Product Startup Podcast Episode 128: Plan an App for a Hardware Device

00:00:00 Kevin Mako: Hello, product innovators. Today we learn from the head of a major IoT medical device app development firm on best practices for making your app for your hardware product.

00:00:11 Narrator: You're listening to the Product Startup Podcast, the show that helps bring your product idea to life by chatting with successful inventors,

00:00:21 Narrator: product developers, manufacturers, and hardware industry professionals. Our goal here is to get to the bottom of what makes a product successful, from initial

00:00:29 Narrator: idea to getting your product on store shelves. We're taking your product on store shelves. We're taking. you step by step to build a functional product and scale your

00:00:37 Narrator: product business. Hosted by Kevin Mako, one of North America's leading experts on hardware development for

00:00:44 Kevin Mako: small product businesses. Now, onto the show. Welcome back, everyone. Today I'm very excited to introduce Piotr Zajac to the show.

00:00:51 Kevin Mako: Peter is the CEO of Untitled the Kingdom, a 55-person mobile app development company that focuses on apps for physical hardware-connected devices.

00:00:58 Kevin Mako: They have built and launched over 75 full-scale apps for hardware products.

00:01:03 Kevin Mako: Today, Peter is going to share some valuable knowledge on how inventors, startups, and small manufacturers can

00:01:07 Kevin Mako: understand how to best manage the design and development of your hardware devices app. And what are the best practices for making a connected devices? Great. Now on to the episode.

00:01:19 Kevin Mako: Hi, Peter. Welcome to the show.

00:01:21 Kevin Mako: Hi. Thanks for having me, Kevin. Well, it's great to have you on to talk about apps today. And apps are a huge component of many hardware devices, especially

00:01:30 Kevin Mako: connected devices, IoT devices. A lot of people think about, okay,

00:01:35 Kevin Mako: Even if I have a product that doesn't have an app, how could I have one? Or if it is a socially connected device or something else, of course, an app is necessary.

00:01:42 Kevin Mako: So it's interesting today to talk to you about the ins and outs of apps. Obviously, you have an extensive career almost 15 years in developing apps for many hardware startups.

00:01:51 Kevin Mako: Let's just start off with your background. How did you get to leading a 55-person app

00:01:58 Piotr Zajac: development firm for hardware and other connected devices? This is a funny story, and I have to give you a small box. account. I'm not a technical guy.

00:02:07 Piotr Zajac: I have started as an assistant to member of parliament a few years ago. And then when I resigned because I decided I have to move on and to focus

00:02:15 Piotr Zajac: on something much more interesting and much more meaningful, I decided to join this company as a project manager.

00:02:22 Piotr Zajac: And I had been managing projects for six months. And then I became a CEO of this company. Maybe company is too big work because it was a team of

00:02:32 Piotr Zajac: five of us back then. Imagine that you can work on only digital apps, only on applications that can, I don't know,

00:02:40 Piotr Zajac: there are for baitings or for bills, there's bill splitting apps, or you can work on apps that are

00:02:46 Piotr Zajac: connected to physical devices, apps that are connected with like the real physical world.

00:02:51 Piotr Zajac: And this is exciting because when we talk about IoT Internet of Things or when we talk about MedTech, which is our specialization, stands for medical devices or Femtech,

00:03:01 Piotr Zajac: female health technology, You can really work on products that can affect people's lives.

00:03:08 Piotr Zajac: And you can not only create amazing device that help people to improve their life, but you can also create an application that is like this additional value

00:03:17 Piotr Zajac: that can bring much more value to the users to understand. In our case, bodies, health, progress when

00:03:26 Piotr Zajac: we talk about some sport-related activities. So that was a really interesting journey.

00:03:33 Piotr Zajac: And in 2017, we have met LV, which is the leading and the most funded Femtech startup. And then something has changed in our brains.

00:03:43 Piotr Zajac: We thought that, guys, we had this internal conversation, guys, do we really want to work on non-IOT products or do we really want to work on IoT products

00:03:53 Piotr Zajac: that, as I said, can connect physical world and this digital world? And we decided that this is a great area for us.

00:03:59 Kevin Mako: And then we became this company that's specialized in the IoT and MetTech. That's amazing.

