May
20

Copious Communication

I take a lot of notes. You’ll never find me in a meeting or a call just sitting there nodding – nope. Also, you’ll never have a meeting with me without getting a giant email afterwards detailing pretty much everything we covered.

Why? Jennifer, why are you such a crazy chronicler? Do we really care about what we talked about at lunch? Why are you listing out what goes into the Settings screen – isn’t that obvious?

The reasons I do these things, and why I’m so militant about taking notes and asking others to refer to/read the notes is because communication is key to a successful product.

Notes are a great reference point for what we’re thinking, problems we’ve worked through, and decisions we’ve settled on. While some people might have amazing eidetic memories, most of us don’t and that’s where the notes come in. BAM! Here’s a note on what features we want in the Settings screen, or here is a note from a user interview we did last June where they asked for 3 new features, or here is a note where we decided to delay push notifications until V2 so let’s stop arguing about it for the 1 millionth time.

At LunarLincoln, we use a little tool called Confluence to keep track of notes, plans, etc. This isn’t necessarily the best tool or the most elegant tool (but it works with our ticketing system JIRA and user system so it’s fine). Some teams use Google Docs. Some teams use Notion, or Basecamp, or Asana. Sometimes I even use regular pen and paper *gasp*. (And then later I type it into Confluence so it’s searchable). These all work.

Notes may seem not important when you’re first starting out – I know everything, I’ve got it! But when it comes time to add new team members, or when you’ve put a side project down and then you want to resurrect it 6 months later – you’ll come to appreciate the time savings of having notes about where you were, what came next, and why in the world you decided that the menu needed to be at the bottom instead of the top.

So “notes” is kind of a vague term. I mean, I get the concept but what exactly DO we consider useful notes at LunarLincoln?

Things I find myself referencing, creating, or wishing I had later:

  • Feature Lists
  • Goals, Audience, Problems
  • Names, Marketing Phrases, Short descriptions of the Product
  • Meeting Notes / Decisions Made
  • Credentials, Key Roles, Terminology
  • User Stories / Development discussions
  • Business Plans / Monetization
  • Drawings / Doodles / Whiteboard Photos / Designs

Typically if you have detailed content for these areas – you are on your way to having STRONG plans for building a product. These are the kinds of notes that allow you AND your teammates/contractors/helpers/investors to have CLEAR VISION and to be on the same page. (It also majorly cuts down on the number of questions you get and having to repeat yourself over and over)

So yeah – NOTES. A super basic thing, that you should do and make a habit of. We love it and hope you’ll learn to love it too.

Sep
02

Gif TV: A LunarLincoln Product

Gif TV: A LunarLincoln Product

If you’ve ever perused our blog or Twitter you might have noticed that we like GIFs. We think they’re a great medium for injecting humor or emotion into what could otherwise be a dry industry-specific topic. If you’ve ever been in our company Slack or on a text thread – you’ll notice we sling just as many GIFs there too. We just can’t get enough of those little moving-nuggets of fun.

What feels like 1 million years ago but was actually 2014, I found an article on Lifehacker (remember Lifehacker?) about building a little screen that showed GIFs. I was fascinated, immediately ordered the parts and put one together (although not without copious cursing due to the inaccurate instructions). This lil’GIF machine resided on the wall in our office for a few years but was more frequently out of commission than active. It was the definition of a buggy hack.

I loved it. I loved the serendipity of a random GIF being served up as well as the mindless entertainment of seeing what comes next. If you’re a fan of the TikTok For You page, you know exactly what I mean.

So, when we first started clearing time in our schedule to work on passion-projects at LunarLincoln, we each made lists of potential ideas we’d like to work on. Wiley made a huge list of tools that could help him at work/life (to do apps, API validators, proximity photo services). Me? I made a huge list of fun, useless things (80s photo filters, mean mail and….the Gif TV).

I wanted to see our office Gif TV as a real product, for real (non-technical) people. It could show your favorite GIFs, GIFs from friends, GIFs for topics, reaction GIFs, etc. Whatever hit of 5 second dopamine-laced entertainment you needed.

