How we shipped 3 apps in 30 days.
Building only what is necessary and nothing more is crucial to your success
--
The problem that we faced…
Every year iShapeBrows hosts 3 days conferences for the PMU (Permanent Makeup Industry). This year, because of COVID, the conference was all digital and held using Zoom. The conference was to have 300–400 attendees. Because the conference was digital though, certain problems surfaced.
How would users be able to view video demonstrations after the conference? How would we ensure that only those who attended the conference had access to the videos? How could we quickly administer the videos to all the attendees? These were all problems that needed immediate solving.
Another problem we had to solve was the issuing of certificates…
At every conference, attendees receive Certificates of Attendance. It’s a large part of the reason why people attended the conference in the first place.
Being that now we would meet none of these people in person, we needed a new way to administer the certificates.
In the past, some after receiving certificates called their Credit Card companies denying charges. So we also needed a way to deactivate certificates if something like that happened again.
As you can see, many problems needed figuring out.
How did we solve these problems super fast?
#1 Cut Features Aggressively
First, we designed the web app PMU Masterclasses, using Adobe XD. It would be the platform where we give video access to the attendees.
In the design phase, we focused only on having the essentials. There were features that we knew would be nice to have, but we cut them out.
Being willing to cut features is important. You must be willing to do it to ship on time. Cut features during the design phase. It’s much harder to cut features once development starts.
So when designing, if a feature is not essential, cut it. Once you have the product in front of…
