serious about camo

Finding your way online = Mindful Infotention says Howard Rheingold

Howard Rheingold made up this term "Mindful Infotention" to describe the constant, conscious shifting of attention forms as one is immersed in the deluge of signal+noise in our day to day online and offline environments. Whew, mouthful. It is basically a stateful filter, so you know what to be looking at. It's the equivalent of systema as described in William Gibson's Spook Country.

Mindful Infotention interactive mindmap

Here's an interactive mindmap of what he's talking about. It's pretty great. 

Is a good goal just to be "good enough"?

 

Photo by occhichiusi

There's an interesting new Wired article on what they term "The Good Enough Revolution". In it they posit that the intersection of high-tech and low-fidelity is where "good enough" was born and that it's transforming the world as we know it. As the article states, from Flip video cams to Kindle & mp3s to healthcare, we've seen many cases where adaptation of new technologies coupled with increased simplicity has resulted in breakaway technology with mass adoption. 

It's a fun read, in that it talks through the recent histories we have watched unfold in a way that gives new insights into their genesis and players. The post also puts focus on something that we often experience and then forget: 1.0 versions generally suck.

Check out the Ford Quadricycle. This is the first Ford combustion engine vehicle. It's radically simple compared to what we see in today's forms of transit. It was a synthesis of a bicycle, a carriage and the internal combustion engine, all of which had been around for generations at the time of the Quadricycle's creation in 1896.

And it's a piece of crap.

It maxed out at 20 MPH, carried one person and had zero safety features. LAME. But at the time it was pretty amazing, and ultimately led to stuff that Ford is more famous for. 

That said, it was good enough.

From this, Ford was able to move on to more advanced machines and technologies, ultimately feeding the course of history. The same is true when Jonathan Kaplan and Ariel Braunstein made a really crappy camera that sold a million units and jumped from there into the digital video market with a crappy lofi cam, the Flip Ultra. The decedent of which, the Flip Mino now constitutes 17% market share and sold to Cisco for $590 Million. 

The simplicity of the Flip was as much a factor in its design as it was in the fact that it was an innovation. Innovative applications of technology are rarely born fully fleshed. Instead, when introduced they are often fugly, rough edged ... one step past prototype.

I love simplicity, and I believe that you should always aim things to be, as Einstein said, "... as simple as possible but not simpler," But lots of things that are "good enough" are kind of funky. The funkiness can be charming, but it's not sufficient to say that slashing features or polish is going to make something good enough. 

Reducing a product down to its essence makes it possible for the object to capture the imagine of consumers, who then will start using it in unexpected and novel ways. This gives input into the product designers and provides implicit design direction. Arguably, making something "good enough" isn't what makes it good. Making something "good enough" creates a medium for end user innovation, which can result in awesomesauce.

Bookmarklets increase your browser power without plugins - what I use

First, if you don't know what a bookmarklet is, it looks like a standard bookmark, but uses a chunk of javascript code to make the browser do something with a lot more capacity than simply redirecting you to a new webpage.

As an example, try clicking this: Share on Facebook If you're logged into Facebook, you get the standard Facebook Share window.

Facebook Share window

There are a million of them out there. This post on Make Use Of has some interesting ones; rather than reiterate theirs, I thought I'd focus on the ones I use. 

In the order, left to right, they appear on my browser Bookmarks Bar.

Note: you can start using any of these right away by dragging on the names onto your Bookmarks Bar. 

 

Location of your Bookmarks Bar

Post to Delicious

This bookmarklet will take the url you are at and redirect you to the "Share on Delicious.com" page. Because I use Delicious as my primary bookmark list, this is invaluable for me.

bit.ly it

Using bit.ly is one of the best ways to share links on Twitter, read what I say about them here. This bookmarklet makes it super simple to get a short url that you can track.

Share on FriendFeed

This bookmarklet is shockingly robust in the features it offers. Makes it very simple to share things on FriendFeed in one or more feeds. 

Share on Facebook

Unfortunately, this bookmarklet doesn't enable you to post to specific Pages you own, but it will post the page that you are currently looking at to your Facebook feed or let you share it with a specific friend.

♥ imgfave

This bookmarklet lets you share the images that are on the webpage you're currently viewing on the social network imgfave, built on top of Identi.ca. There are some incredible finds on imgfave.

Readability

Readability will take the current page you are looking at and make it more readable! It really works.

A/B Testing 101

Note: This was originally posted 8/5/2009, but has been quite popular.

This post on Brian Cray has some great A/B testing resources. It covers most of the posts that I have been looking at over the last few months. Below is a bit of a rundown to get you started.

But first, you may be wondering why you should be spending your time on this. In short: there's no formula for winning. Your most educated guess, your best data will rarely give you a cut and dry solution. Testing variations will undoubtedly uncover novel, disruptive implementations. 

