PORTFOLIO

PORTFOLIO

ImaginWOW, 2020

  • Position: Chief Product Officer, Founder

  • Overview: ImaginWOW was a mobile app that delivered ideas for people to draw and then share via the ImaginWOW creative social network.

  • Problem being addressed: Reducing screen time in children and increasing creativity

  • General responsibilities: Essentially, created and delivered everything...Project strategy and management, overall technical and creative concept, UX, content creation, advertising concepts, branding, character design, computer programming, graphic design, animation, Facebook App integration, AWS management, systems implementation and management

  • Project URL: https://www.facebook.com/imaginwow

I am a bit obsessed with creativity or more aptly, lack of creativity. I believe that creativity is truly human and that if we don't practice and make develop and innovate with our creativity, then we will lose our humanity. Digital technology has moved in to mesmerize not only our children but everyone - although I see the most potential in correcting this course of action with children. Because of that, ImaginWOW was first introduced in 2020.

The idea was simple: click "GO" and a set of random spinners would cycle through random words and fill in the blanks of a random sentence (very similar to Madlibs). They would then draw on paper (with pencil, pen or crayon) their artistic interpretation of the silly sentence.

I started prototyping this as early as 2018 working in JavaScript and defining the UX.

I am a bit obsessed with creativity or more aptly, lack of creativity. I believe that creativity is truly human and that if we don't practice and make develop and innovate with our creativity, then we will lose our humanity. Digital technology has moved in to mesmerize not only our children but everyone - although I see the most potential in correcting this course of action with children. Because of that, ImaginWOW was first introduced in 2020.

The idea was simple: click "GO" and a set of random spinners would cycle through random words and fill in the blanks of a random sentence (very similar to Madlibs). They would then draw on paper (with pencil, pen or crayon) their artistic interpretation of the silly sentence.

I started prototyping this as early as 2018 working in JavaScript and defining the UX.

After the main prototype was completed, I started testing the market viability of a product like ImaginWOW. It is simple, but will people use it? More importantly, will people pay for it? Is it too simple?

The answers I received were mixed. Parents loved the idea and they saw it as a way for children to express themselves while still using technology. But many of the apps that their children use are free. This became a challenge and one that my business partner and I had to figure out.

I wanted ImaginWOW to be fun and exciting for users who were mainly children under 10 years old. The color scheme, the fonts and animations were designed to increase engagement. I still knew something was missing so I developed a design system of characters that were added to the mobile app and subsequent advertisements and promotional material.

I started designing the app with Sketch. I was able to design all of the screens and workflows in order to check that the flow was correct and so I could communicate to the future development team.

We raised enough money to hire nearshore developers to help us get the mobile app and running. I took their advice and we went with React Native to build out the mobile app. I managed the deployment from the design and Product Management POV.

Before long, the app was ready and we began user testing.

UX was fine. People enjoyed the mobile app. We put it in the App and Google Play stores. Things didn't move. Some of our friends purchased the app and made positive recommendation on the app stores, but only a few sales. We launched advertisement with the idea that ImaginWOW was like "fitness for your brain."

Most of the parents who purchased the app told us that they liked the idea of balancing the amount of screen time with time that their children are creating on paper. We took that and ran with it.

I began creating advertising campaigns related to reducing screen time. The campaign was aptly named, "Operation Reduce Screen Time."

We also tried to launch in different languages.


Copyright 2025. John Fox Consulting

Impressum/Legal


Copyright 2025. John Fox Consulting

Impressum/Legal

At the end of the day, ImaginWOW was unsuccessful but I learned a lot.

1. I wasn't patient enough with getting proper product validation and pushed the product to market before it was ready.

2. My primary user group (parents) said they wanted on thing but their actions showed something different. Because we set an altruistic benefit to ImaginWOW, many parents gravitated to it. But, parents see mobile applications as a break from watching their children. It is unfortunate, but true. Parents don't want to sit with their children and draw for hours using a mobile app. They want a mobile that they can give to their children and then have time to themselves.

3. I added too many features such as the multilingual capabilities. We needed to prove the concept in English first. I also added the social component. This required extra computing such as NSFW checks on uploaded images. This ends of up costing money on AWS.

4. Because the development was kind of done in a "black box", I didn't hold the control over the code nor the deployment. This led to having to remove the app from the app stores because we could not maintain even the smallest costs once the company closed its doors.

What I learned here, I put into practice with ImaginGO. I was much more patient and let the market dictate when to launch.

At the end of the day, ImaginWOW was unsuccessful but I learned a lot.

1. I wasn't patient enough with getting proper product validation and pushed the product to market before it was ready.

2. My primary user group (parents) said they wanted on thing but their actions showed something different. Because we set an altruistic benefit to ImaginWOW, many parents gravitated to it. But, parents see mobile applications as a break from watching their children. It is unfortunate, but true. Parents don't want to sit with their children and draw for hours using a mobile app. They want a mobile that they can give to their children and then have time to themselves.

3. I added too many features such as the multilingual capabilities. We needed to prove the concept in English first. I also added the social component. This required extra computing such as NSFW checks on uploaded images. This ends of up costing money on AWS.

4. Because the development was kind of done in a "black box", I didn't hold the control over the code nor the deployment. This led to having to remove the app from the app stores because we could not maintain even the smallest costs once the company closed its doors.


Copyright 2025. John Fox Consulting

Impressum/Legal


Copyright 2025. John Fox Consulting

Impressum/Legal