A clickable phone app in one page, sent to a few people to try before anyone writes real code.
A picture of an app gets polite nods. Something people can tap shows you where they hesitate. Shed Door is a made-up sign-up app for a community garden's twelve beds: one page, five screens, nothing behind it. It forgets everything on reload, no tester sees another's changes, and it can't tell you what anyone tapped. You have to ask.
Who it's for
Founders, designers and volunteers with an idea for a small app and five people willing to try it. Send it before any code is written, in one message: here's the link, try these three things, tell me where you got stuck.
It fits an app with one main job and a handful of screens. It can only pretend at real accounts, payments, or two people using it at once, and it should say so.
What a good one contains
- One job, end to end. Find a free bed, put your name on it, give it back. Five screens cover that: Beds, one bed's details, the sign-up, Work days and Mine.
- State that carries across screens. Take a bed and the number free on the Beds screen drops by one. Without that, testers are looking at pictures again.
- A believable starting point. Seven beds already have names on them and one work day is full. The real app will never be empty.
- A dead end, handled. Try for a second bed and the button is disabled, with the rule next to it: one bed each.
- Tasks instead of a tour. The note gives three things to try and leaves the taps to the tester. Explain the route and you've tested your explanation.
- What isn't real, in plain words. Four short lines cover saving, names, money and sign-in. People forgive a fake more easily when they were told first.
- A frame at a desk, none on a phone. On a real phone the outline would be a small screen drawn inside a small screen, so the note opens first and the prototype then fills the display.
- A way to start over. One button puts all 12 beds back, so the second person at the table gets a clean run.
What to ask the five
Put your question in the message and ask for the reply there, because the page records nothing. Where did you hesitate? What did you expect that didn't happen? Give a date, as Shed Door's note does: Sunday 22 November.
If you can, watch one person use it and say nothing while they do. Then fix what tripped them and replace the page. The link stays the same, so the next tester opens the better version.
How to send it
As an open link. Five testers should get from your message to their first tap with nothing in between, and there's no real data on it. Add a password if the idea itself is under wraps.
Every page you publish gets one link that opens in any browser. You choose who can open it: anyone with the link, anyone with the password, or only the people and company domains you name, who sign in with Google or Microsoft. Change the page later and the link stays the same.