 
Photo by Dave77459

Google Website Optimizer

In my mind, a way to test the value of a business tool is to determine if it is GOOG-worthy: if Google has created a product suite around a tool or process, it's likely worth your time to investigate and adopt it (even if ultimately you don't use the GOOG service.)

Google Website Optimizer (GWO), in my mind, is the clearest beginning choice in implementing A/B testing. From the GWO homepage: 

Eliminate guesswork

Don't worry about making it perfect. Brainstorm a few site variations and try them out on real visitors.

Try out images, headlines, and more

Instead of guessing what your visitors respond to, get hard data on which images, headlines, descriptions, and layouts produce the outcomes you're looking for.

Increase profit

Become more profitable by increasing conversion rates and ROI. Test results provide the stats you need to make data-driven decisions.

That's basically the A/B Testing for Dummies definition, and you don't really need to know more than that to understand the value in doing this form of testing.

Carsonified: How to A/B Test on Wordpress

After posting on how 37signals used A/B testing to increase sign ups by 200%, Ryan Carson gave a tutorial on how to perform A/B testing on Wordpress. It's full of good nuggets, and many of the takeaways & process can be applied to other platforms, such as Typepad.

 How to do A/B Testing with WordPress from Carsonified on Vimeo.

Insights on designing for social traction

A tweet by @DrBaher pointed to this great slideshow by @bokardo, Designing for Social Traction. At the highest level, it posits that there are 3 core problems to designing social software:

1. The Sign-up Problem
2. The First time Use Problem
3. The Ongoing Engagement Problem

Product managers, developers and designers would do well to spend some time with this presentation. There are a ton of slides (120), but they flow really well and the net is pretty insightful.

Sketching and thinking

I am currently reading Bill Buxton's Sketching User Experiences. It's an incredible book that expounds upon the value of user experience design and makes a compelling argument that sketching as a means of thinking is the entry point for UX. 

It is truly the first design book to inspire me since Understanding Comics: The Invisible Art, as it transcends being about craft or process and positions design within the context of human experience. Good stuff.

It's about drawing

I've long maintained that drawing is a thinking tool. When I was ten, drawing pictures of the subterranean home I would someday build (using prefab components! I really hope I do someday...) I was transported into a rich world of math, science and art by the simple medium of graphite & graph paper. 

twttr sketch by Jack Dorsey

As Buxton frames it, sketching is key here, in that drawing is a class of activity and sketching is a very specific form of drawing that has qualities that enable it to act as a thinking tool.

Here are the attributes he enumerates as intrinsic to the nature of sketching:

• Quick
• Timely
• Inexpensive
• Disposable
• Plentiful
• Clear vocabulary
• Distinct gesture
• Minimal detail
• Appropriate degree of refinement
• Suggest and explore rather than confirm
• Ambiguity

The gist

In sum, this collection of qualities define a drawing that can be a container for emotions and thinking, much like a good artwork. Things that I think are most important here are the notion of multiples, gesture and suggestion. 

In my experience, one of the biggest challenges for artists and designers alike is disassociating from the work, allowing the product to be as non-precious and objective. It must be a priori.

Augmented reality done right: Sony EyePet

Are you familiar with augmented reality? The idea is basically providing real world interactivity with virtual objects, or as Wikipedia explains:

Augmented reality (AR) is a field of computer research which deals with the combination of real-world and computer-generated data (virtual reality), where computer graphics objects are blended into real footage in real time. The term is believed to have been coined in 1990 by Thomas Caudell, an employee of Boeing at the time^[1].

It can be kind of a gimmick (as witnessed earlier,) but it's also the future of how we will interact with electronics. Why? Because it's the first step in creating TRON.

In comes Sony with EyePet, an augmented reality Tamagotchi-like game. See the engadget video below... the amazingness speaks for itself. 

 All I can say is YEOW! Now I have to buy a PS3.

iPhone app mistakes

500 million downloads breakdown, by Gizmodo. Larger version (Copyright: Gizmodo)

Smashing Magazine has a great post on the five most common iPhone app mistakes. They enumerate them as:

1. Over-blown visuals.
2. Neglecting technological limitations, such as slow Internet connection, slow processors and single-threaded OS architectures.
3. Confusing navigation (flow, layout and taxonomy).
4. Confusing the iPhone with a computer. Neglecting to use new iPhone interactions (fingers instead of the mouse; multi-touch gestures; turn, tilt and rotate) and technological features such as phone functions, built-in GPS and accelerometer.
5. Disregard of context. A lack of understanding of how, when, where and why the mobile device is being used.

It's a great post you should definitely check out. Here's my quick rundown.

Over-blown visuals

 
 SpongeBob Tickler

1. Download and use as many apps as you can, including the good, bad & fugly.
2. Don't try so hard. As Forest Gump's momma says, "Stupid is as stupid does".
3. When in doubt, look at Apple. Have a interaction or workflow issue you are trying to solve? Chances are Apple has already done it in one of their standard apps (Mail, YouTube, Camera, etc.)

