I Launched. It Was Bumpy. That Was The Point.

Last night I ran the first real test of Sports Ball Squares using the Spurs vs Thunder game as my guinea pig.

Thirteen things needed fixing by this morning. I am not embarrassed about that. That is what beta testing is for.

The issues ranged from the embarrassing (grid numbers were displaying 0 through 9 in order, not exactly the randomized reveal I had envisioned) to the genuinely useful (turns out not everyone knows what a squares game is, which means I need to do a better job explaining it before people start picking). Both are fixable. Both make the product better.

A few things that stood out from the night:

The reveal moment when the grid locks and the numbers appear is exactly as fun as I hoped it would be. Even with the bugs, people reacted to it. That tells me I built the right thing.

Not everyone in the test group was a die hard sports fan. Some people had never played a squares game before. That is actually exciting. It means the audience is bigger than just the people who already know what this is.

The commissioner experience needs work. Getting one email every time a player signs up gets old fast. Hourly batching is the fix and it is already in the queue.

Tonight I am running test two using the Canadiens vs Hurricanes game. All 13 fixes are targeted before puck drop. I will see how many I actually land.

This is the part of building something that nobody really talks about. It is not glamorous. But watching something go from broken to better in 24 hours is its own kind of fun.

More soon.

• Kevin