[Case study]

Urban Outdoors

MVP Mobile App

Took a native MVP from product roadmap to first users in four weeks; the app itself was built in six days.

[Stack]

Adalo, Notion, Figma

[Duration]

4 weeks

[What it is]

A native MVP in just 6 days

Urban Outdoors, which Kay Rodriguez started in 2019, built its audience with guides to outdoor adventures for people who live in cities. DreamLabs built its mobile app MVP: a fully native app made in Adalo, taken from product roadmap to first users in four weeks, with the app itself built in six days. Agencies had quoted Urban Outdoors six months for its mobile app MVP.

The problem

Urban Outdoors began as a WordPress site of guides to its founder’s favorite hikes around Chicago and grew into an online resource for city-based outdoor adventures. By October 2022, Technical.ly reported 150,000 to 200,000 visitors a month and 27,000 email subscribers.

Urban Outdoors wanted a mobile app. After many conversations with full-stack development contractors, it was looking at agency quotes of six months for the MVP, so it decided to build a no-code MVP instead.

[How it works]

Four stages over one month

We completed the build in four stages over one month, end to end.

Phase 1: Strategy (Notion, Figma)

A detailed, prioritized product roadmap with clear user flows, a sitemap, unit tests and spec’d features.

Phase 2: UX (Adalo)

The front end of every scoped screen in the app.

Phase 3: Beta (Adalo)

The back-end database powering every MVP feature. Phases 2 and 3 ran concurrently and were completed in six days.

Phase 4: Launch (Adalo)

UI and copy polish, then launch to the app’s first users.

What users see

A sign-up screen
A map of activities that can be searched and filtered by type and difficulty
Activity pages with a difficulty level, star rating, description and photos
A tab bar for Home, Discover, Activities and Menu

User testing

The scope also covered a User Testing Guide and DreamLabs leading the first five user testing sessions, so future releases could build on what real users did. Our free user testing guide covers how to run sessions like these.

Stack

Adalo for the native app’s screens and database; Notion and Figma for the roadmap, user flows, sitemap and specs. Adalo made it possible to build a native MVP in six days. When an Adalo app has proven its idea, we now rebuild it in Flutter or React Native code the owner controls. Our guide to getting an Adalo or Glide app into the App Store covers that move, and our mobile app development page covers building from scratch.

Timeline

Four weeks end to end: one week for the product roadmap, six days to build the app, and two weeks of QA. DreamLabs had promised six weeks.

Outcome

Urban Outdoors had a native MVP ready for its first users in four weeks, against agency quotes of six months, along with a plan for learning from those users. DreamLabs helped with scoping, building and beta testing, then handed the product off to the Urban Outdoors team.

[Don’t just take our word for it]