Don’t be too fast at launching a product
About a week ago I launched a new service for designers, where you can search for a hex code and find the palette that fits with the given color. It’s called pltts. It was such a simple idea. Too simple…
I was working on this project for more of less 8 hours. It was exciting to launch my first project ever. And then I was just working on it for 8 hours.
Don’t start in the browser
That I got from pencil to product in 8 hours was actually lied. I didn’t took a pencil. I made a mistake. I started designing in the browser. Without mockups in Photoshop or Sketch and without doing some sketches or anything else. Take the time and let the project grow. Not only in the browser. It was a huge mistake, that I started directly in the browser, because I didn’t thought correct and just coded an interface up in HTML. Without thinking about the user experience.
Take time evolving the product
As mentioned I got from “pencil to product in 8 hours”. I didn’t took enough time to evolve the product, that it was ready to use for a designer. Many designer used it though, but I wasn’t satisfied with it, but launched it. This was my second mistake.
You cannot create a good product in 8 hours, which acomplishes everything you need (Good interface, interaction and experience - and a good product itself). If you want to create a good product, take your time to create it, as you would think other great people would have done this.
This situation happened to me 3 days ago at an exam in school. I was finished with the exam about 30 minutes every pupil must handout the papers to the teacher. I sat on my chair in the room where the exams where written and was almost finished with it, but didn’t delivered the papers to the teacher. After reading every every exercise for the tenth time I had a flash of insight. I saved 10 points by adding some things to an exercise that wasn’t really finished.
(This could be easily compared with a product. You are the pupil (me). The teacher is the customer. The exam is the product you are creating.)
If you are delivering the exams to early, you are giving away important points that could better your grade — If you are delivering a product to early and you are not finished to launch it, it’s bad for you and your customer if there are many errors etc.
Make Betas
As I launched pltts.me the only one, who was testing it was me. I thought that it is great, but I would never use it, because I have my personal color palettes in my brain. So do it not like me!
Do it like this: Create a prototype of your product and seed it to some chosen beta testers. Beta testers are very good for giving feedback at your product by testing it in a private phase.
Foot Note: Sure, there is no product that is perfect as it is released. But it is possible to better your product by doing it fast, but not as fast as I did.
