Before Preset/Hype made its way to the App Store, we wanted to test the videos we were producing on beta users. The only problem: how do you test an app before the app is complete?

Here’s what we did. When our testers signed up for Hype, we would send them an intro video right away and a new video on a rolling basis each Monday. The videos were hosted at an unlisted URL on the Hype website. Though the videos did not have interactive elements yet, we used a small comment section under each video to build a feeling of interactivity, and relied on the scripts to build loyalty and community in the way a future interactive app might.

In this video’s script, which I was inspired to write because of my love of chess, viewers are encouraged by an easy call-to-action: that is, identifying a celebrity they admire and a quality they wish to borrow from them. Conveniently, this can all be done in the comment section below the video!

Right away, we knew the app would need interactivity to keep our audience engaged and willing to incorporate the psychologist-backed exercises we included in each video. To that end, we decided to design and test a task list prototype. I created several wireframes in Figma, first creating the flow for a traditional task list, and then creating a simpler, card-based task generator (these wireframes are EXTREMELY crude — I made them in a few minutes in order to show my boss what I was thinking during a one-on-one meeting) . We ended up prototyping the latter.

After we designed the feature, we wanted to see how it would affect our users. I led the qualitative research by interviewing a selection of our early users over Zoom. I created this interview outline to proceed.