00:04:05 Piotr Zajac: And you've done over 75 apps now for connected devices at this point in time. Yes, yes. Like I can say that we love to talk about connectivity.

00:04:14 Piotr Zajac: We love to work with Nordic components and we love to work on embedded software with engineers.

00:04:21 Piotr Zajac: This is super exciting because when you think about the connectivity, for example, and you can improve it and make it much faster and much more real-able,

00:04:29 Kevin Mako: this is something that makes you want to wake up in the morning and start coding. That's amazing. I can tell you you're very passionate for it and you obviously have a tremendous

00:04:38 Kevin Mako: amount of experience. So what I want to dig into today for today's podcast is figuring out what makes a connected devices app very

00:04:47 Kevin Mako: successful. What makes the app a really important part and a smart investment for these connected or IoT device providers?

00:04:56 Piotr Zajac: With all your experience from all these places. What does it come down to that you've seen for the winners?

00:05:03 Piotr Zajac: Kevin, I'm really glad you asked me that question because there are plenty of apps on the market. And we have a lot of apps

00:05:10 Piotr Zajac: on our phones for smart body scales or for other devices. But this 10% of devices that we really love to use.

00:05:18 Piotr Zajac: And when you create an application for smart device, you need to really focus on end user. You need to really focus on this additional value because the physical device is

00:05:27 Piotr Zajac: one thing. It can do a lot of positive things for your life. It can be a super smart fridge, it can be a super smart body scale.

00:05:35 Piotr Zajac: But when you create up, you need to really think, what is the real value for my user? We are not brave enough as a company to suggest you to create everything inside your

00:05:45 Piotr Zajac: application, like plenty of features, like spent hundreds of thousands of dollars or even millions of dollars on the application.

00:05:51 Piotr Zajac: We need to find one feature or two features that are super important for our users. We need to hear their voice, our user's voice.

00:05:59 Piotr Zajac: And we always like to say our clients, our business partners, that it's not about you. It's not about your shareholders. It's not about your employees. It's about the end user.

00:06:09 Piotr Zajac: And I would say that the most important part is to gather feedback from them, to ask them, what do you really want from this application? And you

00:06:18 Piotr Zajac: should create the perfect onboarding, like the really good onboarding. I would say that the

00:06:22 Piotr Zajac: The onboarding in the application is one of the most important parts of the application to create this habit for people to get back to the application, to use

00:06:32 Piotr Zajac: it again and again and

00:06:33 Kevin Mako: over again, to check the statistics, to check the progress or whatever you have in this application. But the end user is the most important part of the equation.

00:06:42 Kevin Mako: I love that you mention a couple of things there, because we talk about this a lot on the show in hardware.

00:06:47 Kevin Mako: Think about your one or two main features and do those extremely well and ignore everything else for now until, which is the second part, until

00:06:57 Kevin Mako: you get user feedback, then you figure out how to add and create extra features. It's amazing to hear you come on

00:07:03 Kevin Mako: the show. And the first thing you mentioned on the software side or the app side is almost

00:07:07 Kevin Mako: identical to really best practices on the hardware side when developing a new hardware product as well. Yeah.

00:07:12 Kevin Mako: So if you can do both of those together, make a great product that solves one or two features, especially as a startup, in combination, if you need an app and the users

00:07:21 Kevin Mako: really desire it, that's an important piece to your business, then have that app also be very niche, very focused, and then, of course, do a good job of it.

00:07:29 Piotr Zajac: It's amazing to hear. Can you just break down something you mentioned in terms of onboarding in more detail? Just describe what onboarding is,

00:07:36 Piotr Zajac: and how do you do onboarding well with an app? But before I do that, let me just add one thing to

00:07:41 Piotr Zajac: because I think it's really important to differentiate the hardware and the software. So when you create hardware, you have this design phase and when it's done, it's done.

00:07:50 Piotr Zajac: You cannot change the hardware. not go to the manufacturer and say that, okay, so from tomorrow, we're going to change this

00:07:56 Piotr Zajac: small feature and all of the devices that we have on the market are going to somehow magically

00:08:01 Piotr Zajac: change. So here in software, you need to switch this way of thinking in your brain. You have to think that the software is super easy to change.

