Month: December 2011

Facebook gets into the continuous scroll promo page game

Facebook has embraced the continuous scrolling, animated-esque homepage style. Like I mentioned in my other posts about this style of website (animated scroll sites), the format reduced the closing doors effect that clicking around a site can create. You bring the user into a story and prevents the message from being broken up. The single stream of consciousness keep a user curious to see what comes next. Combine the scroll with the hit-the-bottom-to-load-more-content system the potential for great workflows is there. Im really liking these design patterns, and they keep getting better. I wouldn’t be surprised if this style of website becomes the standard in the next year.

https://www.facebook.com/about/timeline (2011-12-15)

You are introduced to the homepage with a video. A pretty good one at that.

Clicking a button on the bottom quickly scrolls to a new section, so whether you start by scrolling or you are more of a clickster you are taken cre of. And both actions quickly teach you how to interact with ethe site.

As you scroll, the section headers rise to the top and stay there. (much like the other sites I have blogged about, and possibly started form the ios table header design pattern). ALso becoming a standard is the button navigation animates to sync up with where you are scrolled to in the website.

Long Lost Bucket List

I was going through some old Google docs of mine and came across a bucket list a wrote in 2008. Haha, I can even remember writing it. It was after I saw Ted Leonsis speak about what he has learned and accomplished in his life, and how his bucket list helped in decide to do the things he did. In his words [paraphrased]:

“[when the oppertuity came to produce a movie at first it was a hard descision, but looking back at my bucket list, and seeing it on their, reminded me to take the oppertunity I was given before I die]”

It felt much like finding a time capsule, and one that I forgot I even placed. With so much having happened in the last 4 years, and so much happening in the last week, it offered a pretty perspective on things. As I read through the message in a bottle sent to me by my former self, I was excited to be able to cross of a couple items on the list, and dissapointed at the vast majority of things I could not.

I really encourage those out there to mak a bucket list. It offers perspective into you life as yo find yourself focusing on so manythings over the years. It helps bring you back to a core goal, or reminds you of one you may have forgotten.

From a more technological perspective (I can’t help it, I am a technologist after all,) I encourage you to write it in google docs. I was not obly able to easily find this old list, but since Google Docs are live docs I can see the revision history of the document over time. I can imagine how interesting it will be to check out the changes, and additions I make to this list over the next 20 years.

…

While looking for bucket list-esque pictures for this post on the web I stumbled onto this site (http://bucketlist.org/) that helps people share their bucket list publicly.

Google TV is finally a google TV

Got home tonight and notcied my google tv wasnt responding to my harmonay iphone remote…..after some fiddling around a simple update ended up being all that was required. To my surprise it wasn’t just a minor release, like it usual ends up beeing. My google TV has changed considerably! (along with my iphone remote,) and the my Google TV finally has the Adnroid market, ergot finally a real Google TV! Yay!

I downloaded some apps, checked out the new user interface and workflow. I know have a 50 inch non-touch tablet 🙂

There is also the “allow unkown sources” option in the settings, along with enable debugging, so I guess developing for my TV is now piled onto my list of things to do.

 

After some googling, I found some info on the update. You can check it out here: http://www.google.com/tv/

Deciding on a new feature: An Insta-Test-market. (AKA: Ghetto Testing)

I love making a decisions tree as efficnet as possible, especial around discussion that steer the business or the product within a business. Or in another words, I HATE “tough decisions.”

Here is another addition to the decision tree to make life easier, it is called “Ghetto Testing” and coined by the founder of Zenga.

How do you figure out if you should go with a feature with minmal disruption to the company or its engineers, and how can you invest in it with the highest posible certainty of success? Ghetto Testing a feature. The concept is there are a wide range of data points you can aquire to guage interest on an idea before the idea is fleshed out. At the “Ghetto” stage, it sint so much a test of the product value or feature set itself, as much of a servey to see if the concept will get clicks or interest by the public. It’s basically an adhoc test market. If you think people will love feature x for instance, create a google adword promoting the vapor-ware concept and run it for 5,10,30 mins.  The resulting page of the ad could technically go to a 404 page, and although that would be a horrible experience it still wouldbe a valid ghetto test.

From there you can invest incrementally into how deep of a gauge you want to testing of the idea i.e. a pretty landing page with feature highlights, a download, or a purchase wall.

http://grattisfaction.com/2010/01/how-zynga-does-customer-development-minimum-viable-product/

 

“Should I add x to my product line?” litmus test

For small startups it is essential to decide what not to do as much as what you decide *to* do. As new technologies come and go, ideas for change could cripple a companies productivity or ability to reach any single objective (AKA Distractions.)

If your objective is to build an awesome product, and work hard at solving a problem that others may not have been able to solve yet, then here is a “is this a distraction right now, or a need for change?”  litmus test for small startups.

Test:

Do I believe we should *only* do [new idea] and grow the company out from from there?

(i.e. stop focusing on the other thing you had previsouly decided was *the* way to grow the company from.)

If you find yourself getting to a strong yes, then the convo to get into the new idea may be ripe for discussion, and it may be time to focus energy on a new strategy and to pool your resources to build a world class product. I’ll go into what you can do to break the new idea down further from there, to see if it makes sense in your business in other ways, in later blogs.

