Zahnd Industries has been working on an innovative online product called Distance Logger, and we will begin beta testing in late Spring.
Distance Logger is for anyone who participates in distance-based sports. Distance Logger helps you:
+ Set goals and stay on top of them
+ Log your workouts in as much detail as you like
+ Track your progress
+ Find and meet real people doing the sports you do
+ See the ways that other people are making progress and succeeding
If you would like to help us take Distance Logger for a test spin before we launch it this summer, go to http://www.distancelogger.com and sign up.
We’d love to have you on the team!
Joel Spolsky spent 15 minutes at ETECH today presenting his grades on the state of a few products. I don’t know if it was due to the short time he had, but his presentation came across as half standup comedy, half presentation.
His Grading Formula™:
His first example was Reddit.com - he goes to the site because of the Reddit alien. It looks like a human baby, and babies are cute. (note: WTF?)
Happy: A
Emotions: A
Aesthetics: B
Final grade: A
Motorola: Razr / Pebble
Happy: D
Emotion: A
Aesthetics: A
Final grade: B
Internet Calendars
He bashed all the stupid web-based calendars that have popped up lately, and bashed the ancient Yahoo Calendar. Then he brought up Airset. His litmus test for a good calendar was whether or not he could enter his flight times and info into the calendar. Airset, also has a java phone app that Joel claims doesn’t suck.
Happy: A (control)
Emotion: B
Aesthetics: C
Final: B
Contemporary web design: F
He said something along the lines of:
“All contemporary web design is ugly. Enough with the pastels and Arial! You’re all copying Google. That’s not what made Google Google. Google’s was making a statement against the portals of yore. When you copy their fonts, you’re not making a statement. So, Web site design in general gets a F.”
I kicked off the Emerging Technology Conference by attending a workshop with Kathy Sierra called Creating Passionate Users. Aside from my fighting a nasty head cold/fever/flu thing, and trying not to offend folks that were near me, the workshop was fantastic.
I don’t think there is some finite set of “Here’s a surefire way of succeeding” ingredients from Kathy’s talk, but rather a set of concepts and methodologies that all deserve to be chewed on and possibly applied.
Between nose wipes and coughing fits, here are some of the more interesting notes I came away with.
Focus on the passion: where there is passion, there is always a user kicking ass. People are passionate about what they are good at.
Example: It’s not about the tool: it’s not the digital camera, it’s photography. It’s about what your users do with your tools.
The KICK-ASS curve
When focusing your product, choose something that has an endless growth curve - something where you’ll never reach perfection (like martial arts or playing the bass). That said, the product should have an quick growth curve so that people can get past the SUCK threshold quickly, and into the PASSION threshold.
People want to kick ass
There should be a clear picture in your product of how much fun it’ll be when you don’t suck anymore (meaningful benefit). And there has to be a clear path to getting better. She used an example of a ski resort map to show where you can ride when you’re good.
Why? Who cares? So what?
Ask these three questions repeatedly to get to the core of your message.
Conversational writing kicks Formal writing’s ass
Quite simply, the brain engages in conversation. It goes into stasis when being lectured.
Note: Kathy really talked about this in terms of technical documentation and writing - not so much in user interface design. I’m a proponent of conversational tone in UI, and feel like we’re just starting to see more products adopt this point of view.
There’s a lot to learn from game designers, film makers, and novelists
The cycles of building interest, challenging activities, and payoff.
Another example: The Modified Hero’s Journey:
Life is normal –> Something happens to change that –> Things really suck –> Hero overcomes bad things –> Return to a NEW normal
You know your product has ‘arrived’ when people start criticizing your USERS
Think about how people hate Apple users. 
Don’t appease the critics
Dignity is deadly. When you appease the critics, or design by consensus your product will be driven to mediocrity. When people are criticizing your product, and particularly your users, you’re doing something right!
Note: Truth is not determined by a majority vote
Beginning a short series of brand notes, I’ve taken literally the notes from my notebook and this week, prepared them into a short, simple nine-page document.
Over six or nine features like this, I plan to write up my notes that explore what a brand is. These will be in note form, because as I proceed, I may find I wish to alter original thinking or find better examples to illustrate my point.
This document suggests there are five working parts to what a brand is - the company, product, the experience/interaction, the consumer and their perception of all this. In future features, I’ll explore these relationships in a little more detail and document useful case studies that highlight this thinking. The PDFs may not make as much sense individually as they should in conjunction with others, and really should be considered a partial thought, sort of incomplete without the following PDFs to come. In this case, there are still many parts of a brand to explore before answering completely, “What is a Brand?”. There, have I covered my butt?
Overall, my notes are to help me simplify my area of focus so I can apply and communicate it clearly in many different situations. I hope they serve the same purpose to you.
Because of my interest in business behaviour, in particular how organizations can improve their performance through design thinking, there most likely will be a lot of intersection between design thinking + brand thinking here.
Do feel free to correct, discuss or ask questions. Because it is in a PDF doesn’t mean it’s final by any standard, and I’ll always appreciate any ‘helpful’ comments.
This PDF tries to illustrate the answer to, in very simple terms, “What is a Brand”. It stops short of discussing parts like brand identity: personality, values and so on. Instead, this sets the stage for further notes, questions and answers.
What is a Brand? [brand-notes.pdf: 700kb]
By now most of you must have heard about the re-cutting of the Shining trailer to show a sort of drama/comedy movie out of it. A link to both the quicktime and the history of it’s creation can be found here.
I like this as a sort of jigsaw puzzle game, taking different pieces and putting them in a different order, playing with different cues to convey an entirely different meaning. For those that haven’t seen the Shining, it will mean nothing but perhaps be a little amusing. For those that have - it is hilarious to think that a different voice-over, the script of the voice-over and the Peter Gabriel track could make it a mid-summer hit.