Pair A
Help a 25-year-old Zara shopper explore and follow outfits from people like her, so she lands on a look she wants to try on, in under 3 minutes.
Ionian Technologies · Thessaloniki · May 2026Four ideas, one day, one decision
A private for the team behind Wardrobed, an outfit app from Thessaloniki. Four product directions, built in pairs and put in front of real users the same day.
4
challenges built in parallel
8
builders in pairs
2
rounds of user tests
1
go or no-go decision
The situation
Ionian Technologies is a small software agency in Thessaloniki building its own product: Wardrobed, an app for people who stand in front of a full wardrobe with nothing to wear.
The team had a hypothesis about a Pinterest-style outfit feed, several competing directions, and no evidence for any of them. Spyros Tsoukalas, the founder, booked a day, not a quarter.
The unusual part
The usual move is to pick one idea and defend it in meetings. Spyros made a different call: four challenges, four pairs of builders, the same user, the same day.
Pair B
Help a fashion-curious 30-year-old find and follow 5 people whose style matches hers, in under 3 minutes.
Pair C
Help a returning user open the app at 7:45 a.m. and pick a complete outfit from her saved looks plus today's feed, in under 90 seconds.
Pair D
Help a new user fill her digital wardrobe from a pre-loaded brand library, 20 items ready to mix in under 5 minutes, without photographing anything.
Four working prototypes before 16:00, zero developer hours, from a team that had never worked with a UX person before. Building is cheap now, so you can afford to test four answers instead of arguing about one.
The brief
Each challenge was written the same way: user, moment, goal, time box. Here is Team C's, all 31 words of it.
31 words
"How might we help a returning 25-year-old Zara shopper open the app at 7:45 a.m. and choose a complete outfit from her saved looks and today's feed in under 90 seconds?"
Every fragment does a job. The named brand means everyone pictures her in the first second. The 90 seconds means a judge can check the result with a stopwatch. No feature named, no screen prescribed, so four teams could serve the same brief four different ways. Tight enough to aim, loose enough to discover.
How the day ran
10:00
Spyros opens with the decision waiting on the day and what he will do with each result. The brief is read out loud.
11:00
Pairs build. Five hours on one user flow, end to end. I keep the pairs unblocked, Spyros stays on call for product questions.
15:00
User testing. Every member of Spyros' team had one hour to test with real users, and they delivered.
16:00
Demos. Five minutes to walk through as the user, five for judge questions. Scored live.
16:55
Winner announced. The room leaves knowing which build goes to users next.
Decision over opinion.
Same-day user tests
Each pair took its prototype to the streets of Thessaloniki and put it in front of strangers, the same afternoon. The app in their hands looked finished. The tests said otherwise.
10+ min
One user spent over ten minutes and never found an outfit she would wear.
Tap. Nothing.
She tapped an outfit expecting details behind it. There were none.
"What is this for?"
One user could not explain what the app was meant to do.
Three findings before dinner, on a product that looked done. The alternative was learning this after a quarter.
What happened next
The first test round said: roughly right.
That morning none of the four directions had evidence behind it. By the evening all four had some, and Ionian kept investing in all four.
The second changed the product.
1
Same week
Online moderated tests, five to eight users, recorded with consent.
2
Days later
A results report: task completion, friction points, quotes, and a recommendation.
3
Together
A decision workshop: go, iterate, or no-go, with a Now / Next / Later list.
Eight hours replaced the best argument with the best evidence.
In their words
"Building has gotten easier. Distribution is now the challenge. User engagement is the tough part nowadays. We learned a few things about our users and about what we are going to do next."
Spyros Tsoukalas
What this would be in your office
One day, your people, your own challenges.
From 7,900 EUR netUp to 20 peopleYour office
Ionian's day was a . The decision gets made in the room, by the person who owns it.
Book the 15-minute callLet's talk about your
Free, 15 minutes, and "this is not the right tool for you" is an answer I actually give.