The First Prototype
最初の試作品
For the next three weeks, the three founders worked almost every night.
Ken had spent many long hours writing the first of the app.
He had learned two new programming tools before he even started coding.
Maya had designed every , and Rio had prepared a list of shops.
By Friday night, they had finally built a prototype they could test.
On Saturday, they carried their laptops to a small grocery shop nearby.
The owner, a busy man named Mr. Sato, agreed to try the app.
Rio was explaining the buttons when the suddenly froze completely.
Ken was checking the code while customers were waiting behind them.
The app crashed twice, and Mr. Sato began to look .
"I'm sorry, but I don't have time for this," he said flatly.
To one box of food, he had to fill in seven different fields.
He had to add the price, the weight, the time, and many other details.
"By the time I finish typing, the shop is empty," he complained.
The three founders had spent weeks on features that nobody actually wanted.
They had been so proud of their work, yet the real test had failed.
On the walk home, nobody spoke for a long and painful while.
Rio finally broke the with a tired but honest laugh.
"Well," she said, "at least now we know what does not work."
Ken nodded slowly, staring at the crashed app on his .
"We built the app we liked, not the app that shops need," he said.
Maya wrote down his words in her notebook and underlined them twice.
That simple sentence would change the whole direction of their work.
They had failed once, but they had also learned their most important .
Tomorrow, they decided, they would go back and ask the shops one question.
"What would actually make you want to use an app like ours?"