Category Archives: webvisions

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The UX Driven Startup
Alexa Andrejewski
User Experience Designer, Adaptive Path
Founder Foodspotting http://www.foodspotting.com 
  • Slides available here 
  • Woke up one morning with a great idea
  • Why are we always rating restaurants, why not rate individual dishes?
  • How can people learn about the foods around the world.
  • “Yelp for dishes”
  • At Adaptive Path, would help companies figure out what to build before they build it. Figure out their experience strategy. Interaction design: flow of the product.
  • The only problem was….Couldn’t actual code anything.
  • Ended up spending 6 long months looking for a cofounder. 
    • Everyone she knew was a experience designer, didn’t know any developers.
    • Critical thing: get out of your immediate social group.
  • But these 6 months gave a chance to refine, communicate, and validate vision.
  • Ate out a lot, carried a notebook everywhere. Asked people what they liked about their food, and how they would rate it, and what they would say about it.
  • But the time she did find a cofounder, the product had evolved a lot. It started looking like Yelp, but what resonated with people was the visual aspects: the photos of the food. 
  • When I did find a cofounder, we could hit the ground running.
    • The cofounder was a Ruby on Rails developer. Didn’t have iPhone skills, but hired that out originally.
  • What is the experience you want to create?
  • The UX driven startup: Focus on the experience you want to create and let everything else support that.
       /  Experience
      /     Business   
     /       Product     
    /     Technology    
    ————————–
  • Avoid common mistakes startups make
    • Building something people don’t really want or need.
      • example: Segway “It will change cities and create a new world”
      • reality: it’s just novelty seeking tourists who use it. it doesn’t fit into people’s existing experiences.
      • A UX Vision validates the experience and its fit
    • Thinking Too Small
      • Investors ask questions like: How does this get Big? What does success look like? What’s your world domination plan?
      • They want to hear about what you want to big ultimately. If you just focus on what you can build tomorrow, that’s not a big enough vision.
    • Moving Too Slowly
      • Arguments of “this is the best design” , “no this one is” causes things to slow down.
      • Vision: A concrete representation of where your product is headed. Can be words, images, or prototype. But it should be tangible.
      • Having that gives you something to orient your path around, so that the decisions can go faster.
  • Tools
    • Coming up with a vision
    • Communicate your vision
    • Validate your vision
  • Coming up with your vision
    • Originally was considering a book.
    • Contextual Interviews
      • “Tell me about some of the highs and lows for your restaurant.”
      • Yields understanding of pain points and opportunities you may not have considered.
      • Ingredients: 10 people, 10 questions, notebook & pen
      • How
        • Meet people in context
        • Ask open ended questions
        • Use cues in environment
        • Use discussion aids if you can.
      • Examples:
        • “draw me a timeline of your restaurant. what were some of the highs and lows of your experience. now tell me about those highs… tell me about those lows.”
    • Make Believe
      • Yields
        • an outpouring of fresh ideas
        • New ways to frame a problem
        • A chance to taste whether an interaction feels natural in real life
      • Ingredients:
        • props, a friend, the real world
        • example: Palm Pilot designer carried a block of wood around and considered what it would be like to use.
      • How
        • Act out some ways you’d use your product, using props to inspire and test ideas.
        • Get out and enjoy everyday activities. –> makes it easier to interact with the product idea, rather than sitting in a room.
    • Metaphor Brainstorming
      • Yields: 
        • Interesting properties extracted from the metaphors
        • Fresh ideas and perspective
      • Ingredients
        • Core concepts on big stickies
        • Lots of small sticky notes
      • How
        • Think about each concept in isoltation
        • Write down whatever comes to mind
        • Deconstruct the metaphor: what characteristcs are interesting?
        • Use the characteristics to get ideas?
      • Example:
        • For foodspotting, uses stamp collecting and coin collecting as metaphors for collecting, and the characteristics of stamp and coin collecting that are unique
    • Artifact From the Future
      • A concrete representation of where your product is headed. Something you can rally around.
      • How
        • Imagine the TechCrunch blog post in the future written about your product.
        • Imagine the future splash page
  • Communicating your vision
    • Experience Principles
      • Yields: Concise, memorable guidelines that inspire ideas, gives you a basis for decision-making.
      • How: 
        • Brainstorm characteristics you want your product to embody
        • Choose the ones that are unique to your product.
      • Example:
        • Foodspotting only talks about good food, not the bad food.
        • Foodspotting lets you give a blue ribbon, not rate food.
        • Foodspotting believes great food can come from anywhere, and we should celebrate it, not just from big cities.
    • Experience Poster
      • Yield: a pocket sized visual summary of what using your product could be like. Something you can use to sell your vision and vett your ideas.
      • Ingredients:
        • an elevator pitch
        • descriptions of benefits
        • principles, characteristics, and metaphors
      • How
        • Describe the benefits of your product
        • Illustrate those benefits – capture the experience, not the interface.
        • Thing about Nine Problems Your Product Sells: Just use stick figures to illustrate it.
    • Pitch Kit
      • Yields:
        • a meaningful name
        • a one setence ocktail party pitch
        • a vision statement
        • an “ah ha” reaction.
      • How
        • A few social events to practice at
        • A few well known companies you can relate yours to (optional)
        • Practice your answers to these question until you can get people to say “ah ha!” in a minute or less.
        • Also, what is your bigger goal? e.g. Google is about organizing the world’s information, Facebook is about enabling people to build their social relationships.
  • Validating Your Vision
    • Prototyping
      • Yields: a tool you can use to guerilla test your product where you go. Used: InDesign.
      • Ingredients: cardstock or index cards or imagemaps + webkit
      • How
        • Create a lightweight, smoke and mirrors prototype of your product
        • Pull it out and ask people how and why they’d use it.
      • Example:
        • Drew up five different rating systems, from stars to numbers to blue ribbon: and asked people how they would use it, and respond to it, and what it meant to them.
    • Design The Future Homepage
      • yields: 
        • a concise summary of your product’s benefits in typical homepage form
        • A way to test interest in your product
      • ingredients: 
        • blank paper and model homepage
        • or typical homepage template
      • instructions
        • sketch the homepage of the future – include name, taglione, top benefits, glimpse into data
        • show people andask “how would you use this and why?”
      • KISS insights: a tool that allows you to ask people a question about any webpage.
      • Throw a page up on the web, with an email signup to determine interest.
    • I Love this product because…
      • yields
        • perspective
        • a reminder of what it’s all about
      • ingredients
        • Write “I love this product because…” up on a whiteboard.
      • how
        • finish this sentence as if your mom or end user were saying it
        • show people your vision and ask them how they’d finish
  • Reaching Your Vision
    • Building a cupcake and build to a cake over time. Don’t build an unfrosted cake and give it to your friend.
      • Another way of saying it: Build half a product, not a half-assed product.
      • Once you have the big vision, step back and ask what is the cupcake version of that vision.
      • Pick a few most essential features, and ensure that they work really.
  • Design principles should drive ideas. If the principle doesn’t drive ideas (.e.g “simple and easy to use”), then it’s not a useful principle. Everyone wants their site to be easy to use. Also, the principles should be unique to your product.

