The five questions we ask before building any app (most ideas fail at number two)

Ideas are cheap and we have too many. What we are short of is time, so every concept goes through the same five questions before anyone opens a design tool. They are deliberately boring. Boring questions kill exciting ideas, which is their job.

1. Which moment in the day is this for?

Not "who is it for" but "when". Bedtime. The commute. The queue at the counter. The ten minutes before sleep. A moment gives the app a user, a mood and a reason to return, for free. An idea that is "for everyone, anytime" is for no one in particular, and it will be opened on no day in particular.

Passing answer: a time of day you could set an alarm for.

2. What is personal about the first result?

This is where most ideas fail. The first thing the app produces for a new user: is it about them, or is it the same thing it would produce for anyone? A story with the child's name in it passes. A scene set in the user's own city passes. A generic feed, a generic template, a generic chat window does not. Generic output is easy to leave, and people leave it.

Passing answer: you can name the three pieces of personal information the first result will use.

3. What does week two look like without a notification?

Imagine push notifications do not exist. Does the user come back in the second week? If the moment from question one is real, yes: bedtime arrives on its own. If the honest answer is "we would remind them", the product has not found its moment and no amount of notification copy will substitute for one.

Passing answer: the return is triggered by life, not by the app.

4. Can it reuse what we already built?

We have a backbone: story generation, voice cloning and narration, subscriptions tuned per market, analytics, a loyalty and QR layer. An idea that stands on that backbone can ship in weeks. An idea that needs an entirely new stack needs to be worth months, and it has to say why.

Passing answer: at least half of the engine already exists, or the new half is something we will reuse later.

5. Can we explain it to a stranger in one sentence?

The sentence becomes the subtitle, the first screenshot, the ad and the answer when a friend asks what we do. If it takes a paragraph, the product is either two products or none. "Bedtime stories about your child, told in your voice." "The life you want, written back to you." "Your coffee card, on your phone."

Passing answer: someone repeats the sentence back to you correctly.

What happens to the ideas that fail

They go in a document with the question they failed written next to them. Some come back when the answer changes: a new model makes personalization possible, a moment becomes clearer, a piece of the backbone gets built for something else. Most stay in the document. That is fine. The apps that passed are the ones we are proud of.