User testing with kids and parents

Earlier today, JFDI-Innov8 2012 startups Gradeful, Wildby and Kark took their minimum viable prototypes to Food For Thought, a family restaurant at Singapore’s Botanic Gardens, to see what kids and their parents made of them.

For any developer, customer feedback feels like crunch time … but the Lean Startup Methodologyfollowed by the JFDI-Innov8 bootcamp makes it essential to frame both the customer problem and to test the solution. For at least one team, today’s experience means a pivot in a new and positive direction.

As for all the JFDI-Innov8 teams, the process of customer development has stretched the original idea that brought Gradeful to JFDI. What started as an app idea for tracking school grades evolved into a product focused on fatherhood but, today, it took a new direction again. Co-founder Luther Goh reflected on the change in my video log for today:

If the outcome of customer development is unpredictable, working with children is doubly so.

For Kark Mobile Education, today’s tests proved inspiring validation for a concept that had another young audience ooh-ing and aah-ing last week. Two of the co-founders, Sindhu and Fithor, were delighted to see that even in its current form, their prototype held the attention of youngsters for up to an hour. Better still, it encouraged exactly the kind of group play and interaction with an adult that they had intended, using a new platform that links tablet, web- and print media.

Tom and YY from team Wildby aim to help parents who want their children to learn and be active but who don’t have time to answer all their kids’ questions. Saying the name of something or scanning everyday objects with this mobile app triggers a talking encyclopedia that turns the whole world into a playground of imagination and discovery. Today, Wifi connectivity limited the performance of the speech recognition element but that revealed something interesting … it’s quite fun to shout at a robot friend and kind of reassuring to see he’s not always right 🙂