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    33 Lessons about Beer, Life, and Building a business
    Dave Selden, 33 Books Co.
    • A graphics artist by background. Starting a business stretched his comfort zone.
    • Background
      • Went to art school and journalism school. Main lesson: beer is awesome.
      • Ended up in advertising.
    • Art/Journalism school is great, but doesn’t teach you everything.
      • They teach you critical thinking skills and art skills, but none of the business skills.
      • But you can teach yourself…
    • Started a blog (Blog Sober Brewing Co.)
    • But art school taught him how to see possibilities.
    • Scout Books: 32 pages, 100% recycled. You can customize the cover. Local, family business with emphasis on sustainability.
    • Gave idea that he could create a book for beer tasting.
    • Made a spreadsheet to estimate costs and profits.
    • “The road to hell is paved with good intentions”
    • “33 bottles of beer book”
      • 3-pack is 99 bottles of beer
      • Each page has:
        • a flavor wheel with characteristics like: linger, body, bitter, sour, burnt, toffee, alcoholic
        • stats like IBU and ABV
        • notes
        • beer name, brewer, etc.
    • http://www.33beers.com  -> website to sell beers. nice looking, emphasis on how much it costs and where to buy it.
    • But building a website isn’t enough… You need to get people to go to the website.
    • PR doesn’t have to start with bloggers.
      • Simple intro letter to bloggers with link to website, low-key solicitation. Every person contacted took the free sample.
        • It’s a given that you should avoid stupid stuff like attaching a 3 mb pdf to the email.
    • Some of the blog reviews were totally awesome… but it generated at most a dozen orders after each post. Good, but not enough.
    • But seeding blogs like to some other sites picking it up: an online beer site reviewed the product, and that generated 150 orders in one day.
    • And that led to traditional print publications like Food & Wine, and Sunset magazine reviewing the product, which has led to even more reviews.
    • “Beer can be tax-deductible”
      • blog project to taste 999 beers in 999 days.
      • the blog draws search traffic, which helps sell the product.
      • so the cost of the beer is an advertising expense.
    • E-commerce can be simple…
      • Just string together a little PayPal and HTML.
    • USPS is great, and easy.
    • Pricing isn’t easy.
      • Subsidizes shipping to keep it simple.
    • Shipping out books takes 30 minutes to an hour every night.
    • Retailers are important:
      • He gives them a free sample. Of those, about 75% will actually decide to sell the product.
      • He makes the display stands himself from recycled wood.
    • The other thing that is awesome is that as a web person, he felt like he missed the green thing. Now actually making a physical product, he can make a green product.
    • The time to expand is when you have orders.
      • 33wines 
      • You don’t want to run out of stock. Especially you don’t want to run out of money to reorder stock.
    • His wife is very supportive, which is critical. She ships when he has to go on business.
    • Other facts:
      • Hops and marijuana are 99% genetically similar.
    • Q: How does it work with retailers?
      • A: When I first got started, I asked to put the book in the store, and they paid me only if the book sold. Then later, it worked out that I sold the books in bulk at discount price to the retailer, and then the retailer sells it for profit.
    • Q: Are you continually doing marketing and PR, or does that diminish?
      • A: Doing less now than I was before. I’m spending more time doing fulfillment than marketing. I used to have a sales week, in which I would approach retailers, and then a marketing week, in which I would approach bloggers.
    • Q: Are you doing any affiliate marketing on the website?
      • A: Oh, that’s a great idea… I should do that.

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    The Human Interface
    Chris Fahley
    http://graphpaper.com
    @chrisfahley
    • Cyborg: embedding or attaching technology to our bodies to make us better
      • contacts, glasses, jotting things down to remember them
    • The history of humanity is the history of becoming cyborgs
    • This isn’t always a good thing, sometimes the technology falls short
    • The Uncanny Valley (Masahiro Mori)
      • Two dimensions: how comfortable humans are around robots, and how closely the  robots mimic humanspastedGraphic.pdf
    • Lessons So Far
      • Don’t replace humans
      • Don’t replicate humans
    • What childhood experiences brought you into design?
      • Take things apart to see how they work
      • Fixing broken things
      • Creating Little Worlds
    • Lots of design stuff is not new. Example of multitouch display from 25 years ago, of Apple pad demo video from 25 years ago that’s like an iPad with AI
    • Jef Raskin: “An interface is humane if it is responsible to human needs and is considerate of human frailties”
    • Alan Cooper: If we want users to like our software, we should design it like a likeable human being
    • We make better products when we think of them as human beings
    • Future
      • We’ll see a return to command line interfaces: not necessarily arcane commands, but typing or saying what we want, rather than pointing and clicking
      • We’ll see more physicality of user interfaces
    • Not merely mimicking human behavior but reflects it.
    • Software that mirrors behavior:
      • Chat and IM reflect the immediacy of face to face community
      • Social networks mirroring the structure of the special primacy we give our close friends.
    • The Human Interface
      • is about persausion and seduction
      • is smart and has awareness
      • is empathetic and feeling
      • is physical and embodied
      • is linguistic, poetic, and narrative (creates compelling stories about our interactions)
      • has a name and an identity
      • has a personality
    • Paul Dourish: Where the Action Is
      • Embodied Interaction: the intersection of ubiquitous computing, tangible computing, and social computing.
    • Reeves and Nass: The Media Equation
      • Experiments they did on users and machines to figure out how we perceive them
      • We tend to personify the interfaces we interact with
    • Ergonomics of the mind
      • Cups designed by the other Masahiro Mori, such that they each have their own personalitypastedGraphic_1.pdf
    • Human-ness
      • Christopher Alexander: The Quality Withou a Name aka The Phenomenon of Life
      • Fifteen properties of Living Structures
      • Katherine Isbister: Better Game Characters by Design
        • external characteristics of personhood: bodies, faces, vices
        • internal: …
    • The Three Qualia of the Human Interface
      • Sentience
      • Intimacy
      • Personality
    • Sentience
      • The system is about to collect robust sensory data from the world and make sense of that data
        • voice recognition: e.g. google voice recognition mobile apps
        • image and face recognition: e.g. google picasa
        • touch and gestures: touching a screen, moving a controller
      • Not always that great… fitbit counts how many steps you take. It’s not perfect, but they can discover a lot about your motion and activity.
      • Microsoft Project Natal: just observes your body.
      • Artificial Intelligences
        • all of these things have artificial intelligence in them
        • the difference between these and HAL is that they are not trying to do it all at once.
        • (they are no danger of falling into the uncanny valley)
      • Even simple things can be unnerving: 
        • e.g. search results that are uncannily good. 
        • Search that pops up microsoft bing advertisement with search term prepopulated
    • Intimacy
      • Emotional Intelligence
      • Proximity
      • Presence
      • Social Web
      • Personal Informatics
      • Multiplayer Games
      • Real Time Web
      • Conversations
      • Examples:
        • We noticed you haven’t called your mother later.
        • Your email is using more stressed words this month than last month
        • Status indicators shows people where we are and what we’re doing
        • Big Ben Clock on twitter
      • Conversations…
        • Efficient and fast? Or elegant and graceful?
        • For a long time, the answer was that interfaces should be efficient. But maybe elegant is the new efficient.
        • Politeness is something all people do, but not machines…
          • Don’t reject
          • Don’t interrupt
          • Say hello and goodbye
          • Use people’s names
          • Praise people
        • Example: spell checker that praises people for writing difficult words correctly, or writing an error free emails. Yes, it takes longer, but people come away feeling more satisfied with their experience.
    • Personality
      • The system has a distinctive character, with recognizable cultures and habits
      • Interpersonal Circumplex
      • pastedGraphic_2.pdf
      • Example:
        • Max Train comes to a station. How to let people know which doors will be opening when the passengers could be facing forward or back: “The doors will be opening on my right”
      • Culture
      • Casting – Role they are in (copilot who is subservient vs. engineer)
      • Names – People associate meaning with names
    • Things to try
      • Use pronouns for your product: he, she
      • Give your application a name
      • Do more visceral prototypes
    • If we don’t humanize our products, then our products will mechanize us.

