So one of the things you'll do when bringing people on to your project,
is have consultations.
You might have a designer or an engineer come in to help you understand
what would be part of your minimum buyable product, and
what might need to go in a version two or version three.
To do that, we've brought in James and Karl.
Now guys, we have this app here, this is a prototype built out in envision.
And the idea is that it is an essentially a to do list or
calendar app.
And I want to understand sort of what we would go about making first,
if we wanted to make a version zero of this.
So as you can see, we've got these sort of welcome screens,
these sort of home screens.
And as we go on we've got a bunch of extra features that I thought were
really cool that we added on.
We've got, you can view your tasks by the month or by the week,
you can see an overview of what tasks you've completed,
what proportion of tasks you've completed over time.
You can also see tasks grouped up in certain ways, so
you know all the tasks about cars or all the recipes you've wanted to make.
And then you've also got sort of a profile and
a timeline of things we've done.
And then sort of general settings screens and a menu.
Does that make sense?
>> Mm-hm.
>> Sure.
>> So, I'm really excited about getting this built.
First off, James, as a designer, what are the things that you would like to
focus on in making this a better app right now?
>> Color.
I would probably change this color palette and then,
I really like this overview screen, like this graphic is really cool.
But I'd probably pull some colors from the images,
like maybe from your title bar and use the Palette Library for
Android to make it kind of more interesting.
And I really like this group setting.
And that's another place where I might change up the colors,
I might use more interesting topography to make it more impactful of
how many items I have in this automotive area, or books or whatever,
because that's not that readable >> That makes sense.
And Carl, how does that sound to you?
Do you think that that would be a reasonable set of things to start
working on as every one?
>> Well, there's a lot here in this envision prototype.
I think that we should probably talk about some of the core elements
before progressing into building absolutely every screen.
We probably want to talk about just the most interesting interaction elements.
So for instance, I have to question whether or
not we really need high fidelity graphs at this point.
We're talking about building a to-do app.
So, let's focus on the core elements of managing to dos.
>> Okay.
So if I'm understanding you correctly, we want to at least have as our first
bit, building out, making a to-do, checking off a to-do, things like that.
>> Yeah, that's right.
>> And do you think that it's worthwhile for
us to build out those small features?
This stuff is really cool and we wanted to include that in the app in the end.
>> Ultimately, we can make the app as big and featureful and
fancy as you want.
The thing that we have to do though is express the core elements first,
the core functionality.
What are users actually doing with this app?
And in this case they're managing their to dos,
they're managing a little bit of their life.
So we have to make that easy.
We have to bring that to the forefront.
There's a lot of extraneous views here that maybe don't support that
core work flow.
And so let's, I think it would best for
us to focus on the core elements going forward.
>> Okay.
Now James, with what Carl just said, that we want to focus on the core
elements, what would we be able to work on?
What would we be able to use your time on,
to make these core elements a little bit better?
Right now, that core element if I'm understanding it right, we would want
to have this screen where we have these to-dos and be able to check them off.
We would want, sort of our screen of actually making a to-do.
And then we'd want something like I don't know, a calendar or
something, to help manage their life.
>> Okay, so if we're focusing on those three screens,
starting with this general overview to do screen,
I would focus on the transitions between that screen and the creating a to do,
just to make it more instructive and make more intuitive for the user.
For this calendar, probably a similar type thing, and
just focus more in making it glanceable and more easy to read for, this
is the to do I have, this is what I need to do at this moment, or for this day.
>> So even if we're just building a small feature set,
there's still stuff for you as a designer to work.
>> Oh definitely.
>> Okay, so, you know, we've been talking about this small feature set,
and I'm not sure if this is actually a set that we,
I have the ability to pay you guys for yet.
I have a relatively small budget for this and
I want to make sure that we can get this done within that budget.
>> Well, I think we should adopt a philosophy of launch and iterate here.
That'll give us the agility to move where our users are going
with our software, and allow us to really focus on min viability first.
>> Okay, so I think we probably have enough to pay you guys to make this
initial minimum viable product really good, really beautiful,
and actually functional.
And then from there we can use the rest of my budget as the users dictate.
>> I think that's a great idea.
>> Perfect, so that's how a consultation session might go.
You'll have some concerns from either side and you'll have to balance them.
>> And at the end you'll hopefully have a sense of what is the minimum viable
product you'll be building.
As you go through this, you'll have multiple consultation sessions
at each release of the app, and it might be valuable for
you to bring these concerns in every step of the process.