Side notes as to why this problem may often come about:

For one, the grass is always greener. So you need to be carefull when shifting towards an idea that is not on your mind every hour of every day…There will often be different problems, not less, to overcome when you switch.

Second is brain time. The amount you spend on solving a problem has some (not sure yet what amount yet) relation on the lack of time you have spent thinking about the new thing. All the litte details that are reflex knowladge for you for is lost with a new idea and direction.

Analogous Exmaples in life:

For a simplified abstract example, you spend a few hours packing the night before a trip. Last minute the morning of the flight you realize, “Hey, I can just take the smaller bag! How much smarter of me, I can save much space!” So you do.

At the airport you realize that one of the side reasons you wanted the bigger bag was not just to carry more, but to so your friend could but his shoes in it. Damn! You over looked ne of the many small details that led to the dscisoin to pack the big bag in the first place, but the new idea that came to mind, that you took action on in a shorter amount of time, did not allow you to consider all the many reasons why you made the decisions you did the night before.

A more common example: “Ughhh, I left my wallet in my other pants pocket!” You look better, and it’s a good thing too because now you need to find someone to pay for your dinner :p

Closing

You may not be able to avoid these smaller mishaps, but you definitely have the power to minimize disrupting a company by paying attention to these business distractions vs changing directions type decision points.

Remember: A small comapany needsto solve *a* problem, focus on it, and when they get their fit and a few wins the grow into more spaces. Here is a great article on focus as it pertains to Product Market Fit and MVP:

http://www.svproduct.com/mvp-vs-product-vision/

“…But of course that was just the beginning of the product line and not the end.”

 

"Should I add x to my product line?" litmus test

For small startups it is essential to decide what not to do as much as what you decide *to* do. As new technologies come and go, ideas for change could cripple a companies productivity or ability to reach any single objective (AKA Distractions.)

If your objective is to build an awesome product, and work hard at solving a problem that others may not have been able to solve yet, then here is a “is this a distraction right now, or a need for change?”  litmus test for small startups.

Test:

Do I believe we should *only* do [new idea] and grow the company out from from there?

(i.e. stop focusing on the other thing you had previsouly decided was *the* way to grow the company from.)

If you find yourself getting to a strong yes, then the convo to get into the new idea may be ripe for discussion, and it may be time to focus energy on a new strategy and to pool your resources to build a world class product. I’ll go into what you can do to break the new idea down further from there, to see if it makes sense in your business in other ways, in later blogs.

Side notes as to why this problem may often come about:

For one, the grass is always greener. So you need to be carefull when shifting towards an idea that is not on your mind every hour of every day…There will often be different problems, not less, to overcome when you switch.

Second is brain time. The amount you spend on solving a problem has some (not sure yet what amount yet) relation on the lack of time you have spent thinking about the new thing. All the litte details that are reflex knowladge for you for is lost with a new idea and direction.

Analogous Exmaples in life:

For a simplified abstract example, you spend a few hours packing the night before a trip. Last minute the morning of the flight you realize, “Hey, I can just take the smaller bag! How much smarter of me, I can save much space!” So you do.

At the airport you realize that one of the side reasons you wanted the bigger bag was not just to carry more, but to so your friend could but his shoes in it. Damn! You over looked ne of the many small details that led to the dscisoin to pack the big bag in the first place, but the new idea that came to mind, that you took action on in a shorter amount of time, did not allow you to consider all the many reasons why you made the decisions you did the night before.

A more common example: “Ughhh, I left my wallet in my other pants pocket!” You look better, and it’s a good thing too because now you need to find someone to pay for your dinner :p

Closing

You may not be able to avoid these smaller mishaps, but you definitely have the power to minimize disrupting a company by paying attention to these business distractions vs changing directions type decision points.

Remember: A small comapany needsto solve *a* problem, focus on it, and when they get their fit and a few wins the grow into more spaces. Here is a great article on focus as it pertains to Product Market Fit and MVP:

http://www.svproduct.com/mvp-vs-product-vision/

“…But of course that was just the beginning of the product line and not the end.”

 

Smart Car Makes Clever Website

I was oddly propelled to click on an ad today, brought to me by the makers of the Smart Car. It was a pretty, clean, well made site. I scrolled up and down to see if anything would catch my eye, and strangely enough something did.

Some time ago I made a post about the coolness of sites I see that take advantage of telling their story, not through pages navigated to by the standard point-and-click, but by animating the home page based on the amount of scroll a user applys to the site. (You can find the post on cool scrolling animated sites here )

Some people have done a poor job of creating well balanced sitethat not only tells a good story, but does in a animated way that tells the story better than it otherwise could be told. And done smooth enough that the coolness, or story, isn’t hindered by the latency and choppyness of the meium.

Well This smart car ad page did just that. And without futher adu, here are some screeen shots and the link to the smart car ad site (2011-12-4).

It begins with a simple page, that focuses all the users attention to the car, and its size.

As you begin scrolling the colors of the sites changes and the a different smart car is presented.

Notice the menu on the right site, letting you know where you are in the story. The white cricle tells you what part of the story you are currently in, and what is coming up next. Notice the blending from one “page” to the next as you scroll. Notice how you find you self scrolling more and more, and digest a few tid bits of knowladge thatyou would ohter wise not have gained behidn a barier of clicks. Well done. 🙂