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      Lipstick on a Pig
      Can UX Differentiate a Software Company?
      Gene Smith
      @gsmith
      • Story of transformation from user experience design to product design
      • Retrospective of what worked and didn’t work
      • Wanted to transform from a services company to a licensed product
      • Great user experience team, great development lead, great development team
      • Idea: we could bring web 2.0 design to Microsoft Sharepoint
      • You could go to one spot, see all your sharepoint sites, docs, etc.
        • Sat on top of sharepoint
        • Everything designed to be very simple to use, straightforward, very easy
      • Mint.com
        • Founder had used Microsoft Money and Quicken, found them to be very tiring to use. A lot of work to enter all transactions.
        • Mint is a thin user experience layer on top of Yodalee. 
        • Had:
          • Engaging experience
          • Clever solution to common problem
          • Amazing Timing (right at recession, people needed tools to manage money)
          • Way to make money
      • Flickr
        • Relative to competitors, was a step above everyone else
        • Interesting social features was novel
        • Flickr became popular just as digital cameras were booming
        • Before flickr, people were sending an email with 25 photos attached.
        • Pro account had unlimited storage
        • Had:
          • Engaging experience
          • Clever solution
          • Timing was right
          • Way to make money (pro accounts)
      • Slideshare (bit of counter example)
        • People tweet about how hard uploading, annotating, and sharing presentations is with Slideshare
        • It meets most of the criteria (engaging experience, clever solution, etc), but the experience isn’t quite there from an engaging experience
        • However, Slideshare reaches over 28 million monthly people. It’s a top site, ranked  in the top 400 sites in the US.
      • Getting Starting…
        • “What if we built BaseCamp on Sharepoint?”
        • This turns out as a terrible way to start an idea
          • Will: I don’t believe this.
        • Sharepoint is a billion dollar product today.
          • Sharepoint ecosystem is a $13B system.
          • Market that we were entering was massive.
        • And we know that companies out there were having problems using Sharepoint. You could have hundreds or thousands of sites in a network. Companies wouldn’t know what was out there. People would spend 60% of their time giving people permissions. Another company was spending hundreds of thousands on training for Sharepoint.
          • You know something is wrong when a person who uses Facebook for two hours a night needs a two day training session to use Sharepoint.
      • Product: kiiro
        • Make a product that focuses on getting your work done, instead of endless tuning of Sharepoint.
        • Make a central dashboard, so you could see everything relevant across multiple sharepoints.
      • UI Design stripped everything away… very clean.
      • First idea was to have a two way sync between Microsoft Project and Sharepoint.
        • This wasn’t so good. 
        • Project health metrics and so forth made for a very good demo, but doesn’t match how people actually do project management, which is much more messy.
      • Then decide to focus on social stuff… an activity timeline of what you and your coworkers are doing.
      • Took twice as long to build on top of Sharepoint as opposed to a regular web application like Django. Regular web apps have easier databases, security, etc.
      • We wanted to make this thing a black box. Organizations have trouble with people continually customizing sharepoint. We took most of that way. 
      • We wanted to have a very purpose focused interfaced.
      • Market Response
        • Not particularly good. 
      • Products like Mint, Flickr –> the buyer is the user.
        • Even if they don’t pay money, they make a decision to invest their time
        • The person who is evaluating the product is different than the person who will use the product
      • Enterprise market
        • The buyer is not a user.
        • What benefits does the buyer get?
          • They want hard benefits like increased revenue, decreased cost
          • And soft benefits like increased effectiveness and efficiency
        • e.g. we can save 10 minutes a day x 2000 employees x $57/personhour = $xM savings
          • Not really true, because if people have 10 extra minutes a day, they will just go on Facebook…
      • Problems…
        • It was hard to make the business case for the product
        • The Buyer, the Business Owner, IT, and the User all different…
        • The marketplace is complex: independent software vendors, system integrators, buyers
      • Finally did a market analysis of which companies would be a good match for their product. About 24,000 companies were a good match. 
        • But the next problem was diffusion: the companies were spread across industries and markets.
      • Next problem… system integrators.
        • Companies with complex sharepoint needs go to a system integrator, not directly to 
      • 1:3:5 Rule
        • For every dollar an independent software vendor makes…
        • Microsoft makes 3 dollars in licensing fees…
        • system integrators want 5 dollars to integrate the software
        • And system integrators don’t encourage companies to go directly to an independent software vendor: “oh, you don’t want that software, we could build that for you…”
      • 2:1 Rule: Marketing vs design and development
        • You need to spend twice as much on marketing vs. design and development
        • And which means that about 10% is left for UX design
      • Conversion…
        • If you have a $5K product, and $500,000 in costs, then you need to sell it to 100 companies.
        • If you have a 1% conversion rate, you need to pitch it to 10,000 companies to sell it to 100 companies.
      • Because the product was strongly differentiated… it allowed them to more easily get companies into the funnel.
      • But because the product limited customization, many companies, once they learned about the limitations, wouldn’t use it.
      • And one of the biggest potential customers would be system integrators (who would resell it)…
        • Except that because it was a black box and limited customization, the system integrators wouldn’t really use it. (their specialty is customization…)
      • Kiiro Had:
        • Engaging Experience
        • X Did not have Clever Solution
        • X Bad Timing: in the trough between SP 2007 and SP 2010
        • Way to Make Money
        • Market Opportunity (good)
        • X Market Fit was bad…
      • On the scale of fidelity and functionality:
        • I would spend as much time with low fidelity and low functionality as long as possible researching and learning.
        • When I was ready, I would go for maximum fidelity: Mock-Ups (and then add functionality)
        • As opposed to going for maximum functionality: Working Product (and then improve design)
      • Going beyond… New Version of kiiro
        • Highly customizable
        • Better Sharepoint Integration
        • Targeted to System Integrators
      • And created a new tool… Parachute
        • Backs up Basecamp Files
        • Complete HTML Export
        • Low Cost
      • Releasing something out there in the world is thrilling. User interaction design is fun, and it pays the bills, but releasing product is exciting.

