F
or North Huntingdon resident Chris Guenzel,
necessity was indeed the mother of invention.
In 2011, after spending a long day at a
Pittsburgh museum, Guenzel and his wife,
Shannon, had stopped with their children and extended
family to grab a meal at a local restaurant. With six
children and four adults in the mix, Guenzel says it quickly
became apparent that the dinner had the potential to be
“challenging.”
“We were outnumbered,” Guenzel, a 1987 graduate of
Gateway High School, says with a laugh. “It had been a
long day, and the kids were being kids.”
In an effort to keep the young cousins “relatively
quiet” and occupied, he invented a simple game. Every
few minutes, he would give the kids something silly to
draw, like “a vampire eating a pepperoni pizza during a
snowstorm.” Guenzel would then score the artwork and
give loose change to the child with the best drawing. The
game was an instant hit. Each time the family would get
together to go out to eat, the cousins would ask Guenzel
to play “that drawing game.” Following one of those
gatherings, Shannon suggested that the game would make
a great app for kids.
“Like a lot of people, we’re always tossing different ideas
around,” says Guenzel. “But we thought this one had great
potential, and that it would be a fun family project.”
However, he works in pharmaceutical sales, and had
no idea where to start. He turned to Upwork, an online
freelance marketplace, for help. He soon found a developer
and artist who could work within his budget.
Bringing the app—which the Guenzels named “Doodle
What!?!”—to market wasn’t without complications.
The first developer had to quit the project due to health
reasons, and Guenzel soon found out that all of the
features he wanted to include on the app wouldn’t be
possible within his budget. Still, the family persisted,
bringing the app to fruition with the help of developer
Mirza Zaim of Genial Solutions. From start to finish, the
project took more than a year.
Before Doodle What!?! launched in April of this year,
Guenzel's team took the app through 11 different versions.
His children, 12-year-old Blase and 8-year-old Greta,
served as beta testers, as did their cousins, Aria Lauritzen,
12; Fiona Lauritzen, 9; Julia Parente, 11; and Connor
Parente, 9.
The children, who are all Norwin students, were heavily
involved in the design process and also contributed various
nouns, adjectives and verbs to the more than 1 million
quirky drawing combinations the game offers, such as “a
caterpillar smooching on a basketball court” or “a ballerina
bowling at the zoo.” Shannon, a former English and
special education teacher and Gateway graduate, helped
to craft the storyboards to present to the developer. She
also provides the monster’s voice for the app’s YouTube
commercial.
“Shannon is the one who had the vision and the idea,”
says Guenzel. “She helped me with the big picture.”
Doodle What!?! amassed 250 downloads in its first
few weeks, and the Guenzels continue to have ideas for
both updating the app and for creating additional apps
in the future. Chris named his burgeoning tech company
KnuckleMonster Games, after the name of his rock band,
Knuckle Monster, for which he is the drummer.
“I didn’t know what to expect when we started this
process, but I’m not doing this to get rich,” he explains,
pointing out how difficult it is to compete in a market
that’s flooded with apps like “Angry Birds.” “It was just a
great experience for all of us. It showed our kids that when
you put your mind to something, and you work hard, that
it will pay off. We’ve all learned from this.”
Doodle What!?! is available for download for $1.99
from both Google Play and the App Store, where it’s
received numerous 5-star reviews. For more information,
visit doodlewhat.com. n
Norwin | Fall 2016 | icmags.com 17