24 hours to launch - a development scrimmage story

If you read my founder and CEO, Jeremy Toeman’s interview in We Got This Covered about our last developer scrimmage, you know it’s a thing we are quite fond of. You might also remember that we were able to not only build something fun that brought joy to people but also something that made meaningful progress in our journey to building our core product. So, naturally, we decided it was time to do it again.?

The Concept?

Generative media is everywhere and since AugX Labs is building a tool to make video storytelling easier for users, it’s something we are paying very close attention to.?

For those of you who are not following the Generative Media space, the key to building the best computer-driven art is the use of what is called “Prompts” - fundamentally, and in detail, this is what you tell the systems to build. But there is an art to telling a machine how to do something. There is a balance you have to strike between broad and narrow details, as well as just speaking the language of the particular machine you are using. So on our AugX Labs company journey of learning how to better leverage these amazing technologies, and use them in our soon-to-be-launched platform, we found ourselves sharing and saving LOTS of prompts to build on top of. Enter PromptLocker - a single place to view and store prompts for AI Art.?

Don’t make things that don’t bring joy

While there is a ton of benefit to having a place to store all your prompts, we felt there needed to be another layer to this utility. With that in mind, we wanted to take our learnings from Moviedle and apply the same logic: Make it fun while still being useful.?

As this space is growing, and there are communities forming faster than you can imagine, how awesome would it be to have a place to upload all the amazing stuff you build and have people evaluate it for you? Not the art you create itself, because art is subjective; more so how well the art represents your prompt. Therefore, we built something for creators to interact in a gamified manner and get real feedback from people in their community. Also, for me, it’s just a ton of fun to scroll through all the amazing stuff people are dreaming up in the Generative Media space. So that became our goal. Build not only a utility for creators but also something that would be fun to do even if you were just now learning about the space.?

What we did?

If you have ever participated in a traditional hackathon, you know how hard it is to get something going from scratch (a topic we will certainly cover another day). As a product-led organization, we wanted to come to the table with something we had already vetted and that had merit for our tech platform, but more importantly, for users. So that’s exactly what we did.?

We built a product brief that covered all the user journeys. Then we ideated on some design concepts and MVP requirements, then presented it to the team. This was an invitation to participate in the process, not a mandate around what to build.

We engaged with and solicited real feedback from the team about the concept and value of building this product. I firmly believe users can “feel it” in a product when the team didn’t want to build it (plus, that’s no fun!). We wanted to build a gamified experience for the AI/generative art community that our team would WANT to share with all their friends. Lucky for us, they did.?

The Process?

With a product outlined and the team ready (and excited) to build and launch it, it was time to go to work. Having already thought through some of this in advance with a smaller group made getting started so much easier, making the process so much more efficient than it can often be for a hackathon.

We outlined a clear set of goals:?

Be clear, concise, but flexible in everything we were doing. The team knew things were going to change along the way, but that doesn’t mean creating loose expectations or requirements. It means moving away from things that are not going to work without friction.?

Align on the MVP, clearly setting the must-haves and the stretch goals (with a high tolerance for things changing as we learned the things we didn’t know).

Running while holding hands:

• We kicked off Marketing, Design, and Development simultaneously, with development spending time architecting the product, design setting up low-fidelity wireframes for development to plan around, and Marketing working on outreach, naming, language, messaging, and positioning.?

Collaborate, Collaborate, Collaborate?

• In this instance, our entire team was in the same building, so while squads were separated while working, we touched base frequently to make sure everyone was on the same page.
• We set up a single Slack channel where all questions or issues were placed so that no one person was ever in the dark as to all the moving pieces.?
• The entire design was done in REAL TIME in Figma, so as the small details were fleshed out everyone could weigh in on concerns or suggest ideas to improve the user experience.?

Be Realistic for the win:

• Some features we wanted were not going to make it in time for initial launch, and we found those things out along the way. But the entire team was briefed on this in advance, and it was no individual's responsibility to make impossible things happen. Therefore, there was no sense of disappointment if we missed something.?

Have a good time:

• Rotate who owns the playlist. Stop and have lunch together to take a break. Buy extra Red Bull. Encourage people to take a walk, get some air, and stretch; if there is too much pressure, it ruins it for everyone.?

The Outcome

I am thrilled to introduce you to PromptLocker.?

Did we do in it 24 hours? No. It took a bit longer, closer to 72 if we are being honest. Do we love it? Yea, we do. Does it need more work? Oh, it sure does, but doesn’t every new product, app, or utility? Designing, building, and shipping something in this amount of time is monumental and we are extremely proud of the entire AugX Labs team.?

Shipping a perfect product wasn’t the goal (nor should it be anyone’s!). Our goal was to ship something, together as a team, that we are passionate about, and that we think will be helpful to the community and most importantly, FUN.?

We learned a TON in 72 hours about things that we otherwise wouldn’t have messed with. We got to play with new technology, made some incorrect assumptions, and had some fun debates that ended with some bets on how users will interact with PromptLocker, but most importantly we proved to ourselves, again, that as a team we can ideate, design, develop and deploy something we would want to use. And, as a product leader, that’s all I want at the end of the day - to build things I am glad exist.?

We would LOVE to hear what YOU all think of PromptLocker. It’s a work in progress, but it works, and for 72 hours, I'll take that!?