Deckible Beta - Update 3

No apologies, this is an essay.

The devil is in the detail.

Grab a seat. Get comfortable. Lots to love in what's coming. In no particular order:

Seven videos,
40 social ads
Social Bios / Creator Meme Cards
Hardware compatability (phones/tablets)
Spreads & Deck Info updates.
And lots more

CAVEATS

For the Deck Creators who are new to the Beta, welcome!

If you are on Apple, you need Testflight and you need an invite for the email you use for IOS and the app store. You get an email from Apple

If you are on Google you need an invite to the beta using the email you use to log into Google. You don't get an email/invite from Google, but you can find Deckible in the google play store. This link won't work if you have not been given access.

If you logged into Deckible with a different email than above, then you need to let us know so we can add your correct login to gain access to the beta. This is explained in the slides below.

This is the third update since the beginning of the beta. Access to the beta is limited to people who have uploaded a Deck on Deckible.

Each of these updates have been dense on facts. If you intend to use the Deckible app prior to release, you must read all prior content (i.e. Update 1 and Update 2).

If you don't read them, you will ask lots of questions that have already been answered. Save yourself the frustation. Read on.

Deckible Beta U2 from Nick Kellet

You are not required to test the beta. That's our job. That said, we welcome your input if you have time, we think you be inspired to read and watch all the content in these updates.

We do encourage you to share and you can screenshot and record videos from Deckible and share them to social along with images of your Deck Box and deck videos.

I know I'm excited about U3. There are so much finesse and precision. I thought Deckible was awesome before, but what we have in store is epic. The team has done an amazing job.

The biggest changes are in dialing-in core workflows. I think it's a game changer.

Deckible is by far the most exciting project I've brought to market. When I think of the number of people involved and all the conversations it's just to magical.

I have always thought of my projects as "living" things. I look for signs of life and work to engineer natural momentum. I've seen lots of this with prior projects like GiftTRAP, Set Analyzer and List.ly, but there is something profound about Deckible. It has an energy and life force all of it's own.

We have made over 100 social adverts. Silly, pun-rich micro-ads to highlight a single feature or benefit of deckible, or to poke fun at something.

We are here to have fun and we hope you are too.

We're providing you the tools to share these ideas with the world. There's more where these came from. And we welcome your input/suggestions.

If you have a bright idea for another advert, send them along.

The first 40 are featured here. You can right click to download any of these images. Share the ones you live, ignore the others.

TIMELINE

The bad news - yes we are a little late.

The good news is we are now weeks and days not months from launch.

Yes coding has taken longer, but I know we've also raised the bar of expecations because of a strong feeling of the significance of the project's impact.

Many of you have taken longer to load your decks. And that's just fine and what is meant to be. We have been drawn in to supporting and helping you in this process. That's great too. All perfect.

With more creators on Deckible, I really feel we are all on the path to changing the the card-deck industry globally. If we change this, together we can impact the world and bring decks into the hands of many more people.

We get one chance to launch this product and define initial expecations in the mind's of consumers. I'm not about to ruin that first impression after all this effort. So, I'm OK with the delay and believe you will be too.

With a larger community of creators, we will collectively have more impact on the world. Artists helping artists. We are creating a movement. We are working on democratizing decks. Audible for card-decks is simple to say, but it's also profound.

Our initial goal was to reach 100+ creators. Today, we've blown past 140+ creators and will likely pass 200 or 250 by launch. That is massive as there are many creators who will jump on board once they see proof and can experience the app in person. 500 and 1000 creators are not far away. We are not all early adopters.

I can get lost perusing the artwork and decks and that is a truly amazing feeling. A collective achievement of teamwork and community. And that fills me with gratitude.

We have taken on board so much feedback with the first release. And we could not be prouder of what is emerging. We are certain you will really feel that too. We are sharing the details of that today with you for the first time. Read on.

RELEASE DATE

We are still a little vague on this.

Here's why:

We estimate 8-23 days more work to complete everything we want in the product. Once we reach this milestone, we will release a final candidate product.
We then need to submit this release to Google and Apple. This could take a day, or it could take several weeks if we have to adapt to feedback and resubmit.

Once we get approval, my intuition is guiding me to begin a 30-50 day count down to a formal launch. Countdowns are effective marketing tools.

I like the number 42. As we all know, the answer to everything is 42. Why the countdown? Teasing works. FOMO. Curiosity. We follow noise and influence. Collectively we are the influencers.

I expect to sell decks pre-launch invite-only period, so the countdown is not slowing anything down.

The opposite infact. As we begin countdown we will also reset any of the decks you accessed during the beta (as explained in U1/U2 slides).

We will then begin a 42 days long celebration. A launch party.

Incentives are still being finalised. There will be:

an incentive to buy decks.
an incentive to upload decks.
free cards in the form of sampler decks (more below)

We expect to release a version to you (the deck creators) in the next two weeks or so. This will be a big leap forward from the current version you have access to. We expect to complete most of the content from Isaac's six videos (see below).

