Sean Hsu walks through building an app mockup fast using PowerPoint and stock images. His example: an app that reads clothing tags to set washing machine cycles automatically. He covers when to buy assets versus build them, mimicking phone interfaces, and pitching a subscription model for detergents.
Chapters
OK. App design. So at this page, what I was trying to show or demonstrate is that I have this function that once you scan the tag from all of the— like, for example, this vest has this tag, right? No one is going to understand what's going on in these little symbols. So the— App can basically just scan it and tell you what is this article of the clothes. And then it will just tune whatever setting for you. The speed, the level of water, the torque, the washing time, the soaking time, that kind of details. So what kind of software do you think I use for designing this? C? What's that? C? What's that? No. SD. Yeah, I heard of that. No, I actually use PowerPoint. It's so fast, seriously. So first of all, this hand with an iPhone, you can just Get it from Shutterstock.com. First of all, I need to declare this. I didn't get any money from them. It's just a good tool. So I got this with a blank iPhone, right? Uh-huh. And then there are a lot of templates, actually also templates from here. Sometimes I download it, sometimes I don't. But template of— You can download whatever template there are online and most of them are in the format of AI or Photoshop. Most of them are Illustrator. So just find the color, whatever you feel the most likely, and just like $10, you got it. You don't need to spend more than one day. My approach is always like if my hour Worth more than $70 per hour. If this thing can save me $70 or an hour, I'm going to spend money on that. So like $10 versus maybe 8 of my hours, I'll just buy it. And if it's like a very simple— so this is an MVP. I don't think I need that kind of fancy design, like this kind of fading effect, right? I don't need that much detail. Actually, I just used PowerPoint just to get this guy done, confirm, and then put this here. So get a feel about it. If you really like, you can just find whatever app in your phone and just mimic the design and then feel it like, OK, this seems like a good camera feeling so people can focus there. So this is like— 30, 40 minutes of my work and then people know there's an app and they feel like there's an app. So it's— you're boosting their confidence to your product. And then more stuff about the points that I want to make, like what are the selling points. And then the last point I want to— I was trying to make is I'm not only selling the washing machine but I also provide subscription model for you to— if you have underwear or jeans or baby clothes, there are different spinners with different detergent. So they started to know what we are talking about. I think one picture can speak for thousands of words. So you just tell them this is your vision and they will just understand and also believe it. Again, good lighting here so that you feel like this is the actual thing. Well, this is advanced stuff. So sometimes I leverage my network to— I have a lot of friends who are PhDs or very technical persons. So we build this kind of simulation to make it look very technology-driven feeling. Again, this photo, don't need to hire a model. Just get one that fits in your design, and that's pretty much good to go.
