The App Idea Evaluation Worksheet: pressure-test your idea before you spend a dollar building it.
10 PAGES · 30–45 MINUTES · FILLABLE PDF
Type into the fields or print it out and write by hand. Either works. What does not work is skimming it in five minutes and deciding you already knew all this.
Nobody else sees this. The point is to find the soft spots in your idea now, while changing your mind is still free. It gets expensive later.
The scorecard on page 8 is not a verdict. It is a to-do list in disguise. Your lowest score tells you exactly what to go and do next.
I am a product designer in Baltimore. I have spent ten years designing products inside large organizations — GEICO, CNN, IHG, Publicis Sapient and ADP — and the last stretch building and shipping one of my own. This worksheet is the first week of the FEZ Innovation Lab, condensed into something you can do alone at a kitchen table.
Your answers stay in this browser — they are saved on this device only and never sent to us.
Downloads the designed PDF with your answers filled in, still editable in any PDF viewer. Nothing is uploaded — the file is built here in your browser.
If you would like me to look at where you landed, send it over. I read these myself and reply — usually within a couple of days. No list, no sequence, no pitch.
This sends only your score and your one-sentence problem — not the rest of the worksheet. Everything else stays in your browser, and the PDF is still built on your own machine.
Before Us is my own product — a daily inheritance of Black wisdom, one quote a day with the person behind it. Built in React Native, shipped on the App Store, and built alone. Here is how it answered these questions — including the one it never answered at all.
Everything below is published: the case study at fezmedia.co/work/before-us/ and the app’s own site, beforeus.app. Section 03 is the exception, and it is the most useful part of this page.
Black wisdom is quoted constantly and attributed carelessly — a name gets detached from a life, passed around until it means nothing in particular.
Someone who wants a quiet daily practice, not another feed. People do not open an app like this to browse — they open it in a mood.
The alternative is a feed. The product answer was restraint — one quote a day, no ads, nothing to scroll past.
There were none. I built Before Us alone, and the feedback arrived after it shipped rather than before. Week two is the week the Lab says changes the most minds about what the thing should be, and it is the one week I did not run on my own product.
Because every answer above it came from conviction rather than evidence. It worked out here. That is not the same as it being the right way round, and it is why five conversations are a requirement of the cohort rather than a suggestion.
For people who want a daily practice rather than another feed, Before Us gives them one quote a day and the person behind it.
Six, written down in week one and published on beforeus.app as “small on purpose”: a voice a day, collections, know the voice, keep what moves you, two moods, and a gentle nudge.
A feed, a social graph, a streak. In the case study’s words, a quote app wants to become all three. The v1 list written in week one is the v1 list that shipped.
The FEZ Innovation Lab is a six-week cohort for non-technical founders. Small group, hands-on, and you leave with a clickable prototype of your app.
Questions? Reply to the email this came with and tell me your idea in a sentence.
