5 or 6 Lessons Relearned From Getting Physical With a “Real” Product…

& how they apply to producing an app

I wanted the perfect iPhone stand. A stand to keep me company watching videos during rushed lunches. One so I could spend lunches with my friends Jalen & Jacoby on Grantland, without me having to hold them ‘cause that can get uncomfortable… holding an iPhone all through lunch.

There was a great candidate that almost made it onto my table, but bad reviews and high shipping charges changed my mind. Instead I decided to make one of my own design, since a FabCafe with laser cutters and 3D printers had opened near my coworking space in Tokyo. I planned to buy some leather, snaps, and some laser time at FabCafe and make my own for a couple thousand yen ($20–40).

After all, I’m a designer by day and just as often late at night. I should be able to design something, even if that thing is typically made up of pixels and makes up an app. Apps had burnt me out though. Too many late nights of pushing pixels on a screen, so I was ready to work with my hands for a bit.

From there it was hands-on for a few mornings a week. Apps were still 80% of my time, so while working on my physical product I’d often apply lessons learned or reinforced back to my night job of design. These are a few of those lessons:

1. All resources are “real”

Putting on snaps by hand with a mallet is a simple process. At times though you can stop paying attention and bend a snap while securely fastening it. Other times you might really be out of it and securely seal on only one side of the snap, as pictured above. If I were a better leatherworker these wrongs likely could have been righted without my damaging the leather.

Those times damaging a piece of treated and cut leather were pretty painful. Throwing it away in the trash was as painful as throwing cash in the trash. I couldn’t help quickly tallying up the couple of dollars that I just threw away.

How often do you delete your digital work, figuratively and literally throwing it in the trash?

Often when developing or designing I’m faced with the proper way to design an element. One way it would be reusable and work in many situations, the other quick and easy and not quite as reliable. I’m not going to lie to you, it’s less than often and more than hardly ever that I pick the easy way. It is almost always that I’m forced to come back and redo the design.

After throwing away the cash in leather form I was forced to reflect on how much cash I’d thrown away in refactoring form. As most designers and engineers that time is worth significantly more than $1/minute from contractors I’ve worked with. So let’s just say I’ve thrown away a lot of leather.

Still, the leather hurt more…

2. Versioning is about multiple versions

The first batch was one of the best. Not the product, after all it wasn’t even a product yet just a hobby, but productively. Productively because I had little idea of what I was doing, so I threw a number of versions at the laser cutter made up of different shapes and sizes.

Later groups weren’t as productive. I’d become invested and confident in one form. That confidence would lead to trying to scale a design too early and making 20 of it for myself and friends. Friends who were now asking for a copy of my hobby. Even if the iPhone stand was spreading, the design wasn’t evolving.

Do your iterations include versions?

Working with a physical product helped to realize the importance of having multiple versions in each iteration. In desigining with less permanent pixels it’s easy to simply iterate, because the next iteration is just a commit away. With a physical product the level of commitment is higher, and another iteration was another reservation and walk to Fab Cafe. This helped drive home the importance of going beyond iterating.

3. You’ve got to graduate

There’s something great about the smell of a laser cutter in action. Not great in a healthy way, it’s got to be up there with those awesome fruit scented markers (except the black one). Great in a motivational way that you really feel like you’re working, even if the machine is doing all the work for you.

There was also something great about hammering on the snaps, closing grommets, and working with the leather. Thinking about a fold that could be made, a grommet that could be a snap, and how the product could be designed for streamlined production. Afterall, the physical part of the product was a big motivation of making it, but still a rubber hammer doesn’t do the work for you in the way that a laser does.

Near the 3rd to last version the new rubber hammer smell had worn off, and I was ready to start having that part produced at scale. Still the laser smell hadn’t… much like those fruit markers, but hopefully for less habit forming reasons. We’d started talking to good old fashioned leather die makers about making our dies, but I kept trying to come up with reasons why we could keep producing with lasers.

This reminded me of a conversation over lunch with Matt Romaine, the founder of Gengo. His team is much further along than any of mine have been and I remember on a past project him asking me:

When are you going to stop doing the design?

At the time I was trying to build a large service and grow towards being the CEO beyond the Twitter profile position.

He was asking me this, because as the CTO of Gengo he isn’t as able to get lost in code as he once was. Now he’s got to play at a higher level, making sure many others can get lost in the code, without ever feeling lost about where they’re headed.

Ultimately my project failed, with me getting too head down in the designs to move the entire project forward and guide the team. I was too in love with one part of the process, to graduate and grow towards the vision that I love.

Lasers = love in this case, and now that the potential of the phone stand and cord wrap is growing beyond myself and friends it’s clear that lasers are holding the product from going to scale. This isn’t always as easy to admit with a skill that you use to define who you are as a human, like being a designer because you design.

4. Find a material specialist

With real products you don’t find jacks-of-all-trades masters of none. The startup costs are just too high and the mistakes too costly, or at least seem that way (see part 1).

In creating a physical product we couldn’t go to our button supplier and ask for her to supply paper for packaging, any more than we could go to our leather supplier and ask them for buttons. Yes they were both suppliers, but that did not make them the masters of all supplies.

In the early stage tech startup world it’s all too often though that we seem to have 3 categories: coders, designers, businessers. If you’re a coder all of the code bases are belong to you, and all of the businessers might be looking at you as the code part of their base. Perhaps this is most apparent in job listings for UI/UX designers.

Pictured above is the progression that happened when we talked to a packaging design and production specialist. We went to them with a rough concept that we’d spent money designing with a great friend and industrial designer, using the tech startup approach of generalization, and came out a week later with solid design.