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      Erin Malone
      Designing Social Experiences
      @emalone
      founder of Yahoo Pattern Library
      partner at tangile ux 
      author of Designing Social Interfaces
      email: at tangible-ux.com
      • Engaging and Onboarding
        • flow: to move or run smoothly with unbroken continuity / to exhibit a smooth or graceful continuity.
        • The New User Spiral: 
      pastedGraphic.pdf
        • Email example: solicitation to sign up for service
          • Good: uses friend’s real name in from. Bad: uses company name – perceived as spam.
          • Good: uses full name in subject line. Bad: use only first name. erin who?
          • Good: uses photo in email, reinforces that it is actually from someone they know. sign up success is much higher with phot.
          • Good: Action button is large and obvious. The call to action is clear.
        • Full of Life
          • Twitter is good because it shows pictures of the active people, and top tweets, even if you are not signed in. It shows that the site is alive, not a ghost site.
        • Research at Yahoo showed that best landing page design should have
          • a large feature block on 2/3rds left side, and main call to action as a large button on the right 1/3rd side, with secondary actions below primary action and more pushed back. (e.g. flat buttons, rather than big web 2.0 button)
          • another big call to action button below the fold.
          • Examples of this include:
        • Sign up / registration
          • Example is http://knx.to
            • No creating an account – uses existing social networks
            • State that they don’t store personal information
          • Have fun: “Enter your DJ name” instead of boring “username”
          • Use Facebook Connect or Twitter API
        • Onboarding
          • Tumblr example: “To get started, why don’t you try uploading a photo you took recently or just add a text update about what you did today.”
            • Full set of options are below. But the introductory text ensures they won’t get overwhelmed.
          • Togetherville: Prompts parent to send Hello message to child. They don’t even have to type anything. The message benefits both parent (who sends something) and child (who receives something).
          • Blip.fm: uses some informal handwriting overlays to show people what to enter where: “type in the name of a song you’d like to hear”. 
          • These introductory messages should go away after 2 or 3 times.
        • Re-engagement
          • Send an email when you add new features or content on the site.
          • TripIt uses peer pressure to show what the rest of your network is doing, which may inspire you to share what you are doing, or to actually do things.
        • Care and feeding of the passionate
          • Featuring what people do on the homepage: shows that not only do their friends see what they do, but the system sees it and values it. Even if people don’t say it outright, they want to be recognized as an expert.
            • At least show the potential that it can happen.
          • Always show something new each time: question / quiz of the day.
          • Badges, points, and stats:
            • Foursquare uses all of the above. Mayorships, badges, and points, plus publishing the stats.
        • Share and share alike
          • You want more people, you want people to bring in their friends.
          • Some patterns, mostly from Christina Wotkle
          • B=f(P,E)
            • Behavior is a function of a Person and their Environment
            • e.g. reputation / points will create competition. whereas labels like “funny”, don’t create competition, just sharing.
          • At Hand: Make the tools for viral sharing be very easy, and obvious.
            • Hulu makes the controls for share and embeding puts the controls right at hand on the borders of the video.
            • YouTube puts the controls right below – within eyesight of the screen.
          • Frictionless
            • Make sure the defaults make sharing easy. Default sharing on flickr is public. (but easy to make it private.) Flickr grew really fast by going against conventional wisdom that picture sharing was private among friends.
          • Email vs. Network
            • What is the default sharing? Email goes to a single person, or multiple people typed in. To the network can go to 200 people with no effort.
          • Connectedness
            • The more connected people are, the more active they will be. Becomes virtuous cycle, because more active people will invite more friends.
            • Make recommendations (facebook connect)
            • Lety users walk other people’s networks to find people they know
          • Password Anti-Pattern: Don’t Use It!
            • Startups frequently are faced with cold-start issue. They say “give us your name and password and we’ll scrap other sites”, e.g. gmail, yahoo, linked in.
            • But that trains people to give away their login information. That’s bad.
      • Bridging Real Life
        • user and activities flows across real world and online world
        • online tools -> real world gatherings -> artifacts from real world -> conversations / pics / data -> online tools
        • Meetup / Evites type sites
          • Need a dashboard of activity, gives people something to come back to and use.
          • Encourage membership: meetup makes you join a group to get all the details. That gate determines interest, and that interest feeds the dashboard.
          • Show friend activity: their taste in music, their events, etc.
        • Travel Sites or Hiking Sites
          • Allow people to put together their top ten hikes, or best vacation package, and share: like lists on Amazon.
        • Foodspotting: food scavenger hunt encourages people to participate in visiting restaurants and sharing experiences.
        • Meetup has second view of event after it happened: add comments, photos. Shows up again in dashboard with stuff added.
        • Upcoming will pull in photos from flickr uploaded with correct tag.
      • Questions
        • Q: Do you have any good resources for dealing with ethics and privacy?
          • A: Check out the EFF – Electronic Frontier Foundation. Also covered in her book Designing Social Interfaces. Copyright of content is an important consideration.
        • Q: How can you pull together pieces from other sites with some kind of flow (we can’t afford to build it all ourselves)
          • A: Look at each individual piece, and see what it has: if you have a blog, is there a way to alert people to new content on that blog? Is there an email that goes out, and what does that email look like? If you can share, what are the defaults around who it is shared with?
        • Q: We have a bunch of introverted scientists who aren’t very social. How can we entice them to participate?
          • A: Look at what are they doing now? Are they having conversations in email? Is there something you can do that is very simple: e.g. move the conversation from email to basecamp, where the history of the conversation can be maintained, but they can still get emails. … Look at what they are already doing, and see if there is a more social interface to support that behavior.
          • Q ongoing: scientists don’t want to give an offhand comment in public because they don’t want to have a record of being wrong, which can afford tenure, and other things like that.
        • Q: Registration is a barrier to participation. registration/comment spam is high. Captcha don’t work well. How can we solve this problem?
          • A: No good answer… stuck with Captcha. People are working on it, but no good answer.
        • Q: Any recommendations on how to get more user data after registration?
          • A: Work it into your site contextually and gradually. e.g. give them value for what they give you. If you can give them value with their zip code, then they’ll give you their zip code.
        • Q: Have you seen evidence where engagement increases when people can control what information they have on screen? (e.g. more customization, personalization)
          • A: You have to design for your demographic, and one size doesn’t fit all. Attuning your interface to the type of people you are seeking is good. It can be hard to have an interface that attunes to someone without knowing who they are. Lightweight interface techniques like collapsing stuff and making stuff go away, that makes sense. 

      Posted on
      by
      Luke Williams
      Creative Director, Frog Design: http://www.frogdesign.com/
      Thinking the Unthinkable: Disruptive Innovation
      Keynote Address
      #wv2010 #webvisions
      • Doing design a few years ago, everyone who came to a design firm would say “we need an iPod”.
        • “We love it because it has a clean design”
        • But why, what made everyone obsessed about why it was so “clean”?
        • Other designer from frog said: “people perceive the ipod as looking clean because its materials resemble the chrome faucets and porcelian of a bathroom.
        • Jonathon Ives, lead iPod/Apple designer was actually a designer of wash basins
      • Now that the iPad is out, when they ask clients what they like about it, they say they like the smoothness of it.
        • Smoothness is always an attribute of perfection. It’s opposite reveals a technical, human intervention.
        • “I dont have to change myself to fit the product, it fits me. One piece of seamless glass.” – Jonathon Ives, Apple lead designer
      • 1: Bob Dylan Songs
        • “to compete” – comes from the latin for “to seek together”. two people running in the same race.
        • Jerry Garcia: “you don’t want to be considered the best of what you do, you want to be the only ones who do what they do.”
          • You want to avoid competing.
        • Frog Design works with Apple back in 1982: Snow White project. 7 products/7 dwarfs
          • One of the product briefs was a printer. The corresponding dwarf was Grumby.
          • Typically a brief for a product contains tons of specifications: price points, features, etc.
          • Steve Jobs said “I want Bob Dylan songs”.
          • Bob Dylan was always innovating, changing his style, and changing his fan base. He was always counter-culture, to whatever the prevailing culture was at the time.
        • Apple was in a position where they needed to wake up. They couldn’t just do what IBM was doing.
        • Similar strategies favor the stronger, while different strategies favor the weaker.
          • Underdogs choose not to play by goliath’s rule.
          • Analysis of wars shows that winning percentage goes from (something like 30% to 60%) if the weaker side uses different strategies.
        • Tesla as an example of totally different direction. Conventional wisdom by all auto manufacturers said there was no way you could do an electric car.
          • But Tesla was founded by silicon valley folks who didnt know anything about electric cars. So they had no restrictions on their thinking, no belief that it couldn’t be done.
        • Once upon a time, it was fine for only a few people to be disruptive, innovative, and creative. 
          • But now in the creative age, everything is a commodity. The only thing that is left that is original is the idea.
          • So now everyone who wants to compete successfully must be creative.
        • All kids are creative. What happens when people get older?
          • The brain is incredibly good at pattern making and recognition.
          • Education establishes patterns that the brain can use over and over again.
          • But once these patterns are established, it is very hard to break out of it.
          • This is where beginner’s mind comes from: they don’t have the pattern, so they can see things from a novel perspective.
          • Patterns are good – expertise is good, but for creative it has to not constraint you.
        • Pattern switching: Example of a competition to make a new trailer for an existing movie. The Shining is one of the scariest horror movies of all time.
          • In the competition, they use a soft voiceover, and a Peter Gabriel soundtrack, and use clips from The Shining: it comes across as a nice romantic buddy buddy movie. (trying googling it.)