Wiley begrudgingly agreed (since I promised to do most of the work). And so we dug into building Gif TV.

Below is a very quick summary of the journey but we’ll be breaking these into longer posts in the coming days. Keep checking back for more product and GIF content!

Initial Plans & the Reboot

Initially our plan was to package up the original raspberry pi/screen concept with a companion app to select and serve the GIFs since the initial version you had to upload GIF files by hand to a random database. But, as I started to source components, and look at 3-D printing cases, and see how long it took to assemble them by hand – it was seeming a more and more complicated (and not profitable) venture. Hardware is hard y’all.

But what if the app WAS the tv?

This would be a simple solution. We build apps. Why muddy it up with hardware?

BUT, I did still want some sort of physical component for two reasons.

  1. People are so fickle about paying for apps – a physical product still holds more “value” for consumers. We could recoup costs better upfront than trying to build out all the infrastructure for some sort of subscription service.
  2. I wanted a physical engagement with the gifs. We already have a million ways of digitally access gifs, but what about a “present” version. I pictured the app languishing with the 1200 other random things you downloaded into your phone. That physical stand will be sitting there, asking – don’t you want to stream some gifs today?

So the GIF TV was reborn – an App + a Stand.

Coming soon – Learn more about the app planning process and the stand production process.

Gif TV as a way to learn new tools/technologies

The Gif TV project wasn’t just a way to share our office Gif TV with friends though. We wanted some low-risk projects to test new tools on.

Personally, I wanted to take Figma for a test run without using a client as a guinea pig (and on something more complex than twiddling with the pre-built templates).

Wiley had wanted to check out Flutter. After years of nay-saying cross platform solutions, a few close friends had managed to convince him that Flutter was worth a gander. Cross-platform still is only best used for content-driven apps versus sensor driven apps and Gif TV fit this niche perfectly.

Gif TV seemed like the great solution for both goals. Fun product + acquiring new skills. Double win.

Coming soon – Learn more about why we’re fully on the Figma train now and about Flutter and when it’s best to use.

Gif TV as a foray into new activities (crowdfunding, marketing, startup sites)

We weren’t just learning new skills for our careers though, we did a little stretching into adjacent areas too.

I learned more than I ever wanted to know about laser cutting and CNC machines. I built stand prototypes with my Cricut, had early versions cut with Ponoko, and now I have a cardboard box with more random Gif TV stand pieces than you’d even need.

We tried out new kind of promotional websites – falling in love with Carrd for it’s simplicity and inexpensive entry point for landing pages and Big Cartel for our shop.

We stretched our marketing skills again for the first time since CaseCollage. We gained a newfound respect for how lucky we’d been with that first launch and just how many new things there were to learn in this go-round. Product Hunt, social campaigns, cold emails – they were all areas where we felt we were just dipping out toes and learning there was a lot more to learn.

Coming soon – Learn more about our experience with Product Marketing.

Gif TV as an enjoyable product for friends

At the end of the day, we haven’t seen as much traction as we’d hope for our little Gif TV. But that doesn’t mean it can’t still happen or that I’m not still enjoying my personal Gif TV streaming on my desk right now. We’ve learned a ton about Figma, Flutter, Kickstarter, Product Hunt, lasercutting, ecommerce and social media. I think we’re better positioned for future product launches and we have a great little product here as a case study.

We’ll likely push Gif TV some more during the holiday season and I’ll work on some alternative marketing for it in the meantime.

Want to check out Gif TV for yourself?

Visit the site where you can download the apps, purchase a stand, or learn more about all the ways you can enjoy your own Gif TV.

Oct
09

What’s in a name?

You have the idea. You’ve asked others about the idea. You have plans to build the idea. But…in order to start writing code, buying URLs, designing branding, doing your social media thang….you need a name.

Easy. I’ll just come up with a name. No. Big. Deal.

A few hours later, you have a name, you love it. You think it’s pretty clever. You’ve decided to name your idea baby: Xymr (You know, like simmer but with zest”). The product is a recipe app for dogs (obviously).