00:08:09 Piotr Zajac: You can rewrite the entire feature. You can add additional feature. You can change the UI, UX or even the copy inside the application. And it's just like that. You can do it.

00:08:19 Piotr Zajac: You can deploy the code to the GitHub, then to the upstore and that's it. It's done. So you should iterate as often as possible. And we had this one

00:08:28 Piotr Zajac: partner a few years ago and he was so scary of releasing his own application that for over like

00:08:34 Piotr Zajac: two years, we have developed this application for this guy and he spent, I would say, million pounds on the application. And that was with total failure because the end users,

00:08:44 Piotr Zajac: they said we need only this five percent of features you have developed. So that's my main point.

00:08:50 Piotr Zajac: you should focus on this one, two features and ask users, ask again, ask again, ask again, iterate, iterate and ask again.

00:08:57 Piotr Zajac: And when you talk about onboarding, this is, in my opinion, it's crucial. We need to teach our users how to use our application.

00:09:05 Piotr Zajac: I don't believe that everything should be as simple as possible, and I don't believe that

00:09:11 Piotr Zajac: everything should be as intuitive as possible, because let's think about the iPhone. iPhone wasn't the most intuitive device.

00:09:18 Piotr Zajac: the concept of iPhone wasn't the first thing that came to your mind when you thought about mobile phones in 2017.

00:09:24 Piotr Zajac: The first smartphone that came to your mind was like HAT-HTC Titan 2 or Microsoft's Pantops or whatever.

00:09:32 Piotr Zajac: But here you should create very intuitive interface. You should create onboarding that teaches users how to use your application and how to

00:09:42 Piotr Zajac: create this habit of getting back to the application to use this application as often as you need, not as often as

00:09:48 Piotr Zajac: as possible because there is no need for you to use smart body scale up every hour like Instagram. We don't have to use Instagram every hour, but you know what I mean.

00:09:58 Piotr Zajac: Sometimes it's worth only to use your application once every week to check your weight and to check if you're still healthy or not, or if you eat too much or not.

00:10:07 Piotr Zajac: So you have to create this habit in your user's minds that I want to come back because I see additional value.

00:10:14 Piotr Zajac: And during the onboarding process, you have to show this additional value that by using my app, by connecting this app to your device, to my device,

00:10:23 Kevin Mako: you will see additional value. So the onboarding is entirely about that. What do you have this more when you use the application?

00:10:31 Kevin Mako: The more specific you make the app functionality, the easier it is to train, essentially. And that's one of the big misconceptions in the marketplace. If you look at something like

00:10:40 Kevin Mako: the iPhone, you'll hear many people say how intuitive it is. Well, it's not. If you gave somebody had never used an iPhone, an iPhone before, you won't even know how to open it.

00:10:49 Kevin Mako: And what Apple's done an incredible job at is making the device very intuitive after you have properly onboarded your

00:10:58 Kevin Mako: customer base, everything from the way you swipe and how you pull down menus and where the back button is because there is no back button.

00:11:05 Kevin Mako: All these sorts of things become intuitive, but they're not intuitive in the beginning. And I really like that you brought that out because people when

00:11:12 Kevin Mako: they think of an app, think that it should just be inherently picked up, that's impossible.

00:11:17 Kevin Mako: And you're also missing an opportunity, which is what I like you said about the second part, the opportunity is to be able to create a habit with somebody. If you can educate them,

00:11:25 Kevin Mako: create a good fundamental app in the first place, then educate them on how to create a habit

00:11:30 Piotr Zajac: out of the values that those apps bring. That's what creates a successful app that's paired with some sort of connected technology, some physical hardware piece in the world.

00:11:39 Piotr Zajac: I would say that you need to buy their hands, their hearts and their brains to be a successful application. By brains, I mean they need to see additional value by hearts.

00:11:48 Piotr Zajac: I mean they need to love your application and they need to love using this application.

00:11:53 Kevin Mako: And by hands, you need to create this habit of using the application. So if you have three aspects, you have successful application and of course, harder products.

