Creating my Product from scratch with AI (1/4): Conception

I embarked on the adventure of creating my own product/app in a unique way, doing everything myself, or almost everything, but with the help of Artificial Intelligence. The goal is to learn from each phase and area involved, such as the conception of the idea, product creation, design, development, promotion, video creation, and marketing.

Of course, creating a product alone can be very difficult and time-consuming. However, with the aid of AI, I was able to access knowledge from other fields that would normally require a specialist, such as business strategies and marketing. Furthermore, technology allowed me to expedite several steps that would otherwise be slower, like creating a component with a specific behavior.

However, I'm not claiming that my product is perfect in all stages because of AI, nor that it will replace all fields. My intention is to learn a bit from each step of product creation and expand my knowledge as much as time allows, since this is a project I develop in my spare time.

If you are an expert in any of the mentioned areas, your tips, critiques, or suggestions are very welcome!

Creating My Product

The idea came from merging two existing products: Tamagotchi and iOS widgets. I imagined that combining both would result in something interesting, fun, and nostalgic.

Before starting development, I took a moment to define the initial outline. I wrote down what I already had in mind and also turned to ChatGPT to explore other possibilities of behavior and needs for the virtual pet.

The initial part is exciting: you live the idea, think about it day and night, and many ideas emerge spontaneously, while a "virtual assistant" helps to complement and organize those thoughts.

In the first version, I wanted to include EVERYTHING: all the functionalities and ideas I had and that ChatGPT suggested. However, when I put it on paper, I realized it was too much and that it would take a long time to implement everything, which somewhat discouraged me.

But then I remembered how apps and features are developed in the big companies I've worked for. They start with the basics of an idea, a minimum viable product (MVP), to launch it, test it, and begin to profit, and gradually add new features.

I decided to adopt the MVP approach: I wrote down everything I wanted for a version 1.0, keeping only the essentials to be launched on the AppStore to have the motivation of a completed first stage and evolve from there. Because if I waited for everything I wanted to be developed, I might stop halfway due to discouragement.

NOTE: The interesting part of launching the app in the store is that I could also share it with friends to test it and give me feedback and ideas. I will talk more about this in another post.

In the next post, I will start discussing the app design phase.