But when you email about Xymr to others their eyes twitch, they ask…so what does “Ex-eye-m-ar” do? Or you recommend Xymr to a friend at the dogpark and they google “Zimmer” and find nothing. Or they do get it right, and oh hey, it looks like the first entry for Xymr goes to…a…porn site. Wait, you never googled your own company name? Oh man.

See where I’m going here? A good name for your product or company isn’t necessarily trendy or cool but one that works. Everytime. It needs to work visually, aurally, and on the internet. Unique but not tooooo unique.

Easy right?

There are some basic rules to try to follow when coming up with a product name and while you don’t have to follow all of them, it’s important to weight the importance to your audience of each.

  1. Spelling. You can be creative but not too creative (leave the vowels please!). People will hear about your product and search for it. Make sure what they search will bring them to your product.
  2. Being unique. Also known as Google juice. If someone googles your product, are you going to be front and center? Or 9 pages back. Don’t name your company “Googl”. Don’t name your cooking product “Kitchen” or “Recipe”. It’s a losing battle with the SEO giants. Your user isn’t going to hunt for you, and if they can’t get to your product with one or two obvious search terms your name needs to be better.
  3. Competitors. Don’t be too similar to competitors. If you name your company Zimmer and your competitor is named Simmer, you might be losing half your interested audience through a mistaken search. Don’t make users hunt for you.

Now as an aside, you might ask – what about Spotify, what about rrreally unique names? Brand new words? You CAN do this, but again it needs to be easy to hear, easy to spell, easy to search, and easy to remember.

Okay, so I have what I shouldn’t do. Now, how do I go about finding a GOOD name? What if I can only come up with derivative garbage? Work Corp. Synergy Labs, Best Business.

First I like to start by setting the mood for brainstorming ideas. Relax. Be prepared to be silly. Have a beer or light some candles. Get hopped up on sugary donuts. Ready?

  • First, write down adjectives you’d like people to think about when they think of your product.
  • Then, write down words related to what your product does.
  • Do you have a giant list of words now?

Here’s an example. For our dog recipe app, I’ll write down some adjectives: Dog, Pet, Puppy, Pup, Food, Nourish, Meal, Healthy, Delicious, Fun, Homemade, Authentic, Cook, Prepare, Create, Craft, Kitchen, Stir

  • Now, let’s make that list bigger and more interesting. See if there are any words that are similar but we didn’t think of.
  • Go to thesaurus.com and turn those 20 words into 100 similar words.
  • Go to Google translate and turn those words into other languages. (latin, greek, sanskrit, portugese, anything sound cool here?)
  • Stretch your brainstorming even further. I personally love this site: https://onym.co/
  • Now you have a biiiiiiiig list of words.
  • You can remove ones you don’t super like or aren’t working for you. Be brutal, slash it down to just the words that make you excited for your business.

Here are some additional words we found: Pooch, Fido, Chow, Fare, Grub, Snack, Fresh, Fit, Hearty, Make, Plan, Mix, Victus, Canis, Hundo.

  • Next step. Go to Bustaname.com and put in your list to start making combos. Tinker with the word combos (first vs last), suffixes, prefixes.(Sidenote: I know this site is ugly, but it is powerful. There will be a lot of garbage in there, but also some gems. Sort for your gold!)
  • You can also think about prefixes and suffixes -ly, -fy -ist. Or group combos +studio +labs + craft +bits +team.

For this exercise – Bustaname suggested pupmeal but I like the idea of MealPup – a short, quick, fun meal for your puppy, puppers, pupperino.

Now even though Bustaname has done a rudimentary url search, go ahead and google search them, social media search them, and url search them. Few competitors? Available handles? Friends can successfully type it in or pronounce it? You have a name! Time to start plastering that baby everywhere.

Jun
18

Don’t build it all. Picking a Platform.

Often a client’s first knee jerk reaction is to want to build their product on as many platforms as possible. “Our customers and our admins need to be able to access their account online and on a mobile app and maybe on a desktop program.”