00:12:03 Kevin Mako: Hands, hearts and brains. That's a great way to break it down in lame's terms. I appreciate that. So let's go into

00:12:09 Kevin Mako: quality of the apps because I know that when you're developing medical apps, there's all sorts of standards for that, ISO certifications, FDA, et cetera.

00:12:17 Kevin Mako: So it trains you as an app developer to

00:12:19 Piotr Zajac: build an app at a very high quality and redundancy level. How does that apply to the average person building an app?

00:12:27 Piotr Zajac: And why is that so important in today's day and age? Good question. So when you think about privacy, I think the most private data that we have

00:12:36 Piotr Zajac: our data about our bodies, our health. And we do not want to share those data with people around us. We want to protect them.

00:12:45 Piotr Zajac: So when we talk about the quality, we need to create software that you can rely on that software. And the software that is aligned with FDA or European

00:12:55 Piotr Zajac: certification. And I believe that the quality is super important because the quality is much cheaper in long-term perspective.

00:13:02 Piotr Zajac: When we create an app that it's cheap or you use a lot of junior developers without code review, without per programming, without standards, without the quality processes,

00:13:12 Piotr Zajac: you have to rewrite and rewrite and rewrite it over again. You have to reiterate this application, but not in this positive meaning, but in the meaning that you have to pay again

00:13:22 Piotr Zajac: to do the same work because the fundamental of the application is not ready to add additional features. When we create

00:13:28 Piotr Zajac: software, we want to create super high value by showing the high quality to our users, by creating

00:13:37 Piotr Zajac: the software on a really high level. And FDA is a very interesting institution and European

00:13:43 Piotr Zajac: institutions are as well very creative in terms of checking different bugs and verifying the documentation.

00:13:51 Piotr Zajac: So we have to be super focused on how to create it, how to avoid mistakes and how to

00:13:58 Piotr Zajac: to write entire software to verify the hypothesis you have. Because when you create device or application, you have some hypothesis, right?

00:14:06 Piotr Zajac: I want to create a body scale that measure my

00:14:09 Kevin Mako: wave and the percentage of fat in my body. And the entire certification process means that you

00:14:15 Kevin Mako: have to prove that your device is doing what you promised.

00:14:20 Piotr Zajac: How much testing or let's call it prototyping goes into that when you are building out an app to ensure. that you're making those quality promises.

00:14:30 Piotr Zajac: I would say that testing starts before development. You have to think about tests before development process.

00:14:36 Piotr Zajac: You have to engage quality assurance specialists into the development phase before

00:14:41 Kevin Mako: development phase because you need to design good processes before even starts clicking

00:14:46 Kevin Mako: the commands and to create new file and to start writing the code.

00:14:52 Kevin Mako: And do you have any kind of more tips for somebody that's just getting started

00:14:57 Piotr Zajac: on the journey of even considering whether or not they should build an app for their perspective application

00:15:03 Piotr Zajac: and then subsequently, what are the next steps to go ahead and do it? You shouldn't over-engineer. You shouldn't over-think the application.

00:15:12 Piotr Zajac: You shouldn't think that you need to create a super big and clunky application for your device. It should be as simple as possible.

00:15:20 Piotr Zajac: Next advice would be you need to talk to your end users. You need to ask them, what do you really need?

00:15:25 Piotr Zajac: and don't think that you know your users needs best. Don't think that you're perfect user. You're not.

00:15:33 Piotr Zajac: You're the owner of this idea. You're the founder of this startup. But you create this application or this device for your end users.

00:15:42 Piotr Zajac: And you have to ask them, what do you really need? How would you benefit from using this application? Because sometimes it's like with our babies.

00:15:50 Piotr Zajac: We all think that our babies are the most beautiful, the smartest. they will be engineers or politicians or doctors or lawyers. And of course they will be.

00:15:59 Piotr Zajac: But we need to ask, we have some institutions here that are like the educational system. And for us, it's to ask end users, what do you think about this?

00:16:09 Piotr Zajac: How do you feel when you're using this application?

00:16:12 Kevin Mako: What additional features you want to see in this application to see more value? So only two advice.

00:16:20 Kevin Mako: First, do not over-engineer, do not over-think.

00:16:22 Piotr Zajac: and the second one, ask users, ask users again.

