The Arcadia Report

Coming back fresh after Christmas and armed with the latest feedback, I'm reassessing the alpha designs and planning out the coming weeks to get from visuals to MVP.

There is still a lot of work to be done to craft Arcadia into a marketable experience and it begins now.

Working plan:
Week 1 - Establish (long overdue) marketing strategy and begin developing in public.

Week 2 - Design sprint. Overhaul, simplify, or remove to design the most streamlined experience to test and turn into the design for the MVP.

Week 3 - Alpha testers on board. Continue investigating build options and secure funding to hire a developer.

Week 4 - Build begins in earnest.

The Arcadia Report has an official online presence in the form of a (barebones) one page promotional website. It's another v0.1 but now it means I have a link to direct people to, an official email, and finally converted my old newsletter over so the new Citizens Club mailing list is good to go already pre-loaded with people from the research surveys.

Check it out here: https://arcadiareport.com/

After building up and testing 5+ small, iterative prototypes, the v0.1 of the complete application is ready with the latest visual design and off to test with more users. It's great to see it all in together in context, even if it hasn't been built yet.

Market validation and usability testing begins in earnest starting now! The Arcadia Report is still not much more than a concept but can still start garnering feedback, finding out what users want, and begin testing early gameplay concepts.

Lessons:

1. Include an email signup in initial research surveys. Over 50% of participants signed up for more information (even though I don't have a mailing list yet!)
2. Scoping out the right forums and finding where your customers are takes time. Be especially aware of rules and account age.

Work on The Arcadia Report begins as part of my final year of interaction design studies. It is a series of firsts and a decision to dive into the unknown but what better way to learn?

Goals:

1. Create a narrative for the modern world of short attention spans and experience-driven economy.
2. Design and launch my first ever paid product.
3. Take risks and make a crap ton of mistakes and learn along the way.