Volcano!!!
Reflections on our first doodling contest and our latest developments
Congrats to TKD: The winner of our August doodling contest!
We asked the “drawing game” cohort1 of our doodlers to submit their best volcano to us last month. There’s a lot to learn as a game and a business.
Quality vs Creativity
Asking ChatGPT for a high-fidelity graphic (volcano or otherwise) is trivial:
Professional tools like Photoshop (or in VR, Vermillion) offer greater quality and control at the cost of complexity (and the cost of, er, money).
We’re satisfied that our product encourages creativity. How do you draw lava texture from Doodle Board’s basic color palette? How do you add depth to a smoke cloud? TKD conceived clever answers for each.
He’s not alone. Outside the contest, the first time Brian & I met in Doodle Board, we drew this cave:
He invented this texture for the entrance of the deepest, darkest area:
He thought to partly-press his trigger finger as he drew so that the resulting pattern would be somewhat random and and natural-looking.
In a sense, we could offer this as a dedicated “button” or “brush” or “pattern,” but then, what might be lost from Brian’s brain? (Not to mention the added complexity in our app!)
The Creative Process
“Volcano” is a simple prompt. Even simpler is the wholly blank canvas we provide to our users on startup. Doodle Board is a wonderful place to allow for creativity to sprawl. It’s where one might wonder, “ok I finished the volcano, now what?”
Claire added a self-portrait:
London & Twopoint independently concluded, “a stick figure should be in trouble!”
Strictly & Luli drew together and fed off each other’s creativity:
Each led to something different.
Content Sharing
Most people thought to sign their portrait before submitting it to ensure authentication. (Wow!) Some asked that their drawing not be rebroadcast (so they’re not presented here), but everyone’s got something to be proud of! And notably: No prize was needed or offered this time beyond fun of applying oneself to a community challenge.
There’s obvious board quality deterioration depending on how works were submitted. Meta’s current ecosystem has some unhelpful constraints. For August, the default submission process looks like:
A user like Claire draws their volcano
They stand back and take a headset screenshot of the whole scene
They send that screenshot to @secret.password (me!) via in-app message
…I can’t easily get that screenshot out of messages on my headset or out of messages on my phone…
So *I* screenshot my phone
And then I’ve blown up the result here
This is what I had to work with:
Not exactly conducive for complex, high-resolution art!
In part, we’ve leaned into this limitation by building a design tool that is purposefully low-fidelity, whose outputs can still be interpreted easily and used productively despite the shortcoming.
And on the other hand, we’ve innovated (and continue innovating!) to circumvent shortcomings in ways that set new standards for the entire field. Our higher-fidelity export-to-email function takes just two clicks; you can see the difference if you scrutinize Luli’s volcano (sent by email) and London’s or Claire’s (sent by multi-screenshot).
Cohorts
I mentioned a “drawing game” cohort at the outset. Over the last few months of growth we’ve found we generally have two types of users: some folks who want to use the board as a game, and some folks who want to use the board as a productivity tool.
That’s cool! And exciting! And raises interesting & challenging questions!
We love all our users and aspire to serve everyone spectacularly. But this sometimes means tradeoffs:
The drawing contest is an investment our “game” users love and want more of. Our “tool” users might find it confusing (though they might not!!)
If we build a better “send via Quest Social” function, both user types probably will appreciate it
If we build an integration with a file storage or desktop business suite, our “tool” users might be hyped but our “game” users might not care
Both cohorts enjoy our live events, but the subject matter must be totally different to be relevant to each
In fact even within each user base there are sub-cohorts who want very different stuff!
This very blog post is designed to appeal to “game” users AND “tool” users, but for all I know, might alienate both!
Zooming out, this dilemma is an expected challenge for a product en route to enduring product-market fit. We’re mindful that, often, services that try to appeal to everyone end up appealing to no one. We’ll keep experimenting, iterating, embracing feedback from our core, and making tasteful decisions based on everything above — we’re on the case.
Contests & Retention
Also expected: We’re thinking about ways to excite users to return to Doodle Board more often. Contests are one arrow in our arsenal. For now, “monthly” feels like the right pace.
You’ve seen these kinds of tactics in every app or game you’ve touched since Web 2.0 began.
Many apps follow Wordle’s lead and employ daily challenges and streaks to entrench themselves into a routine that’s high-stakes to abandon. We’re wary of this. We want a product people love, not a product that’s an obligation. (One approach in VR is Immersed: After a daily usage streak you unlock premium features; you lose them (or must pay for them) once your streak’s broken. Innovative! But also, perhaps, yikes!)
What’s next?
We keep building! We’ll do another design contest! We’ll toast to TKD’s inaugural victory! We’ll see if we can make submissions even easier and better — we love seeing all the various (and often delightful & surprising) things our users do.
I’ll explain our cohorts in just a bit!