00:16:26 Piotr Zajac: Peter, I really appreciate your words of wisdom on the show today. Where can folks learn more about what you do?

00:16:33 Piotr Zajac: And give us just a bit of an overview of Untitled Kingdom. Yeah, sure. So Untit Kingdom is a medical device consultancy and software

00:16:43 Piotr Zajac: development group that specializes in bringing digital health and metatex solutions to life and breaking down the barriers to accept.

00:16:52 Piotr Zajac: health care through code and cutting in technology. And let me say that when you work with medical companies and medical service companies,

00:17:01 Piotr Zajac: we provide this software and systems that enable those partners to put life-changing tech into the hands of the patients and providers who need it most.

00:17:11 Piotr Zajac: And democratization of that technology, I would say, is the heart of everything we do with

00:17:16 Piotr Zajac: our partner companies, because as I said, we do not call our clients clients. We call them partners because we believe in this symbiotic relationship.

00:17:24 Piotr Zajac: We're seeing to it that everyone has equal access to breakthrough healthcare solution. And let me say one example that is, I always have goosebumps when I think about it.

00:17:34 Piotr Zajac: Irgo is a classic example of using a tiny device to make global impact. I don't know if you know, but 50 million people suffer from hearing loss in the US alone.

00:17:43 Piotr Zajac: And like a fingerprint, everyone's hearing loss is unique to them. So what we do in Antidea Kingdom, what we did with Irgo, is

00:17:51 Piotr Zajac: take their tiny in-canal smart hearing aid and pair it with this internal app called Soundmatch.

00:17:57 Piotr Zajac: And this is a sneak-pick they use ultrasound communication, so this is a nice hardware tip.

00:18:02 Piotr Zajac: After running a comprehensive hearing check, the app allows for a complete personalization of the Irgo device.

00:18:08 Piotr Zajac: And it's one thing to talk about it, about technology, about aspects, about business, but a whole other thing to listen to the users.

00:18:17 Piotr Zajac: sharing their experience of Virgo, is to remember, I remember especially one older gentleman who said that using Virgo, he realized he had not heard music like

00:18:26 Piotr Zajac: this over a decade. And that listening to music with all the nuances, all hearing, and hearing all the instruments

00:18:33 Piotr Zajac: and voices in the background coming together, make him cry because he didn't realize what he was missing over this decade.

00:18:40 Piotr Zajac: And when you heard that story from our partner, from their project manager, we have this gooseband because we found that our

00:18:48 Piotr Zajac: role here is important and we do something important. And when you talk about IoT, and I want to be super clear to all of the founders

00:18:56 Piotr Zajac: of IoT devices, you can really change the world with your ideas, your ideas, your devices.

00:19:04 Piotr Zajac: We are living in this super interesting age where we can create everything we want to do. We have access to China, to US, to Europe, to the talents.

00:19:14 Piotr Zajac: all around the world to all tools and programs and I want to say components, but right now

00:19:19 Piotr Zajac: maybe it's not as easy as it used to be, but you

00:19:24 Kevin Mako: can change the world with your idea. So be brave, use your intellect, use your ideas, create the prototypes, verify your hypothesis,

00:19:33 Kevin Mako: and make your feasibility study, and just do it. There's no time to wait. We can change the world together.

00:19:41 Kevin Mako: Peter, that is a very powerful way to end the episode. Much appreciated. Thanks again, and we look forward to talking soon. Take care, Peter. Thank you very much. Bye-bye.

00:19:50 Narrator: Thanks for tuning in to this episode of the Product Startup Podcast, the show that teaches you

00:19:55 Narrator: what it really takes to bring your product to market and turn it into a big success. This podcast series is brought to you by Mako Design + Invent,

00:20:05 Narrator: the original and leading firm in North America to provide global caliber in-to-end physical consumer product

00:20:12 Narrator: development to startups, inventors, and small product business clients. If you're looking for product

00:20:17 Narrator: development help on your invention, head over to MakoDesign.com. That's M-A-K-O Design dot com for a free

00:20:26 Narrator: consultation from one of Mako-designs for design studios from coast to coast. Thanks for listening, and see you next time.