RunPee’s “Golden Rule”

Whether it’s choosing which Peetimes to use from our notes, or how to carefully word the “getting up” cues so there’s no spoilers, or what to put in the Synopsis, or the Meta details, or anything else, we have one Golden Rule we keep in mind to guide us:

We imagine ourselves sitting in a movie theater, re-watching a film with a good friend who hasn’t seen the movie yet, and simply ask ourselves, “What would we tell our friend they asked us when would be the best time to pee during this movie?”

It’s as simple as that. We keep that in mind when tweaking the app, so we can provide personal information — just as if we were sitting there next to a friend.

When we think about writing a Peetime Cue we ask ourselves, “What if a friend asked us when it would be safe to pee during this movie?” We’d want to give them a Cue that is memorable, and noticeable, but not a spoiler.

When we think about writing our Peetime Metas (the short description below the Cue),  we imagine a friend leaning over and asking, “Hey, I have to pee. What sort of scenes happen for the next 3-5 minutes?” To which we can respond, “Nothing important. Just some dialog,” or, “Just some kissy scenes followed by a little morning after conversation,” or something like that. We pick things that are easy to summarize, so you won’t be lost when you sit back down. Our Peetimes run between 3-5 minutes, which everyone can handle if they don’t dally. Hence, the Run part of RunPee. 🙂

When we write the Synopses for a Peetime, we play a mental game of tug-o-war between providing enough detail to keep you caught up with the movie when you get back, and keeping it terse enough that you can read it in 30 seconds — while you run pee to the restroom, get a beverage, make a call, or whatever you need to do. We’ve been doing this for 12 years now, back in the Pleistocene of the web, so we think we’re pretty good at it.

And no, the humor is not lost on us that RunPee has a Golden Rule. 🙂