What is your business model? Where is the business plan? What are the demographics? What is the market analysis? These are all questions you learn to answer in business school. In the world of technology, it can get thrown right out the front door, and I am beginning to think a good “gut feeling” sometimes is better intuition than all of the data and strategies we put our efforts into. Case in point: the new myLite application we developed for the initial release of the Apple App Store.
Currently, the app we developed has reached an audience beyond our dreams and is on the screens of the iPod Touch and iPhones of a global audience — and the reviews keep raving, showing an appetite for more. When we put together our other apps, we had a market plan and a demographic study and did all of the things you should do to “ensure success.” With the myLite, we expected people to like it, but as a nice little handy thing to have when you want to find something in the dark. What we didn’t anticipate are the stories of professional photographers telling us they use it for photoshoots; and creatives…a writer using the color trip for ambience while she writes; a doctor who’s using the red color in the xray room; and another person using the strobe in yellow as an emergency light in the back of their car. You can’t write a business plan for that, folks! The imagination of people is beyond any business plan, and it is so cool to see how and where they are using the myLite.
It’s inspired us to take it to another level — and, soon, we’ll have even more features that are cool and functional. It’s designing by our customers at its best. They are the reason the myLite has been a success! They’ve applied it in ways beyond our comprehension, and that’s the coolest of all.
I was at an AT&T store to order a new iPhone, and I watched an older gentlemen — easily into his mid 80s — ordering an iPhone. This is not a demographic on my radar, but it made me rethink all of the stuff I learned in business and get back to what matters the most: making products I really care about and making them for people to love them, too.
Shake n Bake.
Posted: July 18th, 2008 by Wade Beavers
Tags: apps, demographics, flasher, flashlight, iPhone, listening, myLite, strobe, users