And then when we suggest maybe only doing only one of those…they get…kinda hostile.

They think that we don’t believe in this big idea. Or we don’t want to help all their users. But, this isn’t it at all! By telling you no, what we really mean is that we want you to be successful! And successful when you’re a fledgling startup means starting small and focused.

We totally get it. You don’t want to miss out on an opportunity to connect with a potential user and their potential money just because they can’t access your product easily, but trying to build out multiple code bases without any initial customers or validation is a very. costly. mistake.

The first thing you should code up when starting a new product is an MVP…or a MINIMUM. viable product. Does building your first product for multiple users to access online, on phones, on tablets and on desktops sound very minimal? Nope.

So what should you do? Which should you pick? How do you even do that?

Don’t worry! We can take a quick look at a couple of different aspects to decide which platform is best to start with.

First let’s look at what kinds of tasks your product will contain.

  • Will your users need to type in a lot of text?
    • This will mean your product needs to run on something that has a real keyboard. (Web or Computer Program)
  • Will your users need access to a camera or video? What kind of photos or video are your users needing?
    • Is it candids like Snapchat (App)
    • Or is it more meetings like Zoom (Web)
  • Do we need the user’s location? How accurate does this need to be?
    • If we’re offering some sort of running, fitness, or habits product we’ll need an app that can offer that hyper detailed data.
    • If we just need to know nearby items (think Yelp) then maybe typing in our zipcode on a website works.
  • Does this product need a really high level of visual polish or performance?
    • Depending on its speed and visual needs, maybe don’t consider a hybrid app or web app for starting off.

Then look at where these kinds of tasks will be done.

  • Are they needing to do these tasks while out and about? (Phone or Tablet App)
  • How about offline/no service areas (Native Apps)
  • Is this daytime, office work? (Web Browser or Computer Program)
  • Is this an evening, couch activity? (Phone App / Responsive Web)

Who will be using this product?

  • Kids? – Most kids use inexpensive tablets
  • Office staff? Maybe custom software or web service or inexpensive android tablets
  • Gen Z? New Moms? Senior Men? – Each demographic migrates to a certain kind of device depending on finances, habits, and age.

Now of course, people have varying habits and not every single user you talk to will say that they want to access your product in the same place. (In fact most users will say that they want more choice – even if their actual habits show them using the same devices over and over.)

So what you’re doing with this exercise is deciding which platform has the most logical overlap for all of these questions/answers for your target user.

Sidenote: Pretty much ALL of our advice at LunarLincoln involves touching base with your users and their needs. Make sure you genuinely understand your “core” user and remain focused on them. If you’re not sure how to do that just yet, check out our article on “Knowing your Users”.

Okay. I know more about where my users are and what this product might need, now what?

Now, pick ONE PLATFORM for your MVP.

Only one? Really? But…but…I can’t! I need them all. This way I don’t miss out and ALL of my customers are always happy. Please can’t we just build for web and mobile and desktop and tablet?

Nope. For your MVP, building for one platform will help you in a myriad of ways.

  • It helps save development time and money
  • It reduces churn when you need to change or tweak features
  • It even allows you to focus your marketing for that initial launch only in places and with groups that will use the platform you’re on.

These sound like good things right? Not doing ALL the things IS a good thing. I promise.

Also, just because you launch with one platform doesn’t mean you’re barred from expanding for all time. If you have amazing demand, then this means you’ll also have more money and information from users to know where to go next (build that Android app! Add that desktop version!)

If you over build and were *gasp* maybe a teeny bit wrong about your users, then you have a big ol’ technical piece that is getting dusty, is underused, and is likely still costing your financial resources to maintain.

Don’t be this creepy, empty castle subdivision in Turkey.

If you feel pretty confident about knowing what your user’s want and where they are but still need help determining the technical solutions, we’re happy to help.

Send us an email (from an app OR a website! 😉 )
Jan
25

A new look

Oh hi! You miiiight have noticed that things are looking a bit different at the online mooncabin. We decided that we were long overdue for a facelift, since we’ve been rocking the same look since 2014. The outside was workable but the inside was a bit of a time warp. Plus in the past few years we’ve been itching to add some new content but couldn’t figure out how to cleanly implement it with the old template.

