Is your app a product? And why does it matter?

We develop mobile apps, but we call ourselves a product studio. Why the distinction?

Some of the apps with bigger budgets are for big brands, music festivals, competitions… but they’re not products. Like most corporate websites aren’t products.

A product has a clear function, a utility that is meant to be used recurrently. And the development revolves around it.

If the worry is how the app is going to be perceived, instead of how it's going to be used, it's not really a product. If you talk more about how it looks, than how it's used, it's not really a product. It’s probably just an app.

A product needs user validation before, to make sure it’s worth building. A product needs analysis and iterations after, to make sure it fulfils its function properly. If you skip this, you're probably just building an app.

That's why we call ourselves a product studio, because what we want to build are (great) products.

Related: You don’t need an app for that (yet)