#launchvideo

As a great Irish philosopher once said; you’ve just got to ride it. So again I notice somebody hacked my blog and prevented me from posting for an obscene amount of time (…that’s my story and I’m sticking to it…) As it’s been a while I figure the best way to update you is to let you know where I am at with EVERYTHING, so here goes:

The company and its holding company are both incorporated, however I am yet to decide on year end dates

A basic cashflow with budgets vs actuals has been drawn up, along with a rudimentary Excel general ledger system (which should be sufficient for my purposes initially)

Directors’ loan and founders agreements have been drafted for when necessary

I have got quotes from 5 lawyers (https://www.lexoo.co.uk/) to draw up terms of service and a privacy policy; these will be commissioned when the product is nearer to launch

The company logos has been designed and illustrations for social media pages have been completed (courtesy of https://www.facebook.com/KatHeapIllustration)

Copy for all social media and website is complete, along with app store descriptions and keyword analysis

Primary and tertiary market research is complete and has been considered and factored into the business plan

The business plan is complete (save for the formalisation of the marketing and promotion plan), including: competitor analysis, monetisation strategies, mission statements, objectives, SWOT and consideration of as many potential pitfalls as I could think of

The features required at launch have been decided upon

A first attempt at a user interface (UI) and user experience (UX) has been mocked up using Invision (http://www.invisionapp.com/) ...more on this later

 So those are the major milestones reached already, and here my furry friends are the things still to do:

A launch site is to be made in the next couple of weeks in order to start generating interest in the product prior to launch

The press release is currently being graphically designed however all of the copy has already been produced

I am meeting with HSBC to set up a start-up business bank account this week

I need to refine the app’s rating algorithm (purely a few finishing touches)

Code – see below

Launch videos – see below

So, to me it looks like we have got somewhere, but with 6 weeks remaining I am getting ever more nervous about releasing something before I go back to work!

Last week I spent a good couple of days attempting to convert some very rushed UI sketches into something marginally more comprehensible that I wouldn’t mind showing someone. After looking around at various wire-framing tools (all of which were either a) laborious to use, b) badly designed, c) expensive), I came across a rather interesting alternative. Invision (as mentioned earlier) allows you to upload pictures or sketches of your user interface; the software then frames the images in an iPhone (so it makes things look a lot more realistic). But hold your horses, it doesn’t end there, oh no, no, no, because the real ingenious bit is that it allows you to create ‘hotspots’ on each image which are effectively resizable hyperlink buttons that mean you can link all of your images together. Not only that but it also allows you to add other UX touches, like left and right swiping or pull downs etc. So after a few extended Microsoft Paint sessions (utilising my mad skills honed from years of drawing scientific diagrams at school) I uploaded my images, linked them all through, commented them so users would know how they worked and have for all intents and purposes what looks like a working app! I can’t say how highly I recommend doing this as it forces you to think of the user path through your app and is also an invaluable tool when discussing UI/UX with developers.

One of my challenges for the coming week is to come up with a few good launch video ideas. From what I can see, I think I will be needing: a ‘how it works’ video; which is effectively just screenshots of a user using the app, some promotional viral videos that are used to generate interest and a launch video or two (maybe a formal and informal version to cater for users and journalists/potential investors) which is kind of a cross-over of the two other videos. So from what I can see the first thing I need to do is storyboard the whole shebang (my job for the next few days), I am then going to attempt to shoot them on my iPhone before I go about hiring a pricy cameraman to see how things look. This is way, way out of my realm of experience so should be interesting! I’ll keep you posted…

We are still behind with the coding, but this was always to be expected, these sort of things rarely finish on time. We are trying to be more proactive in the management and oversight of the coding process now so hopefully things will move a little more quickly now, however an end of August launch is now but a pipe dream, never-mind, as long as it gets done!

Goals, goals, goals, right, so good news! One goal down! I finished the 5 books (largely as a result of an intensive 3 days in which I devoured The Psychopath Test, The Rosie Project and The Rosie Effect – all highly recommended!), the gym goal is still there or thereabouts, I am cooking a lot more again now, although not necessarily new recipes (must try harder), blog posts more than once a week just aren’t happening are they? And the less said about some of the other goals the better… I’ll work on them.