I'm also including a video of the current version today which you don't yet have. It's really quite magical. Perhaps I'm biased. You can be the judge of that.

And once released, we will focus on completing that last elements to sell decks and submit to Google and Apple.

COMMUNITY EXPECATIONS: ARTISTS HELPING ARTISTS

We are here to help you and to help each other.

Artists helping artists.

We shared the first batch of Deckible social ads. Please share these via Facebook, Instagram, TikTok etc.

Sharing is the cultural norm we will actively support and encourage. And we aim to make that very easy for you.

To this end, we will also be providing four 10 second teazer videos for each deck we feature.

10 second shuflling a deck
10 second doing a card sort
10 seconds making a spread
10 seconds exploring the Deck Info page

These videos will be made available to you all to share. We have 140+ creators with decks loaded, but we have almost 300 people signed up and somewhere along the process of loading decks. That's a lot of content now and in the future.

And as I mentioned 1000+ creators is not far away.

These short videos make perfect reels. Share the decks you love. Connect with other creators and let them know you love their work.

Share these videos and see the reaction. We think you will want to share more.

I was reminded by my daughter, Freya, who said "I'm anesthetized to the visual impact of the app because I've been using it and seeing all the cool decks for so long."

This is true.

The visuals and ease of playing with cards is magical to anyone who has not seen or experienced it first hand. Don't forget that. Compare Deckible to Instagram and Facebook. It's a wholy different type of engagement and participation.

Freya's comment had me re-evaluate our strategy and focus on the short video clips. And my warning to you it do not get anesthetized too. Shine a light on the magic. Notice it. Notice others noticing.

All these videos are not branded as Deckible. They feature your art and your decks. The cards etc. And they promote a curious questions. What is that? If you don't believe my try it out. Whenever I've shared unique content in my feed it has prompted comments. Simple put - it's remarkable. Remarkable is priceless.

We expect and encourage your to connect with other creators.

This is a community. And a risign tide floats all boarts.

CREATOR PROFILES

You can now create your social profiles and bio on Deckible. There's a "Creator Profile" page on Deckible.com. If you are logged in, there is an edit button. Link here:

This is in part for SEO purposes, but also this page will link to your individual deck pages. It's very much work in progress, but we need your profile and links to make this work.

This also helps you find, follow and connect with your fellow creators. Together, we will are building the world's biggest directory of card-deck creators and decks. You are one of them. So please fill in your profile.

Here's a link to my profile. I'm all over the socials and willingly connect with all, we hope you are too. Invite me to connect if we have not already done so.

BIO CARD

We've added a user profile photo in profile page above . We will be creating "Bio Card" that is like a "meme card" for each creator. Think of top trumps. We aim to use card as a bonus card for each deck. We don't have the design for this right now. So hold on to your hats. It's going to be cool.

Here's an example of a Meme Card I made to Content Marketing World proabably 9 years ago. We made cards for all the keynote speakers. Very cool. And an early signal that Deckible was in my future!

https://www.instagram.com/p/CcHL9wOprX0/

We will be able to showcase the author and the artists on each deck. And we can automatically add this card to the Deck Info page.

DECK INFO URL

For SEO purposes, we will add a public deck page on Deckible.com for each deck. This page will link to the deck inside the app.

This is a work-in-progress, but will mirror the Deck Info page in the app (which will also be the same as the deck embed mentioned in U1/U2).

The Deck Info page is really very cool as it will gather all the information for your deck and make it very compelling. It is core of the consumer deck-buying experience. It can include an audio or video to help you sell your deck.

DOWNLOADING DECK ARTWORK

We will be switching the downloading to be a background task, just like Audible. Isaac has designed UX for this, but there's no video for that.

Right now when you download a deck you have to stay with the app or the process stops. We know, this is frustrating. Problem solved.

We also have implemented some changes to speed up download speed. There are more changes in the works.

Also when the decks are downloading, the art is currently shown as faded/grayed out. This will change to show the full artwork and to give you more of an impression of visual progress.

ARTISTS & CO-CREATORS

We recognize that some decks will have a distinct creators and artists.

So long as these individuals have user profiles on Deckible, we plan to link to their individual profile, so you can see all the decks that an artist or creator particiapted on. This is a work in progress. Their BIO CARD will be included on the Deck Info page.

CHECKLISTS

We will shortly be adding a checklist feature to help you check off that you have completed all the elements needed for your deck.

I'm making this for me, but they will be very useful to you too.

PRICING

I'm getting a lot of questions about pricing.