The old template

Our old website was a wordpress template implemented before the invention of “page builders”. The inside was a scary land of stacked shortcodes. We didn’t like touching it because each time it required diving back into learning the mystery pseudo-code that stitched everything together. The template ceased being supported a few years ago but at that time we were mid-mobile-dev-mania and didn’t have time to look into alternatives.

What next?

So here we are: 2019. Web development has totally evolved, search engines are now super fancy/picky, responsiveness is key. Even WordPress, itself, decided to undergo a bit of a renovation this year. We’ve built a few other websites in the meantime and it’s helped me have a better idea of what we want and don’t want. We still recognize that we are better mobile devs than web devs, so we weren’t looking to build anything too custom. I’ve test driven several different page builders in the past: Avada’s Fusion Builder, WP Bakery’s Visual Composer, and this newcomer Tatsu run by Brand Exponents. I really dig the interface for Tatsu – it marries flexibility with simplicity and since it’s relatively new, it isn’t saddled with a ton of baggage/backwards compatibility like the industry leaders so we went ahead and dug in. Several iterations later – I think we have our final result.

What’s new?

EVERYTHING! Just kidding. Some stuff is really familiar, because its true and it works, but we did want to revisit how we talk about our work. We added a huge section on our Process. Building mobile apps is still a new concept to many people and “how does all this work” is the #1 question we get from leads. Dumping an entire load of process on someone in an initial meeting can be somewhat overwhelming, so it’s nice to have a place that potential clients can check out at their own leisure. We have a new area that focuses on our internal projects, which will grow in the new year as we add new ideas and ship more.

In the meantime, keep checking in. We’ll keep adding and polishing in the upcoming months, but I wanted to go ahead and kick off 2019 with some fresh code. Hope you like what we’ve built thus far.

As a side note: There’s really only one ongoing debate to settle – ARE THERE ENOUGH SPACE PUNS ON THE SITE? (Wiley always thinks there should be more.)

Jan
09

Hourglass for Jira

Over here in LunarLincoln land we’ve been working on a few things….client work, mentoring, getting Little Doors in the dang App Store (I’ll cover that more in another post). While all of this has been happening, we have a little internal project that’s been chugging along making some background profits.

Oh hey there…

What is Hourglass?

It’s a tool we built a year ago when an extremely popular time tracking plugin we used in Jira basically blew up for a few days. Those were busy and important days where we didn’t want to have to track time manually, so Wiley spent the weekend hacking together a little tool we could use ourselves in the meantime. Goodbye expensive plugin behemoth with a shaky support record – hello Hourglass – our own simple but scrappy time tracker.

We used it for a few weeks, made some improvements, and thought, “Why not share this with others?” Maybe there are other people out there who also just want something simple and straightforward. Start your clock, stop your clock, that’s it. So, we put it in the Atlassian Marketplace, threw up a website and that was it….for a while.

Then we started getting sales checks. Not massive amounts, but a little something nice from Atlassian each month. We decided to show our little time tracker  some love, so we made a few updates: new Atlassian UI, a dashboard and some more analytics.

To date, users of Hourglass have logged almost 3 million minutes of billable time. They’ve created 25,000 worklogs.  They are based in 50 countries and a surprising number of different industries.

Which brings us to the present day. While we are still on our epic search for the best business idea ever, we thought we’d make a short pitstop in Atlassian plugin-land and build a few more nuggets of code that don’t require long term marketing. A few more monthly sales checks wouldn’t be too bad too.  We’re pretty intimate with the ins and outs of Jira. We have some gripes that could use a plugin and there are probably some people out there with the very same complaints.  Do you have any Jira complaints? “It’s so annoying when….” ‘s ? Send them on over! (jennifer@lunarlincoln.com or twitter @lunarlincoln). It’s not the next Facebook, but it’ll certainly make your day to day a bit more pleasant – one tiny tool at a time.

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