AppParently

Inspiration

We believe that real-time connections with parents who’re facing the same challenges will decrease the social distance & anxiety caused by being stuck at home with a kid.

What it does

We’re creating an eCommerce extension solution where parents can listen to each other, exchange knowledge. We’re making sure that content and groups are aligned with relevant kid lifespan development. We’re extending the retailer/producer ordering process and loyalty programs to give extra value for participating in the community.

How we built it

A team of 2 technical leaders, 1 architect, 1 product designer, and 1 business person. We used a "Shape Up" methodology by Basecamp combined with our "SNAP" methodology. In-depth-interviews & user testing included. Both synchronous and asynchronous ways of working combined. We build it with passion & fun. We build it with a purpose.

Challenges we ran into

It was easy for us to come up with ideas for helping people during the lockdown. As founders of non-profit https://www.techtotherescue.org/ we've been focusing on sharing goods since the pandemic began. The biggest challenge, therefore, was to find a use-case that can be broadly adopted and implemented by others than NGO's - and by that, apart from being good and altruistic, we had to find a business value.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

We're proud that after interviewing many parents, without prior acknowledgment that we're under time pressure and need confirmation about value, none of them declined that our idea is useless. Of course, some of our features and assumptions were more than wrong, but hey... I'm proud that we've found some time, listened to them, and adjusted on short notice!

What we learned

We've learned that it's more likely to get a healthcare recommendation from specialists (that was our initial AppParently idea), but on the other hand, childcare products are more likely to be purchased after a peer recommendation (a pivot). We've learned that being a parent is, AppParently :), much harder than we thought... Huge kudos to all parents who're finding the strength to fight for their beloved ones while being stuck at home!

What's next for AppParently (made by Dolphins)

Early next week we continue to test our prototypes with parents to make sure we meet their needs. Mid-February we already have a sprint to improve usability, functionality & message to create a real MVP that can be implemented ASAP.