cnnectd series — Part 4: The Dream

How can this be done better?

Last time, I declared that:

I want ‘The Snapchat of mid/long-form audio for the purpose of maintaining a real, human connection.’

Personally, I want to make it easier for myself, friends and family to exchange audio updates/recordings in a low effort way.

I could also see applications for a product like this for meeting new people with similar interests, like an ‘audio pen-pal’ kind of thing, but that’s something to explore later.

Let’s recap the current process:

1. Open up my sound recorder app on my phone
2. Record audio
3. Share the audio from inside recording app to a gmail draft
4. Go to desktop -> Navigate to gmail
5. Search for the last mail I sent
6. Copy the contacts, paste them into a new mail in the ‘bcc’ field (If I want a subset of contacts, god help me)
7. Attach to the email
8. Send

How I want this to work:

1. Open up app on my phone
2. Record Audio
3. Select recipients+groups (a la Snapchat)
4. Send

• I also want to be able to listen to the podcasts on the app

Perhaps this would be enough to test a lot of the assumptions from my previous post.

First draft of recording/sharing flow

Last year I learnt Sketch through (the excellent) Udemy (where I learnt both the groundwork for Product Management & guitar!), and put my novice skills to use in coming up with some screens that visualise the functionality.

It was a helluva lot of fun being able to put my vision into something tangible. Of course, it’s a completely different thing to make something that actually does something.

First draft of Group creation flow

Unfortunately, I have a very limited knowledge of code…

That’s where my wizard brother comes in. As a developer with android + iOS experience, he’s got the skills to pay the bills.

Of course, it’s neither practical to dump the designs on him and call it a day nor is it at all efficient from a Product Management perspective.

The goal with these designs was to learn Sketch, dump my vision into something tangible, and above all — get started.

Mission accomplished.

Now to the hard part, figuring out if this thing has legs.

Next, introducing…

The Riskiest Assumptions Test (RAT)