        • Examples of breaking out of patterns:
          • Quentin Torrentino: sick of American morality in movies. The hero should take revenge when revenge is called for. The murdered is the hero.
          • TripAdvisor: people want to know that hotels are clean, let’s advertise the list of dirtiest hotels.
          • The Blair Witch Project: convention wisdom is that movies should be marketed 6 months ahead of time. BWP started marketing 2 years ahead of time.
          • Example of sound system advertising: Look for things that have been ignored. Balance, bass, treble. Made visible by having people in choir move around, focus on woman singer, etc.
          • Improv Theatre example of stopping in Grand Central Station: people are practically sleepwalking their way through their lives. But the improv example made people stop in their tracks of their routine, and pay attention.
          • Antiviolence campaign: shows a bullet going through various materials: glass of milk, watermelon, bottle of water, apple. And then shows a child’s head on the screen.
      • 3: The Expectation Gap
        • The Black Swan: The more unexpected the success of a venture, the smaller the number of competitors, and the more successful the entrepreneur who implements the idea.
        • Examples
          • Muhammad Ali vs. George Foreman: Foreman never expected a right hand lead, never trained against it, because it was considered a poor move. So Ali used it again and again and got knockout in first round.
          • TV expectation: you will reorganize your schedule around the TV schedule.
            • Tivo rearranged the TV schedule to fit your schedule.
          • Sock expectations: Socks are sold in pairs that match. 
            • Little Mismatched sold socks in sets of 3 that don’t match.
          • Shoe expectation: should look good, should be advertised with models, made with shoe manufacturing techniques. 
            • Crocs are the opposite of all that.
          • beverage expectation: inexpensive, soda, 
          • Exhibition expectations: you go to an exhibition to see and do things. 
            • Gap: What if you want to an exhibition and didnt see or do anything? 
            • The blair building. they walked into a cloud, and couldnt see or do anything, just walk through a cloud.
          • Video game expectation: you play games sitting down and stationary. 
            • Gap: you play games standing up and moving. 
            • Wii
          • Movie expectation: movie budget is two thirds production, one thing marketing.
            • gap: we’ll do two thirds marketing, and one third production.
            • Saw Franchise
          • Rental cars: you have to reserve, wait in line to rent car, rent by the day
            • Zip car: you don’t see anyone, you rent it by the hour
          • Hiring agreement: you are offered a bonus to stay.
            • Zappos: You are offered a bonus to quit after four months.
          • Hospitality expectation: you have a menu, you order from the menu.
            • El Bulli: considered best chef in the world. 5 year waiting list. only open 6 months a year, innovating other 6 months. they cook 30 courses. you get menu only at the end of the meal, signed by chef, as momento.
          • Sitcom expectation: hugging and learning (characters develop)
            • gap: new rule: no hugging, no learning (characters do not develop)
            • Seinfeld
        • Comedy: comedians excel at figuring out patterns, and then breaking those patterns. 
        • You have to start with a “what if” provation. What if we sell socks that don’t match in sets of three? You need to crack the expectation gap to begin with, and then work out what happens. 
          • What if Darth Vader went to the canteen on the Death Star?

        Warning, contains some offensive language:


      Mike took some really great notes and synthesized them well: http://1222north.com/2010/05/thinking-the-unthinkable-how-to-spark-disruptive-innovation/