Not pictured above, but below, is the hole on the packaging. This was a detail that was pointed out by them that just a simple hole punch won’t work for all stores, some yes, but not all. Their expertise in just this one small detail saved us from what could have been a costly refactoring of the packaging.

In app development go beyond categories like server, hardware, and iOS. At the present I’m developing a new writing application (want beta access? LINK) for iOS and OS X. Simply being literate in their languages could have been enough, but Lee with his specialty in the CoreText framework was able to hash out the MVP in a tenth of a time than just a coder would have.

5. The packaging is the product

To play up my importance at times I love to use a quote that goes along the lines of…

The design is the product to the user

I think the original quote is customer, but it should be “user,” because the customer often doesn’t know the design yet. The prospective customer is not aware of the details of the design. That’s why the quote should be…

The packaging is the product to the prospective user

This realization came from looking at the competition’s packaging for ideas, and appreciating how big a part it played in a product’s valuation. I saw great quality leather products in generic plastic bags, while mass produced plastic pieces were housed in custom premium packaging. If I weren’t a customer thinking about the production costs and quality with an unusual level of consideration the pumped out plastic pieces would have ended up looking higher value.

The plastic pieces’ custom packaging went beyond just holding the product at the perfect angle though, it acted as the initial onboarding. The quality hand crafted products were packaged like that app that just opens, and just opens. Sure you’re free to use it exactly how you like and aren’t tempted to skip the onboarding, but you might miss out on the true value of the product for who knows how long. Websites and apps have the figurative 15 seconds, while physical products on a shelf have a fraction of a glance unless they’re picked up.

With our packaging we make sure that the iPhone holder can be touched, and the prospective user understands it is also an earphone wrap and keychain. We clearly illustrated our 3 key use cases were clear on the front of the packaging, without a pick up or flipping over the case being necessary, the figurative Read More… or “fold” of the physical product world.

For an app the packaging is the presentation, the screenshots, the copy, the website. There's many better people and pieces on Medium about that part of the packaging though, so I'd like to focus more on the beta packaging.

During the beta is when the prototyping of the iPhone holder’s packaging began. This isn't necessarily because I was thinking about testing the packaging on friends, but because I didn't want too look too crafty. Not in the sense of sneaky, but like I was handing out my homemade crocheted creation.

I’m one of those annoying people that likes to think of themselves as a “product person,” which means I'm prideful enough to think I can understand a category as broad as product. This pride means I didn't like showing or handing out something that made me look like a kindergartener holding up their hand made drawing. This was how I felt a hand made leather craft was being perceived at first.

As much as people will tell you doing it for the love is the most important, like a hobby, the truth is the user and beta user won’t value it as much. Once I was handing out a packaged product to friends an increased appreciation of what was being given was clear and interest was increased. It also became more/semi-acceptable to use it for last minute presents (sorry Miles).

For the beta process of an app, go beyond a Testflight invite. At the very least have a simple LaunchRock site ready to go. Present your app with possibly a parody of the official Apple download button:

If your app is going to be a paid app, or a freemium app put it out there on the site before release, make it known to your friends and beta users that what they’re getting is of real value, and more than hobby hacking.

6. Know what you can afford to charge

When you’re dealing with variable costs per product for materials you can’t just depend on economies of scale kicking in at a million… sorry, a billion users. You've got to get your head out of the clouds, because your costs are heavier than the cloud.

With the keychain I couldn’t risk accidentally selling for below what our COGS (cost of goods sold) was. I had to list out exactly the expenses that we had and then factor in a distributor and retailer’s cut into what we might charge (this will make you stop complaining about App Store cuts quick…).

When thinking about COGS I had to think also about profit. More specifically I’d now be dealing with a fixed inventory too, so had to factor in what kind of revenue would be necessary to cover producing a second run, not just our small salaries during the first run.

Maybe I’m putting myself out there too much admitting it, but I hadn’t put together a COGS for an app before. It’s possible to argue there’s not the necessity that there is with physical products, but there definitely could have been a benefit. To be honest though, I'm not entirely sure how to calculate COGS for an app, as R&D doesn't factor into COGS. Because of this, you'd likely be better off using an alternative method, such as resource consumption accounting or of course there's a lean version too now.

In apps it could be good to start with a pretend actual inventory, or realistically your reachable market. Don't fall into the trap of using percentages and the just 1% of x-market. Think about if you had 6 thousand units sold and figure out how much you actually would need to sell your app for in order to eat.

It's not necessarily a bad thing for you or your users if that COGS ends up being above the $1 app tier. That realization that you’re going to have to charge $10 for an app is positive pressure to build a better app. Gone is the excuse in the back of your mind that, "Hey it’s only a dollar app, right..?"

In the case of the iPhone stand the realization that the original thought of breaking below the $10 mark wasn't possible put on positive pressure. To justify the price that would be necessary to cover a distributor and retailers cut we had to improve the product. I said had to, but it was much of a got to. We got to add in the improvements that we’d wanted like premium keyrings, custom buttons, and stitched supportive fold seams like an iPad’s smart cover.

With apps now I’ll be more realistic about what kind of lifetime value is necessary from a customer, and this will be motivation and justification to add in the final 10% of features and benefits that will make the difference.

That’s it & this is it

That’s the SmartHolder above, and those were the lessons learned from producing it.

The SmartHolder’s story is yet to be finished, with the second chapter beginning now on our Campfire crowdfunding page (Japan’s kickstarter). See pictures of the SmartHolder and a short video showing the making of it starting today.

(laser cutter smell not included)

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you can tweet me @benWTNB
or email me at ben@96problems.com