Founding MixPlay iOS App
This is another iOS app that I founded, designed, marketed (building MixPlayApp.com and managing social media), and managed the contract development.
Built in 2015, it's still used and loved by many coaches, and still makes steady sales with no advertising.
Problem
Coaching a music-based routine usually involves the annoying process of repeatedly "scrubbing" to find the right part of the routine to play while your team is practicing that part. It's also tedious to get your routine music (usually an mp3 emailed to you) stored locally into your phone's music app.
Goals
- Make it easy to import emailed or URL-linked mp3's onto your iPhone.
- Make it easy to define sections of the routine.
- Provide 1-tap play of each music section.
Constraints
I'm not an iOS developer, so I hired a contract developer. My small budget limited my development hours, so I had to be careful to get it as right as possible the first time.
My Role
As the solopreneur, I did everything but build it:
- Product Vision
- UX Design
- UI & Visual Design
- Logo, branding, & marketing
- Writing all UI text and marketing copy
- Customer support
- Managing the developer
The Team
I hired a freelancer from UpWork to build the app. He was from China, and his English was not too good, so we had to rely on written communication. It took quite awhile to convey the concept of running parts of music at cheer/dance pracitce! However, he wrote good code — Apple's stats show there are usually zero crashes over the thousands of sessions per month.
Process
Since I was coaching the KU Cheerleading team in the evenings, I was the target market so I already understood the needs well. Most of the work was in iterating to achieve:
- a very intuitive design for importing files into MixPlay, including a fallback popup to inform the user to import emailed mp3s by exporting them from the Mail app.
- a very intuitive design for creating and editing sections (usually done at home).
- a very efficient design for "Play" mode, often done at harried practices.
Results
Many coaches love the time-saving app and use it every day at practice. Sales of the $3 app are modest but steady even without advertising.
I also translated MixPlay into multiple languages and published it to those countries' App Stores: Deutsche, English, Español, Français, Italiano, Português, Русский, 简体中文, 中國傳統的, 日本語, 한국어.
I designed and created a Figma prototype for a MixPlay WatchOS app, but I'm waiting to implement it as a part of FullOut (MixPlay's upcoming fuller-featured replacement).
Easily import your music.
Name & drag sections.
Play a section in 1 tap!
Auto-repeat or adjust tempo.
