Domo customers have been using dashboards for more than they were intended. This was partially my fault, as in workshops I showed customers ways to enhance their dashboards, and they took that and ran with it beyond expectations. In reality, what customers truly wanted were to build full applications with navigation to multiple pages, complex layouts, buttons and forms to take action, data entry and manipulation, and the list goes on.
Dashboards, and dashboard building tools simply couldn’t handle these complexities, so I proposed to my team that we create a new tool dedicated to building data centric apps. The designers and engineers were onboard with the idea, so we designed some prototypes and examples of what an app builder might be like. We prepared proposals and presentations from there, but executives were struggling to catch the vision. I felt that much of the problem was that we could never get enough time to fully present on the topic. Often with executives you have to fit your proposal into a short elevator pitch, but this app builder was going to require a significant shift of priorities, and we simply could not get them to catch the vision of how this could improve our product offerings and product market fit with any of the time we could get. So, I had an idea in the shower one morning that what we needed to do was show them what Domo would look like 5 years from then if we invested in an app builder now. I felt a video they could watch on their phone would help (they always had their phones with them, not always a laptop). I identified that if I could get at least one executive onboard they could become an advocate. I chose the executive that I believed had influence with the CEO and CTO. I knew they loved mountain biking, and were a bit of a gear head. He once mentioned something from a specific YouTube channel that reviews mountain bike gear, and that inspired me to frame the video as a YouTuber showing off an app that they built with Domo, so I wrote a script, and the PM and Lead Engineer thought it was an interesting viral proposal idea, so we decided as a trio to make the video. I created some key mocks based on the script and rallied the designers on my team to take our concepts and flesh it out to fit the narrative. Two of our star designers, Ellen Lingwall and Sadie Ballif, deserve mention for the sheer number of screens that were needed to simulate building an app.
Here is a short clip from the video:
We spent about a week on it. It wasn’t wasted work if we got approval, because we would need the fleshed out user flow to start doing testing with users. The video showed the reviewer on the previously mentioned YouTube channel showing their customers how to build an app around a bike parts distributor. I found a video of this YouTuber reviewing something on a laptop, so I overdubbed it and cut to the prototype that showcased building this parts app. It demonstrated how fast someone could build a fully interactive app that integrated with all the core Domo data features.
We sent a rough draft to the executive we identified. He loved it so much he sent it or showed it to the other executives before we put in all the nice animations. It was like an internal viral video. It wasn’t long after that the team was asked to propose what timeline and resources were needed, which we already had prepared, so that went well. Of course there were other factors that contributed to the project’s success, but I believe figuring out a way for the executives to finally catch the vision tipped it over the edge. It was branded App Studio, and the first version was released in 2023.
Here’s another video we made to tease App Studio to the rest of the company before the big announcement at Domopalooza 2023:
As of early 2025 we are a few years into the project with 3 major feature releases, and another coming next month. Customers have loved it, and are creating some very impressive apps for their businesses.