Our chat with Noam + Reflections

Our Chat with Noam

Last Wednesday, Team Audible had a follow-up meeting with Noam to get some advice about our application's infrastructure, next steps, and how to make the best product that we can in these two quarters. Noam thought that our team was doing well so far, particularly with our focus on the user experience side of things, and gave us lots of valuable advice that boiled down to these two points:

1. Keep it lean - focus on a minimal viable product (MVP) 

This was definitely something we needed to hear, particularly after spending so much time making minor decisions about which type of database to use and which extra features to add on to our app. Noam emphasized that if we remained consistent in our work, made simple short-term goals, and tried to accomplish every goal as easily as possible, we would have a much higher chance of delivering a successful product. He recommended that we hold off on creating databases for right now, and just focus on the critical initial steps: loading the phone's music library into the application, then adding songs to the queue, etc.

2. Try to do code commits and user testing in tandem
Noam warned us not to get so caught up in the programming of the application that we forget to continue user testing. He recommended that every time we add a small feature in the code, that we follow it up with some user testing (with photos and videos!) and then analyze this feedback before moving forwards. This would save us lots of time that might be spent programming features that are not well received by our audience.

Our talk with Noam really refocused our thinking away from all of the minor details we were fixated on, and got us excited to start creating a successful minimal viable product. Following that meeting, we've made a lot of progress (particularly the developing of our interactive prototype and our first significant code commit), and following Noam's advice, we expect to do a big round of user testing this week!

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Reflections

Now that we're about a month into our project, we took some time to reflect on our experience working as a group so far and think about where we are headed. Here are some thoughts from each of us:

Justin: "I think our team works well together, complementing each other's creativity and working diligently to make tangible improvements to our user experience, needfinding insight, and code base each week. I like that we all have been taking the initiative to accomplish tasks we see that need attention without being necessarily asked or directed. I think that we're good about communicating quickly with each other (e.g. recognizing good ideas and each other's needs). Moving forward, I think we should focus on developing innovative approaches to reaching MVP, even if it means compromising some of our original concepts."

Sunny: "I am really pleased with our team dynamic and the way we work together so seamlessly, with each of us picking up tasks that we are interested in and communicating efficiently with the others about our progress. And we have fun too! Amanda and I had some homemade fondue on Thursday night after prototyping and Justin and I took my puppy for a walk before programming on Saturday. I think that this is our strength as a team - we enjoy constantly communicating with each other and we are genuinely excited to work together on this project. As we start to tackle the meat of this project, my hope for our team is that we don't lose this excitement - even though programming isn't always as thrilling as presenting to VCs and making pretty prototypes."

Amanda: "I've been very happy with how well our team works together. I feel we all take turns taking the lead at various points to push our project forward, and never miss the chance to take initiative when someone else is having a busier day. We all have very different personalities and tend to prefer different working styles, but it helps to keep us in check. We communicate openly and well so that while we may have disagreements, we always know that the others are thinking, and make sure to take their opinions into account as well. I truly look forward to working with Sunny and Justin over the remaining few months to see how our product comes into fruition."

Overall, all of us are happy with how we work together and communicate, and we like that whoever has the lightest schedule on a given day will take more initiative on the project. We're doing well so far, so hopefully if we keep this up we'll see a successful product in a few months!