        Posted on
        by
        Jared Spool
        Gourmet Experiences on a Fast Food Budget
        Key Insights:
        1. Mastery of tricks and techniques across your team are key to great designs. Having a big toolbox and mastery of the tools is the most important factor for great design.
        2. Methodology and dogma are unimportant to great design. In fact, focus on these takes valuable attention away from what maters.
        3. Rewarding people for failure encourages learning. Throw a big party with champagne and caviar. Spend three minutes making fun of the failure and twenty minutes explaining the lessons learned from the failure.
        Notes
        • A hamburger and a hotdog cost the same whether you do it on a fast food budget or design it to be a gourmet burger.
        • This begs that question, what’s makes something gourmet?
        • And how can we apply it to web design?
        • You take them apart, and see what gets you there
        • Meticulous Preparation
        • How Do The Best Teams Create Great Designs?
          • The teams with bad design didn’t have different goals than the teams with great stuff. They all have the objective to make great stuff.
          • There is a spectrum… in the middle of this spectrum there is a Process
            • Tricks
            • Techniques
            • Process
            • Methodology
            • Dogma
          • Process: Some teams say “we don’t have a process”, but that’s not true. Any team that eventually produces something has some sort of process. They just aren’t paying attention to the process. (Like a cook who says she doesn’t have a recipe for making something. There is a recipe, it’s just not explicit/conscious.)
            • This is fine when things are going well, but not good when things are not going well.
          • Process: To the right on this spectrum there is Methodology.
          • Dogma: And beyond Methodology is Dogma (unquestioned faiuther independent of any supporting evidence.) Lots of things we do become dogma: “It has to be Web 2.0”, “it has to have social media”.
            • They had a theory, that those organizations with great experiences had some sort of dogma that they adhered to.
          • But on the other side of Process there is Techniques.
            • Many great recipes have a roux. (flour and oil over low heat.) By itself, it tastes terrible, but it makes many recipes great. The roux is useful in many instances. If you can do it well, then you can make the recipe well. It’s a technique. You have to be good at it, and to get good you have practice and maybe a little coaching.
          • All the way at the left end is Tricks. Tricks aren’t always “right”, but they are effective. It’s easier to use the wrong tool to get the job done, than it is to go get the right tool.
          • The Best Teams
            • Don’t have a methodology or dogma
              • The struggling teams often tried following a methodology without success
            • Focus on increasing the techniques and tricks for each team member
              • They were constantly exploring new tricks and techniques for their toolbox
              • Struggling teams have limited techniques and tricks.
          • University websites…
            • Every department maintains it’s own websites. Each college, admissions, etc. So there is a different look and feel for each part. How do you resolve that?
            • The standard answer is to use templates.
              • But there is no evidence that templates result in quality design.
              • It is an attempt at a methodology, and in some cases becomes dogma.
              • Each page has it’s own purpose. The business school is different than the admissions which is different from the school of nursing.
              • There only people who care if the pages look the same are the people who have responsibility for the university website.
                • Students don’t care if a page looks different.
            • Instead, focus on tricks and techniques.
          • The Three Core UX Attributes For Great Experience Design
            • Started with 150 different variables, studied hundrends of teams, only three attributes really matter.
              • Vision
              • Feedback
              • Culture
            • The Three Questions
              • Vision: Can everyone on the team describe the experience of using your design five years from now?
                • Vision turns out to be absolute key to success. It’s a stake on the horizon with a flag. If we can clearly see the flag, then we can instantly look and see if any baby step we take will take us closer or further from the flag. And everyone can see it.
                • A really good vision is stuck in the sand, but we can move it. Then we just move towards the new location.
              • Feedback: “In the last six weeks, have you spent more than two hours watching someone use either your design or a competitor’s design?
                • The organizations where people spend significant time watching people use the design create significantly better designs.
                • It needs to be everyone on the team.
                • No longer do you have opinion wars, because now you actual experiences.
              • Culture: “In the last six weeks, have you rewarded a team member for a creating a major design failure?”
                • When we have a design failure, we learn something.
                • All the really important lessons in life come from failures.
                • Good judgment comes from experience, and experience comes from bad judgment calls.
                • At Intuit they reward people. They throw a big party with champagne and caviar. The CEO makes a speech. They spend 3 minutes making fun of the people, and 20 minutes talking about the lessons learned.
                • Organizations that are risk averse make crap.
            • Five Second Page Tests
              • A simple technique
              • Can be done in less than 10 minutes
              • Can use page mock-ups or real site
              • Example: Buying a Notebook Computer
                • You’re ready to buy a new notebook computer
                • You consider a computer a big purchase
                • How much technical support will you get if you experience problems?
                • CDW: Technical support
                  • New Customers
                  • Existing Customers
                  • Create Login
                  • Rated: 2
                • CDW: Customer Support
                  • Chat Support
                  • E-account
                  • Rated: 3
                • Crutchfield: Technical Support
                  • Free technical support
                  • 30 day return policy
                  • Rated: 5
              • Designers often intend pages to have a single purpose
              • We use this technique when users complain that pages are too cluttered or confusing
              • Identifies if pages quickly communicate their purpose
            • Paper Prototype Testing
              • Design is in flux
                • Team needs to try ideas to get feedback quickly
              • Team can participate in study
                • They are at a point where they can make changes
              • Good resource: Paper Prototyping (book)
          • Quality Ingredients
            • In and Out: Sells burgers, shakes, and fries.
              • There is a secret menu. But they are all burgers, shakes, and fries.
              • They have a machine that slices the potatoes into fries just seconds before cutting them.
              • They have a butcher on site. The meat is freshly prepared.
            • Inuit Inuksuk: Arrangements of rocks to show that someone had been this way before. Lets the solitary hunter traveling alone for weeks or months to know that they are not alone.
              • The Amazon Product Review is like an inuksuk: it lets someone know whether people have been this way before. Not all Amazon reviews are technical in nature, many of them at an inuksuk: just to let you know that other people bought and liked this camera.
              • This is also what having testimonials about.
              • Colleges are now experimenting with having students blog about their college experiences.
                • Colleges even have content for the parents: an inuksuk for the parent.
          • Creative Approach
            • At MIT, students submit CSS designs. They choose 365 a year, and the MIT homepage changes every day. The content is the same, it just moves around.
          • Cooking Up Gourmet Experiences
            • It’s not about the money you spend, or dogma or methodology.
            • You need to focus on developing great tricks and techniques across your team.
              • Don’t let methodologies and dogma boy you down.
            • Look for opportunities for creative approaches.
          • Website: http://www.uie.com
            • Newsletter: UIEtips (free weekly newsletter)
          • Blog: http://www.uie.com/brainsparks

        Posted on
        by
        I’m a fan of Adaptive Path and their work, so I was excited to see this talk by Peter, who comes from Adaptive Path.

        Key insights:

        • Creating a “north star” is all important from a design perspective, because it is key that everyone can understand if their baby steps take them in the right direction or not.
        • It’s easier to move the north star as circumstances change if it has just the necessary amount of detail.
        • Plan for “The Long Wow”: your product experience should keep creating wow moments over time, not just all when the box is unwrapped.
        Notes:
        Subject to Change: Creating Great Products and Services for an Uncertain World
        Peter Merholz
        Adaptive Path
        • Approached by O’Rielly to write a book.
        • Media is a mess
          • Craigslist took the classifieds
          • Everyone took a piece of the ads
          • Blogs are taking the readers
        • Music is in metamorphosis
          • iTunes is the #1 retailer
          • Labels are loosing their grip
          • Live Nation – focused on live events, not CDs
        • Travel is turbulent
          • The three top quality carriers are all low-fair airlines
        • Predicting the future has never been easy, but it’s never been more difficult
        • Predicting the future won’t work.
        • Instead, seek approaches that will continue to work no matter which prediction come true.
        • [Story about how Kodak invented not just a new film system, and not just a new camera, but a whole new customer experience. When Kodak has paid attention to customer experience, they have done well. When they lost focus, they stumble. Kodak: “you press the button, we do the rest”]
        • The way a company builds things:
          • Inside Out: Data à Logic à User interface
        • But the way a user sees things:
          • Outside In: User Interface à Logic à Data
        • The customer really only sees only the user interface. Anything that happens inside of that, we don’t care about. It might as well be magic.
        • Example: Google Calendar
          • There were lots of other calendars out there.
          • Google wanted to do something exceptional
          • They created a vision
            • Set out to build a calendar that works for you
              • Fast, visually appealing, and joyous to use
              • Drop dead simple to get information into the calendar
              • More than boxes on a screen (reminders, invitations, etc.)
              • Easy to share so you can see your whole life in one place
            • Designed for the consumer world where not everyone has a calendar (or one on the same system)
              • Open APIs
              • Invitation for everyone
          • This vision occupies a middle ground
            • Not so highly level as to be useless (“A world class calendar”)
            • Not so specific that every action has to be evaluated against dozens of requirements
            • But provides guidance: if it takes 19 steps to get something into the calendar, that’s clearly not drop dead simple.
        • Example: TiVo
          • “It’s entertainment, stupid”
          • Not “build a better VCR”, but make it easier, better to watch to TV.
          • TiVO users would say “I can’t imagine going back to the old way of watching TV”
          • Now vision is more cleaned up
            • It is reliable
            • It puts me in control
        • Example: Flickr Vision
          • We want to help people make their content available to the people who matter to them.
          • We want to enable new ways of organizing photos and video.
        • Does Your Experience Have a North Star?
        • Focus on the lives of customers
          • Companies tend to oversimplify their view of people
          • 4 old ways of thinking
            • At worst: “a gullet whose only purpose in life is to gulp products and crap cash” (from The Cluetrain Manifesto)
              • This is exactly how cell phone companies and cable companies treat people
            • Homo Economicus: Highly rational, maximizes utility, quantity!
              • But we’re not all Spock. We make emotional decisions.
              • This leads to feature wars: our competitor did these 10 features, so we have to do those 10 features and then 2 more.
            • Type A Personality: Task oriented, Goal Driven, Efficiency!
              • Services like wasabi help people understand their relationship to money as compared to neighbors and peers. That’s a better goal than simply trying to make things most efficient.
            • Sheep: Docile and gullible, Stories and messaging, Preferences!
              • It’s really disrespectful
              • Our customers are sharper than that
          • Not all wrong, not really right.
          • We are evolving our approaches.
          • What’s been missing?
            • The messy complexity of life
            • People regularly mix and match products with little regard for “suggested use”
              • We use products the way they serve us.
            • They challenge social and cultural boundaries in unexpected ways.
              • Picture of monk using cell phone
              • Picture of Proposal written on highway overpass
            • We want to understand people as people
            • What’s missing?
              • Emotions (people can’t bear to throw away their old, broken iPods because they had such an emotional attachment)
              • Context (understanding the context in which customers really use their product)
              • Meaning (people tie their identity to their product: I’m an iPhone user, an Android user, etc.)
          • Do you understand your customers as people?
        • Embrace the complexity: Use systems to support experiences
          • Just expose the minimal amount of complexity to our customers that we have to
          • Experiences cross boundaries
            • Some dysfunctional companies forbid “watercooler” conversations, forcing employees to go through management chain.
          • Iterative approaches
            • More effective
            • When we try to plan everything in advance…
              • We don’t end up where we planned to be anyway
              • Even if we do, we find out that isn’t where we need to be
          • Prototyping and making
            • Story of original Palm: put a block of wood in his shirt pocket to mimic the device. Pretended to enter data using a stylis.
            • Story of mocking up a medical device using a film canister, paper clip, and magic marker to stimulate size and shape of device.
          • Deep/wide collaboration
            • Teams that are cross disciplinary are very helpful
            • Example: the Target ClearRx system. A “safer drug delivery system” that encompasses a new pill bottle, a new type of label, a color coded system. It involved the bottle, the pharmacists, the marketing, the training team, the supply chain, software, a new labeling system. Contributed to a 14% increase in drug sales, and won many awards.
        • Engage in design as an activity – develop an organization capacity for design
          • 1: Design as aesthetics (a vodka bottle – it’s pretty)
          • 2: Design as a distinct role (the guy who is the font geek)
          • 3:
          • 4: Design as a rock star (the power of design to save the day / good / profitable )
          • 5: Design as an activity
          • Design is an activity that an organization ambraces, that everyone can be involved in.
            • Product owners, managers, developers, people with design in their title, strategic planners
          • Benefits
            • Idea fabricator
            • Reframing the fuzz: the wall you run up against in the middle of your product
            • The Long Wow: how you get customer loyalty
          • How Do You Create Loyalty?
            • Traditional answer: give them a loyalty card
            • Meaning more means repeatedly creating notably great experiences.
            • Notably great experiences are punctuated by a moment of “wow” when the product or service delights, anticipates the needs of, or…
          • Peak-end rule
            • People average the peak (best) experience as well as the most recent experience, and average the two.
          • The Long Wow
            • Product is a platform for delivery
            • Plan for wow experiences over time
            • Example: compare the pedometer that packs in all the features up front, or the Nike+ system that has no screen or UI, but lets you access the data via a web interface… so that the interface can be improved, it goes way beyond what the other pedometer can provide.
            • “Powersong” capability of Nike+ : the song that helps you make that last half hour.
            • Can set up contests to compete with your friends. You don’t have to run at the same time or place. “The last one to run 100 miles has to buy lunch”.
        • Survey of 362 firms
          • 95% say they are “customer focused”
          • 80% say they deliver a “superior experience”
          • 8% of companies’ customers agree that the firms deliver a superior experience

