DrawMaster Pro One-Liner
With more and more people struggling to be creative in their daily lives, we have an opportunity to capture a new portion of the beginner digital artist market.
Problem Domain
Individuals have a desire to be more creative in their everyday lives but struggle with finding easy-to-use outlets and proper instruction to do so. Traditional mediums like pencil and paint can be challenging for novice artists to use daily at times convenient to them (i.e. on the commute to work, in between meetings, etc). Setting up and taking down a painting station can be a time-consuming task on its own much less the actual act of painting.
Customer Benefits
“I love being able to whip out my phone or iPad on the subway and quickly create some sketches without having to do any prep work. I also like the little lessons they have for beginners to explore more tools and learn different drawing techniques.” – John, a 23-year-old Investment Banking analyst in NYC
“I like that I can buy more brushes as I need them. I didn’t feel too great about paying so much outright and I also don’t need every brush. This way, I can pay for what I need.” – Gary, a 45-year-old dad in Greensboro, NC
Why Our Product Now?
This app is in a place with both medium value and urgency. Beginners will gain a lot of value through learning how to use drawing tools and getting familiar with the small brush amounts. This is a bit urgent to enable more people to get used to digital drawing tools, as at the moment there aren’t many beginner-friendly options.
However, this is not high in either value or urgency because the market is not particularly hungry for this app; we are in a red ocean, where Procreate, Adobe Illustrator, ibisPaint, and many more apps exist. One of the things that makes these apps non-beginner friendly is that all of these apps have a large learning curve due to the number of brushes for newcomers, making users overwhelmed. Therefore, DrawMaster Pro limits the brushes behind the bundles, so when users are ready, they can activate a free trial to view all the brushes available and choose whether they want to pay for all the extra features. Thus, this will bring in more beginner users to the drawing community and to DrawMaster Pro.
Example Customer Case Study
Meet Alyson, a budding digital artist looking to express her creativity through art in her spare time. She’s brimming with ideas and an insatiable desire to create, but she doesn’t know how to draw. Alyson is not alone; there are countless aspiring artists out there like her who have the potential but lack the knowledge and tools to unleash their creativity.
Imagine that Alyson stumbles upon DrawMaster Pro while searching for digital art tools. Intrigued by the free version, she decides to give it a try to explore its basic features. Alyson finds the free version user-friendly and enjoys experimenting with the essential tools for sketching and basic artwork. As she practices and masters fundamental art skills, she starts to see the potential for her artistic expression. Impressed with the free version, Alyson decides to upgrade to the second-tier package bundle, Creator’s Canvas. The decision is driven by the desire to access more advanced tools and expand her creative possibilities. With the upgraded package, Alyson now has access to a broader range of artistic tools for more artwork.
Areas of Uncertainty and Exploration Plans
Our first area of uncertainty is if everyday people want to be creative. We are looking into the student population for users to convert, and we’re assuming that students want to be creative in ways outside of the classroom. If this is false, that would be detrimental since there would be fewer people to onboard, and thus fewer people to convert.
Our second area of uncertainty is if users view both brushes and colors as things of value to pay for. This would affect how we structure our tiered bundles to make them most appealing for users to convert. It is also unlikely they will pay for a bundle tier if a user finds that paying for color is unreasonable.
Our third area of uncertainty is whether ads on the app’s free version would encourage users to upgrade. Our current revenue model purely relies on the number of people at each tier. Would users want to get rid of ads by upgrading (like Spotify), or would users find them so annoying that they leave the app altogether?
Current Plan to Explore Those Areas of Uncertainty
To explore our first area of uncertainty, our plan was to conduct interviews with students and users of competitors like Canva, Adobe, and Procreate. We would ask qualitatively about their relationship with creativity and also ask quantitative questions to gauge how much they value creativity. We also would study enrollment data to see what portion of students enrolled in introductory art classes (Drawing 1) were taking it for major requirements or for pleasure.
