Carry a tappable fake of the app and use it daily before coding

Joseph ChoiInteresting. This was a 7.9 million views. This was on your brand account, and is this like, is this you making this video, or is it a creator?

Roger Chen… was like he made this, like Leo made this amazing like prototypes, like it's like a mock-up. It's not a real app, it's like PowerPoints, like we use this uh product called ProtoPie, and then he just films everything, like it's just like a fake mock-up, and then see if people like it. And uh funny thing here is that, you know, you know like the TikTok audience just so perceptive, [laughter] and uh supposedly like this video should be, you know, like the point of view of someone texting a guy, right? But then, everyone realized that, "Hey, you know, like it's a man's hand. Like it's like Those are like men hands." [laughter] Yeah, so uh yeah. So, yeah, basically that's what we try to do. Like we want to we build a mock-up, and then we first like use it amongst ourselves, like the mock-up. Like, so- so every day I'm like an idiot, like carrying around like my phone, and I whip out this like a little PowerPoint thing, and I just like when I'm on the toilet, I just like play with it. Everything's like set. It's not a real app, but, you know, just to get a feel, you know. So, every time you you try that, like you get some new insights, like, "Hey, like this flow doesn't work, like it's too long." Uh and then the second thing about having a mock-up is uh you can really test like whether people want it, like just the rough concept. So, yeah, um we do that first, and then we finish building the app, and we start testing among like family and friends, and then, and then we do like the whole TikTok UGC thing.

Joseph ChoiI see. Interesting. And when you're prototyping, are you optimizing for what you think will look cool on TikTok?

Roger Chen… around like a brick that's shaped like the next version of the phone, and it's just a brick, it doesn't do anything. And then, he just like whips it out, and try and points at it, and then puts it back in his pocket. It's kind of like that. So, the mock-ups can be anything. It could be like, you know, the flow starting from the lock screen, or it could be the core like talking flow, or it could be like the flow of you know swiping in the community feed. So, it could be anything, but there's just such a huge gap between the Figma and something that you can tap. Uh it's just such huge tap. Like a lot of things look good in Figma, but it just does not work once you get your hands on it. So by having that mock-up, we uh reduce a lot of engineering, like unnecessary engineering work, because like we have that mock-up and we already know something doesn't work.

Joseph ChoiMm. That's really c- That's really interesting. I haven't seen that many people do this strategy before, ProtoPie, just prototyping it before you even make the app. Like, why do you think this video did so well?