Small, Smart, Scrappy Apps Make Sense
Not every solution or app needs to set the entire world on fire or to be built on a platform just slightly less grand than the Taj Mahal. It’s not always “smart” to build your app to run on the hottest and newest smart phone and nowhere else. You might get some buzz and some early adopters, but being in the shiny new thing biz isn’t the path to building a big business in many cases where ready access and broad availability trump haptic feedback, VR capabilities and other gee whiz features. Mass ultimately always matters and when the real value and design of your business is to touch and impact as many people as possible, the lower the bar to use and adoption, the better.
I’m not talking about MVPs or lean anything. I think the whole lean startup spiel is way overblown. (See http://www.inc.com/howard-tullman/busting-the-lean-startup-myth.html ) In today’s rapid-fire economy, you rarely get two bites at the apple and it’s very hard to skinny down a complex and resource-heavy app on the fly because the market isn’t going to wait for you to get it right. The market just moves on – abandonment curves are many times steeper than adoption curves – so you need to take your best and simplest shot first and then build up from there as your users tell you what else they need and what makes sense to them.
Sometimes the most creative aspect of an idea (and the key to its ultimate success) isn’t how radically different it is from the way we’ve always done things, but how much it’s the same - with just the slightest tweaks that make all the difference. Riding on existing track and/or piggy-backing on someone else’s pipeline is a lot less costly and quicker than trying to build your own. The truth is that the closer you can stay to “business as usual” and the more you can rely on previously learned actions, current channels and the ways that customers, users and consumers are already behaving, the easier it will be to get your new product or service adopted and incorporated into their day-to-day lives.
People only think they always want the neatest and newest thing on the block until they remember that “new” also means changes, anxiety, training and learning curves, mistakes, resistance, incremental costs, discomfort, etc. Better to make things as quick and easy as possible if you want to get a lot done in a short time and make a real difference. Start low and grow.
This topic came up recently at a meeting where everyone was bemoaning the funding cutbacks in social services in many cities and the fact that outreach efforts, awareness campaigns and other marketing initiatives were among the first things to be dropped so fewer and fewer folks were even learning about the availability of possible support programs and various other services which they and their families might desperately need.
Of course, I said that we had a startup at 1871 (mRelief) which was already working with the city on “an app for that” which lets just about anyone quickly and easily figure out exactly which Chicago and/or community-based programs exist that might have benefits applicable and immediately available to them – especially in the current environment – and further that the app was designed by the 3 female founders to serve and provide information from a multitude of different services and agencies all in a one-step, one-stop fashion. This meant that a single promotional campaign for the mRelief app (which was supported by all the concerned agencies and city services) could get the word out to everyone in the city who needed to know at a fraction of the cost of each organization or department trying to do anything on its own with little or no available funding to do so.
Interestingly enough, their overwhelming response was to say that this all sounded great BUT they pooh-poohed the suggestion because they believed that none of the targeted populations would have the kind of fancy phones they’d obviously need to use the mRelief service. And that’s when the discussion got really interesting because anyone and everyone with any phone can use the service. That was the beauty of the original intent and the original design. They went as low technologically as you can go (SMS texting) and built a system that works at that level for all comers. The analytics and the back-end are where the weight of the system is – the front end’s as light as a feather and just as simple – you answer a few questions and you’re good to go. It’s up, it’s operating and – with any luck at all – it’ll be coming to a city near you soon and literally saving lives in the process. They have just released a version (https://build.mrelief.com/) which can be used by other cities to adopt the program. Pretty happy news for the holidays.
And the bottom line – an old rule of design – complexity is the enemy. Make your solution as simple as possible, no simpler, and get started right there.