To explore our second area of uncertainty, our plan is to conduct interviews where we showed participants three packages to choose from as prototypes. One had 12 brushes and 12 colors, the second 6 brushes and 12 colors, and the last only 12 brushes. All priced at 2.99. We would see which one they would pay for. We want to see if they would go for the quantity of items in the kits but also want to see if they think paying for colors is reasonable.
To explore our third area of uncertainty, our plan is to create two versions of the app and mock up prototypes of both. The first is a free app with the ability to upgrade, and the second would be a paid app with full access. We would ask participants to choose between the two apps and give us their rationale for why. Afterward, we show participants app screens for when they hypothetically get one of the apps and ask if they thought they made the right decision.
Prior Research
DrawMaster Pro stemmed from a true market need for a solution that is both user-friendly, instructive, and scalable. Competition in this market is high but fragmented— there exists frictions amongst numerous platforms that allow us to more easily compete with multiple smaller “players” instead of a few big “players”. Specifically, key players in this industry are Adobe, Savage Interactive (Procreate), Affinity Designer, Ibis (ibisPaint), and Sony. The existing market size is estimated to be worth $4.09 billion in 2023. Assuming a capture rate of 3-8%, this could mean our share of the market can be worth $122.7 – $327.8 million.
Our impact can be significant. In a case study of our competitor Procreate, Apple noticed the platform and showcased it on their App Store frontpage. Apple also decided to install Procreate on all demo Apple Store iPads in the world. Allowing new users of the iPad to see how the Apple Pencil integrated with apps like Procreate sold new users instantly to download the app. This translated into Procreate getting an immense increase in user searches and downloads. If DrawMaster Pro is able to attract the same positive user feedback and attention, DrawMaster Pro may very well become the new Procreate, resulting in more recognition to make it a household name.
Leading Signals
As we launch and push forward with our new business model, we must pre-establish and monitor leading signals to track its success. It will be critical to monitor the conversion rate from our free to paid versions. A 2-5% free-to-paid conversion rate indicates that users find value in the product and are willing to invest in additional features. A lower percentage of users transitioning might indicate that users do not see sufficient value or that our paid packages are priced too high. Another leading signal can be user engagement and retention. Regular and sustained usage of the platform, such as a significant number of users logging in daily or weekly, suggests that the product is meeting ongoing user needs and is integral to their creative process. For the first year, a 3-7% churn rate is reasonable; however, for future years, the goal should be to remain under 3%. A lower churn rate means higher user engagement which indicates a higher likelihood of users upgrading to higher-tiered packages as they improve their artistic talent.
Other Considerations
Other ideas we had was to add ads to our free app so that people can upgrade to get rid of them. Everyone has the same access to the brush kits; however, you can just pay $3 to remove ads forever. This would mean an extra revenue source alongside bundles.
Another idea was to add a feature similar to BeReal like a daily drawing app to make our app more fun with friends. However, getting revenue sources was not as clear, and it did not seem to fit into the full drawing app. Something similar, like streaks, could work in the future however.
Lastly, we also thought about making our app an add-on to other apps such as Google Classroom or Khan Academy, which could expand our user base to already-existing platforms and ground ourselves in the study and learning community.
Summary of Technologies Involved
While the preferred language for iOS is Swift and Android is Kotlin, we plan to leverage the cross platform, OS-agnostic React Native for its portability in any device, singular codebase, and lower cost and maintenance. Speaking about technologies, we want to leverage artificial intelligence in a “least-invasive” format. We currently could see using AI for the onboarding process, specifically collecting user information about how they intend to interact with DrawMaster Pro and their experience. If they’re more experienced, we can be more hands off but if they’re a complete beginner, we can lead them through a longer tutorial.
Time Frame
In 3 to 4 weeks, we would like to test all of our current assumptions and make changes necessary to our planning and business model if needed. In 3 to 4 months, we would like to test our new business model with a subset of our current users and start recruiting students at college campuses to join our free app. In 2 to 3 quarters if our previous test is successful, we would like to extend our business model to most of our users. We would grandfather past users who were previously on subscription tiers to the matched bundle tier. By then, we’d have updated our website pricing strategy.