Neglecting technological limitations

 Chess Wars

1. Broaden your user analysis.
2. Understand your core usage scenario.
3. Gracefully degrade on the edges.

Example: If you expect your typical user to have 150 friends, but know that the upper friend limit is 5,000, optimize for between 150 & 200. Make sure that you provide a capability to deal with cases where the friend # exceeds 200. It doesn't have to be purdy, but it does have to be possible.

Confusing navigation

The New York Times Crosswords Daily 2009

1. Draw out your information architecture on paper. Use the sitemap metaphor ... it works. Even though you're building for something non-page based, the way the interface builder is designed this type of hierarchical framework makes perfect sense.
2. Keep it simple. You have very few pixels to deal with, so keep your flourishes to a minimum.
3. Make use of common elements.

Confusing the iPhone with a computer

Seafood Watch

I'll expand this to also including confusing the iPhone with a web browser. Don't limit yourself to the standard point and click metaphor.

Disregard of context

 
Lexulous iPhone app

There are a lot of limitations placed on iPhone app developers, but no one really cares. Figure out how to make things work the way users expect them to. An example is Lexulous. I want to play this anywhere I am, that's the beauty of it, right? Unfortunately, I have to be tethered to a wifi connection. 9 times out of 10 when I am on wifi, I am next to my computer. Why wouldn't I just play in the standard Facebook app?

Awesome App Store Hyperwall

I wish I'd been there, because this visualization of the App Store is pretty friggin' cool. What you see below is just a subset of the actual spectacle: twenty 30" cinema displays with a chromatic array of App Store icons. As apps are purchased on the App Store, the icon pulsates on these displays. It's a pretty fantastic effect, but it also is a fairly profound affect, as the number of purchases is at a pretty awesome tempo!

 

Remarkd is defunct, but I still ♥ Remarkd.

There is a lot I could say about my experience with Remarkd, but I'm not going to go incredibly deep into it right now. As a tribute, I think it'd be fun to post some of the iterations the concept has gone through.

Tradr concept- July 2007

This was the initial idea I had for a Facebook app that would allow you to sell to your community. Notice at the bottom you could add a new item just by typing the description in a single field. Then you'd say what shape it was in, using a three star rating system, enter a price and click "Add". 

CloudFair concept: December 2007

At this point I was collaborating with Jason Wehmhoener, Nadine Schaeffer and Satya Palani on concepts.

Remarkd for Causes concept: May 2008

Andrew Brown and I partnered in December 2009 and created Remarkd. We went heads-down into business mode here, not a lot of pictures to show. Here's how I described Remarkd to our technology partners Nearsoft: 

Remarkd is building a online community marketplace, a "virtual garage" sale, and place for people to post items for sale and talk about their favorite Cause within their community.  Think of Craigslist (sort of), but with 3 fundamental differences: 

1. When people sell something, they will share a proportion of the proceeds with their chosen Causes.  
2. People will transact with people they know and trust - their friends, contacts or fellow cause supporters.  They will also be able to buy/sell with people in the global Remarkd community.
3. The experience we are building fully embraces Web 2.0, next generation internet practices (e.g. mobile, Facebook & OpenSocial application access, user generated wiki & blog).  Online community dialogue and messaging between members and Causes will create a reinforcing commitment to Cause goals (stickiness).

Remarkd's initial launch: September 2008

We launched in September with a whole host of non-profit "Causes" on board. Within a week of launch, we hit a catastrophic snag in our payment solution. Ultimately, we had to double back on the idea of helping Causes raise money. Long story short: the IRS doesn't like 3rd parties doing this.

Remarkd Stores concept: December 2009

Luckily, the fundamental technology we had developed was sound; in our updated business model, we would help community owners to monetize their network. Any OpenSocial-capable site could add the Remarkd Stores app and in a matter of minutes, members of the site's community would be transacting. 

Individuals could buy & sell things, and commercial sellers would have a well targeted niche of customers. Remarkd had a revenue sharing agreement with partner sites, so the owners could supplement their other means of supporting the site. Our initial foray into OpenSocial targeted Ning networks. 

Remarkd Stores: launched with DGRUS January 2009

Our initial launch partners were DGRUS, a super passionate collective of disc golfers.

Remarkd iPhone spec: January 2009

Jordan Alperin signed on to help us build the easiest way to sell things ever envisaged. I am not being hyperbolic: this app would have ROCKED. 

Remarkd Anywhere spec: May 2009

We found out some interesting things about Ning networks with our Remarkd Stores app, primarily that despite the 2M networks on Ning, there weren't an incredibly large number that were ideal for a Remarkd Store. 

We'd always had the notion of an install-anywhere app on our roadmap. We accelerated this and started building Remarkd Anywhere. A single line of JS and you'd have your Remarkd Store on any website.

And then we closed down

No one likes to close down the business they've toiled over night and day for close to two years. That said, I have learned so much over that stretch, I'm almost without words. 

Now I just need some time to marinate.

Fin.