Prices can change over time and will. You can change them.
We don't want to underprice decks, but we also need to ackknowledge that we will be able to sell decks at a high price over time as we establish the value of the Deckible experience.
There will be price-points. So setting price will be a function of picking one of these prices. These prices then flow into other currencies. We're still learning about this all works.
We expect digital decks to initially follow the relationship between a hard back book and a kindle. It's worth noting that your digital deck does not need to mirror your printed deck. You can add bonus cards and audio/video per card.
Also the app can integraete your guidebook and links to your website for yet more information.
It's our job to share our learnings on pricing / promotions with you over time. We will definitely be providing guudance on pricing over time.
Also note that your Deckible experience includes journaling and meditation and all your reading. Plus you can filter, search and share timeline entries. This is a very rich experience. It's much more than a kindle equivalent of a book.
Value is something we will continue to establish over time.

SPREADS/LAYOUTS

We used to make you pick "Card Sort" or "Spread" and then pick a deck. We are flipping that. And as a result you will pick a deck, then pick a "Layout" and a Card Sort is just a layout along with spreads. The spreads on your deck will be featured on the Deck Info page. See Isaac's videos for a demo.

We are also adding index keywords to the spreads so when you choose a card you see the keyword, not just the number of the card in each spread.

We are moving to use the word Layout instead of Spread. This is evident in Isaac videos. Spreads are just integrated into Layouts along with Card Sorting. Much easier to show than tell.

The more we have dug deep into Card Sorting and Spreads the more universal we believe they are. And Tarot can have some negative connotations for some communities. So we have chosen to adopt the work "Layout" as the unifying term for these features.

HARDWARE COMPATABILITY (PHONES & TABLETS)

I mention this as some of you have learned that your phones and tablets aren't compatible with the Deckible app.

The app is built using Flutter from Google. https://flutter.dev/

It's really the lastest and greatest in tech. This means we can support both IOS and Android, and we also work offline and online. And there's also amazing animations. Flutter is cool. We are so happy with the technical choices we made to build Deckible.

The project currently needs Android SDK version 27 (see https://apilevels.com/ for mappings onto versions) as a minimum. That acconts for 87.1% of all Android devices.

iOS is version 15.0 and up. IOS compatability as follows:

https://support.apple.com/en-ca/guide/iphone/iphe3fa5df43/ios
https://support.apple.com/en-ca/guide/ipad/ipad213a25b2/ipados

DECKS IN YOUR TIMELINE

We made a decsion to add Decks to the timeline. So then you can to see when you bought a deck and also when someone gifted you a deck. Yes gifting will be an option.

You can also be gifted decks by the Deckible platform. See featured decks (below). This will be an automated part of our monthly marketing activity.

Decks in your timeline makes it filterable (see Isaac's video). We think this is a big enhancement to the experience and leap ahead of what Audible offers. Audible offer no log of which books you listen to when and that's annoying.

It also saves us from having to introduce another metaphor to manage your purchased decks. You can find all your decks and when you bought them in the timeline. Boom!

MONTHLY FEATURED DECKS

Each month, we plan to feature the following decks

20-25 spiritual decks
20-25 coaching/business/learning decks

We will be making two unique curated decks with one card from each of these decks. These decks will come from unique creators each month and will be a celebration of the diversity of the Deckible creator community.

These decks will be free each month to Deckible users. The deck will only be available during that month. They act as an incentive/reward for being an early Deckible user.

This solves many problems. It gives new users content to use without giving away whole decks. It also lets people learn and explore Deckible from the moment they join. No doubt this will evolve.

If you explore cards in this deck, one click take you to the Deck Info page. At this point, you are a click away from purchasing that deck.

We think this is awesome and we've validated this idea with a bunch of creator and everyone has loved the idea.

We may charge to feature your deck. This is tbc, and if we do, we will simply be spending this money on marketing activity. This is not a revenue, but a marketing war chest.

DECK INFORMATION

We dropped tags. You are all adding too many for it to be of value.

We have just added a "Tag Line" to decks.

So a deck can have

a name (full product name)
a tagline (short descriptive tag line)
a long description

This was in part a design choice, but we also noticed creators often combine name and tagline within the deck name. This is not good.

This change will help creators focus on dividing the name and tagline into two. This makes for clearer communication.

The Name/Tagline division is helpful to be reflected on your box cover too.

Names are short. Taglines are longer. Descriptions are for all the extra information that you want people to know about your deck.

In case you hadn't heard you box front and box back should be 1000 x 1300 pixels. This is a relative recent change.

DECK INFO PAGE

We've automated so much here to make the Deck Info page look amazing and consistent from deck to deck. One of the features that's not quite complete is sampler card spreads. These are auto generated images showing 2 and 3 cards from your deck. I suspect we'll add more to these.

Here's 8 samples of auto-generated card-spreads. These type of images will be available on your deck info page as a part of the images to showcase each of your decks. They aren't shown in the videos you but they will be there by the time you see the next release.

The full size images are 1080 x 1080 px and are therefore perfect for Instagram. We can generate these types of random images on demand. Also great for sharing.

VIDEO UPDATES

Here's a collection of great videos from Isaac. There's some duplication, but each video contains valuable unique content. So please watch them through to the end.

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