        Posted on
        by
        This was one of the better presentations at WebVisions. I felt like it had some pretty concrete actions to take.
        Best takeaway: By putting myself out there for feedback on my company, the many benefits include gaining more followers, learning what my customers want, being able to engage in a discussion. I gain more by listening than by talking.
        Making Whuffie
        Tara Hunt
        • Dunbar number: 120-150 – the number of people we can really know at any point in time
          • Will: based on tribes and communities
          • As a result of the internet / we b 2.0 / facebook+myspace+blogs the dunbar number is raising
          • This doesn’t leave room for the one way messages of corporations / advertising
        • Some companies greeted enthusiastically, some companies are barfed upon
        • Cory Doctorow / BoingBoing
          • DOWN and OUT in the Magic Kingdom by Cory Doctorow
          • In the science fiction future of Cory, instead of money, there is something that he called whuffie
          • Roughly equivalent to social capital: reputation, access to resources, favors added up (reprocity), followers, levels of trust
          • High whuffie score = good reputation
          • You can buy stuff with your whuffie
          • But… not really fictional or futuristic. It’s here and now.
          • It’s how we decide to friend people on Facebook (based on looking at existing friend relationships)
          • To raise your whuffie, you need to establish relationships and credibility
        • 5 ways to raise your whuffie
          • 1. Turning the bullhorn around: instead of just speaking, listen
            • (Will: I wonder what would happen if I solicited input on HP printers and HP website)
            • The silence will smack down your whuffie
            • 8 ways to turn the bullhorn around
              • 1. Get advice from experts, but design for the needs of the novice
              • 2. Respond to ALL feedback, even when you have to say “no thanks”
              • 3. Don’t take negative feedback personally: people want a better experience, they want to keep using your product/website, they are taking the time to give you feedback to make things better
              • 4. Give people credit:
                • mention contributions in blog posts, tweets, or videos.
                • Name a product or feature after the contributor (or let them name it)
                • Send journalists their way
                • Send a gift certificate or special coupon code
                • Schwag and schtuff
                • Upgrade their account
                • Give the contributor more responsibility
              • 5. Point out and explain changes as you make them
              • 6. Make small, continuous improvements
              • 7. Go out to find your feedback
                • Use Google Alerts, Radiant6, or similar tools to seek feedback
              • 8. Ignore the haters (“Don’t feed the trolls”)
          • 2. Become part of the community you serve
            • Figure out who it is you serve
              • What problem are you solving? For whom?
            • Join the community… not for market resource, not to sell them something… to learn what makes them happen. And why they would give a damn.
          • 3. Create truly amazing customer experiences
            • Create love, joy, and laughter.
            • We can design for them.
            • Automagic: a user experience so seamless that it feels like magic just occurred.
            • http://lilgrams.com
              • Tag: “Automagically share your baby’s memories”
              • GrowthGRam, StoryGram, FoodGram, WordGram
              • Automagicness starts with sign: can signin with Twitter account or Facebook connect.
              • You can sync up with your social network accounts
              • And then pick people in those accounts who should receive notifications
              • Estimates dates from EXIF data, and combines with child’s age to guess:
                • First father’s day
                • First solid food
                • Etc.
            • Quicken for iPhone
              • Automagic spending update
              • Automagic account update
              • Automagic ATM finder
            • Tripit
              • “The best way to organize and share your travel plans”
              • You forward your confirmation email, from any airline or travel service, and Tripit creates a uniform itinerary, accessible via web, print, or iPhone.
            • 4. Throwing sheep: fun, lightweight activities that encourage participation, but don’t really do much else.
              • FB: poking, “I like this”, twitter: nudging, virtual gifting, kudos.
              • Makes it an easy way for people to participate, get comfortable
              • Example: Dopplr:
                • Personal velocity meter (silly and fun – people were twittering about it)
                • Carbon footprint
            • 5. lighten up: the ability to inject fun into the most serious & professional interactions
              • Examples:
                • funny 404 page errors
          • 4. embrace the chaos
            • The fear mongers: legal, public relations/corporate communications, IT
            • Understand the need for security… but need to balance it with the need for openness… because that is what people are demanding. We are in a new era of building trust
            • Benefits of embracing the chaos
              • You’ll be better prepared for the unexpected
              • You’ll join in the conversation that is already happening and be welcomed for this move
              • It will bring the opportunity for collaboration
              • It will make your ideas stronger that way
            • In the old days, you had one chance to get the message just right
            • Today, you have multiple conversations and iterations to build that message with your customers and audience
          • Whuffie is part of the gift economy. You don’t hoard it, you give it away.
            • What can you give away that won’t leave you broke?
          • #5: embrace your higher purpose
            • Do well by doing good: in the core of what you are doing, you are giving back.
              • Example: Stonyfield Farms: makes good yogurt, but does good things for the world by doing it. Sustainable production, organic.
              • Craiglist
            • Think customer-centrically
              • Take off your marketing hat, your finance hat, and step into your customers hat. What can you do for them?
              • Look at the “not customer-centric” slide on slideshare
              • Customer-centric is:
                • You send customers to other websites
                • You measure how many people refer their friends to you as success
                • When budgets get tightened, you tighten operational costs (not design, customer support, etc.)
                • Your only customer service policy is to do right by the customer
                • Your customers are doing things with your product you never dreamed and are posting videos.
                • Influencers are adding you as friends on social networks
                • You work with your competitors towards better customer experiences for all
            • Making new things accessible to people:
                • Blogger (enabled amateur journalists)
                • YouTube (enabled amateur videographers/actors)
                • Flickr (enabled amateur photographers)
            • http://Akoha.com: Pay It Forward Mission Card
        • If you combine all of these five whuffie factors, you will become whuffie rich
        • Leads to better word of mouth, repeat sales, customer loyalty
        • Which leads to increase sales and profits
        • Discussion…
          • Q: How to staff up to participate in this?
            • A: It’s everybody’s job. At zappos, everyone is empowered to be social. It’s not one person’s job, not one department’s job. It doesn’t mean spending five hours on twitter, it means being ambient.
            • The big companies spend a hell of a lot of time internally focused. They spend so much time in meeting talking about stuff that doesn’t matter instead of going to barcamps, tweetups, or webvisions conferences.
          • Q: You can’t have a top down mandate to achieve something like the Southwest airlines safety rap. So how do you achieve it?
            • A: You can’t mandate it. You have to cultivate the culture. That takes time, it requires hiring the right amount of people, and it takes time to apply across the board.

