The story of how I validated my first startup idea.

Setting the stage

As a digital nomad and being away from my family, there was a distinct problem in my life: I was not the best daughter. I was constantly busy with work which made it hard to speak with my parents. At the time of coming up with the idea, I was living half way across the world from my paretns and my siblings.

There was a problem in my life that I wanted to fix, so I sought out to find a solution.

As a Lead Product Designer at an early stage startup, I knew exactly how to build and launch consumer tech from 0 to 1.

What I wanted to accomplish / Research goals

I started with jotting down notes which I then organized through a mind mapping exercise & sentiment analysis.

Wants:

• I wanted a way to make new memories with them

• I wanted an easy way to check in with them more frequently

Problem

• I didn’t get to speak to my family as often as I’d like to

• No time to connect with my family or have meaningful conversations 

Research Method #1:
Desk Research:

Results:

I found out that of the 10 people I interviewed they were expats, study abroad students, and first generation immigrants.

To my surprise, all 10 interviewees felt the

Research Method #2:
Interviewing my peers

I wanted to see if this was a problem not only I was having but if my peers were feeling the same way as well. I wanted to also collect real user stories about the dynamics between their family. 

I wanted to understand family user behavior around tech consumption, social media, communication channels, as well as their wants, needs, what they say, think, do, or feel.

I set up 10 user interviews with my peers. Aged 25-35. After synthesizing the findings, and mapping similar sentiment together, here are the findings:

Results:

I found out that of the 10 people I interviewed they were expats, study abroad students, and first generation immigrants.

To my surprise, all 10 interviewees felt the same.

7/10 parents don’t know how to use their phones 

3/10 do not use a cellphone or have social media 

end to have family group message that is more functional and not a way to build meaningful connections

Most importantly, everyone wanted to 

our parents getting older, my friends had discussed in the past that they were all starting to get the realization to fix their relationship with their family. 

Research Method #3:
Concept validation
Testing a makeshift prototype:

After hearing these interviews, I started to put together what I thought would be a solution.

I came up with the initial version of Loop an app that keeps you too, connected to your loved ones daily. 

Results:

I found out that of the 10 people I interviewed they were expats, study abroad students, and first generation immigrants.

To my surprise, all 10 interviewees felt the same.

7/10 parents don’t know how to use their phones 

3/10 do not use a cellphone or have social media 

end to have family group message that is more functional and not a way to build meaningful connections

Most importantly, everyone wanted to 

our parents getting older, my friends had discussed in the past that they were all starting to get the realization to fix their relationship with their family. 

How it works (post video)

How it would work is it would ask each of your family members the same meaningful question. Each family member would respond in a 30 second video. 

Building a prototype

Show screenshots of building the prototype 

Testing the app with family

Lessons Learned

By researching and validating the problem and solution, I had the confidence to start the development of Loop. Upon completeing the research and finding an engineering team to help me build this, I made the decision to persue my passion project full time.

Next Steps:
Creating a Pitch Deck

Insert Pitch Deck here