 66% of my entire audience said they would pay for the tool.

Step 4
Test with end-users (i.e., client-types) Ok, so the idea looks solid, I’ve got it refined perfectly for my audience of designers, but here’s the problem. My new tool is ultimately not really for designers. It’s supposed to make things easier for designers’ clients. For this idea to really have legs, I needed to test with clients.

One of the questions at the end of my broad survey was whether the survey taker had any clients willing to help me test. 187 people said yes. I am only going to test around 20 clients, so I think I’m in good shape.

Initially, I wanted to continue down the Figma prototype route for client testing. I found a service called maze.design, which allowed you to make user missions and would give great metrics on how people accomplished things within the app.

There was a problem though…

When testing with my friends and lovers, I found that these non-designer types were getting way too caught up in the specific terms of any given mission to just use the thing. This mission structure and static mockup with only one right solution were narrowing their focus so much that they couldn’t actually experience the tool in any meaningful way.

I decided I needed to build a working prototype. My friend @tela pointed me towards bubble.io

Bubble.io is a visual app builder, similar to Webflow, but for apps with a database. With Bubble, I’ve been able to build a very realistic prototype of my logo file sharing and management tool. The best part is I can customize the tool with the end user’s own logo files in a matter of minutes. The realism is insane, and the value of these tests will be much higher because it’s so close to the real experience for the clients.

I’ve got the prototype set up. I’ve got clients signing up for testing. I’m hoping to get 20 done.

That’s where things stand right now, and I’ll definitely keep you all posted.

Thanks for coming to my TED talk.