        Posted on
        by
        Makin’ Bac’n: From Idea to Web Startup in 21 days
        Scott Kveton & Jason Glaspey
        This was my favorite talk of the WebVisions 2009 conference. Fun, interesting, applicable.
        Top three highlights
        • Using a combination of open source and free tools (detailed below), they were to go from domain name to full website in 2 weeks, including fully functional store and checkout process.
        • Their operations costs for all web/phone infrastructure are $84/month
        • They’re having lots of fun, and people of all kinds are contributing just for the fun of it, like the Playboy bunny who took photos of herself wearing an “I love bacon” T-shirt.
        Full Notes
        • Started blog called bacondesk
        • My first online order of bacon from BaconFreak.com
          • “Bacon is like meat candy” ™
          • He had an affiliate program
          • It was clear they were getting about 1,000 orders a week. At about $100 an order, it was clear this was a business
        • Decided to have a Bacon Meetup
          • Listed on Upcoming.com
        • At Christmas, everybody gave me bacon gifts
        • 3 guys…
          • We’re going to make money from day 1
          • We’re going to launch in a month
          • We’re going to have fun
        • Confirmed plans between the week of Christmas and new year’s.
        • Wanted to launch by Master Bacon, on January 21st.
          • Forced themselves into a 3 week process
          • Bacn.com (the “o” is really, really expensive)
        • Recipes drive organic traffic and sales
        • Bacon is a shelf stable product when cured. Then shipping isn’t a problem.
        • Where are we going to get our bacon, and what’s it going to be?
        • Decided on 3 suppliers… the suppliers were saying “we’ve got people who have moved out of our distribution area, and now they want bacon”
        • Have instructional cards on how to cook and store bacon
        • Fulfillment isn’t that tough
        • U.S. Postal service gives you free boxes. Just go to their website, and they’ll send you hundreds of boxes to your house.
        • Website
          • Used a basic content management system, plugged into Google checkout. Do 3-4 hours of work each evening, plus Saturdays.
          • Hired local guy to do design.
          • Didn’t get design until 2 days before the launch
          • Fully functional website in 5 days
        • Twirl.cc: is a url shortener. Leveraged the code to do bacn.me to create a bacon url shortener. Can impose a big bacon picture across the website. Picked up mashables story, lots of promotion.
        • Blog lets them take bacon related content (have you seen the bacon 747?) and put it on the site really quickly, drives more and more organic traffic.
        • Used twitter to solicit people for photo shoot
          • Made bacon tshirts, gave shirts plus PBR away to people whose photos they could use
        • Budget: To get to launch…buy domain name, plus everything else, was $15,000. the biggest chunk was the domain name. Bacn.com was about $5,000. Bacon.com was $750,000.
        • Used all open source for everything…
          • Djenko
          • WordPress
          • IntenseDebate…great commenting system for WordPress
          • UserVoice: really easy to get feedback. Don’t need to login.
            • Found out really quick: bacon lovers are really big dudes. Offer 4x and 5x sizes.
        • Total operating cost is about $80/month: fax, hosting bill, etc.
        • Cool group bacon photo was actually a photoshopped picture…all people wearing bacon shirts lined up on wall. Pictures were taken individually, then photoshopped together.
        • T-shirts are their biggest product. They licensed the design of existing bacon t-shirts from individuals / small other businesses.
        • They don’t do any Google adwords revenue, instead they do all affiliate revenue with sites that are bacon focused. They offer 10%, but it is only on purchases, not clicks or views.
        • The vast majority of users don’t like to be referred to another website for payment. So Google Checkout is a major deterent. Having to sign up for a Google account is a major turnoff. But didn’t spend time up front to delay launch. Could launch quickly using Google checkout.
        • Having their own product…
          • Bacn sausage
          • Bacn hamburger
          • They are the only online distributor for these products
        • Q: Did you need to get legal support?
          • A: The company runs as an LLC. The company never opens or handles the bacon. They don’t need to worry about handling the bacon. There aren’t a lot of legal ramifications, other than those that are the usual ones.
        • Q: How do you manage inventory?
          • A: Turnaround from suppliers is just a couple of days. So only hold a little inventory. USPS has priority mail…can ship bacon anywhere in U.S. for 2 days for just $9.80.
        • Q: How did you find out that people didn’t like Google checkout?
          • A: From UserVoice. Someone mentioned it, so then offered it as a choice people could pick “Would like other options for checkout”, surprised by number of votes for it.
          • Use crazy egg to make heatmaps of site
        • Comprehensive list of equipment
          • Craigslist for equipment
          • Friends for models
          • IntenseDebates for comments
          • WordPress for blog
          • GoogleCheckout
          • Endicia for postage: prints label and postage all together. Works with custom label design.
          • UserVoice for feedback.
          • Mimeo for video
          • Django content management
            • Even does packing slips and manages inventory
          • Mycorporation.com to incorporate. Used LLC, but would do it again as a C corp.
        • Use google adword keyword service to assess market size per month
        • Use videos to do education: how to make bacon with a grill bacon. Has a splash page, but it isn’t primarily an advertisement.