How I know an app idea is good

Almost every day, someone tells me to watch some movie or show. A few days go by and I find myself on the coach with my wife wondering what we should watch. Damn it! I wish I could remember what Joe told me to watch the other day.

I think, “I’ll just build something quick and dirty” to record these recommendations. So I do it, I jazz it up a bit by adding a way to rate what I watch and lookup the details of the show on some open api movie site. Sweet!

So even though it looks like crap and barely works, I keep using it!

First version

But now I’m using it more so I see the flaws. It’s not built for mobile. It’s a hack. I need less clicks, etc.

So I write down the question, “When I first open the app, what do I want to do 80% of the time?” I answer, “I want to pick a genre and a person and see the unwatched recommendations.” And I build the simplest mockup to do that.

So let’s build it…