The EchoUser Experience

A rainy day, in SF town

I went to my first TED(x) event this past week.  I’ve never been to TED or a TED affiliated event before, so it was a real treat to see it live and in person after hours of watching luminaries on my laptop.  Hosted by the cool crew at Parisoma, the venue was far more intimate than I thought: about 45 people in attendance - including a few speakers - in a nifty loft space on Howard; not a bad way to spend a rainy day, IMO.

So how did TEDxSoMA compare to the TED we all know and love through the videos? Other than the world’s most uncomfortable chairs, I spent 4 solid hours totally captivated.  I was lucky enough to get a front row seat (literally) next to my new friends Simon and Ted, which let me see the talks up close and personal.  Overall the speakers all seemed well-versed in TED-style speaking: clear, very little reading, and lots of pictures if they chose to have a slide show. From Phil Libin at Evernote, to Heather Fleming at Catapult Design, to the intense Damon Horowitz from Aardvark (who reminded me vaguely of Gene Wilder in the original Charlie and the Chocolate Factory), it was a great lineup, and when you add in a great duet with the stunning Solenn Seguillon and beer from the folks at 21A, it was a recipe for success.

Common thread?

The only gripe I have is this: the talks, while fascinating, didn’t cohesively tie into the theme of the event, “Interactivity in Different Realms”. Sure, it was great to hear Libin’s theory on why man’s brain has changed little in 20,000 years (hence why we need Evernote), and Howard Roffman’s well-versed (and read) story of Star Wars over the years, but I found the common thread tenuous at best. But with an eclectic mix of people in the room we had little trouble brainstorming and chatting during the intermissions, and overall it was a great time.

One of the interesting consequences of working at a start up is that we all get to wear many hats. My role at EchoUser has always been part designer, user researcher, programmer and software development manager.

I thought it might be nice to share some of the blogs and sites that I frequent lately that help keep me somewhat sharp in these various disciplines:

Design / User Research

• Konigi
• Boxes and Arrows
• UXMatters
• http://johnnyholland.org/

Software Developer / Manager

• http://www.agile-software-development.com/
• Slashdot
• Signal vs Noise
• Ruby Inside
• RailsTips
• Ruby on Rails API

Feel free to add suggestions to my list in the comments!

Happy (belated) New Year, one and all - I do hope 2010 turns out to be a smashing success for everyone.

I figured I’d start things off with a video made by my friend and colleague Etan (@Zaqintosh).  It’s a concept for what an iPhone app designed to measure experiences (any experiences, from surfing a website to hopping on BART) could look like, and even though it’s crude, I think it gets the potential across.

Can you imagine if we were able to rate experiences on the fly, all day every day? I, for one, would love to track which ones get me up, and which bring me down.  The trick, I think, will be to get people used to rating their life experiences; Yelp’s easy because it’s tied to businesses, but it might not be obvious to people that rating a bad jog, conversation, taxi ride (due to traffic, not the cabbie) or plane ride is just as valuable as rating your local Starbucks.

In any case, without further ado, voila:

iPhone experience measurement concept - EchoUser

Dropbox and the Human Touch

A few months back I got an email from the crew at Dropbox reminding me to use their service.  If you haven’t tried it yet, Dropbox is a neat file syncing service that lets you back stuff up online as well.

Anyway, usually I hate reminders to use a service - I find them intrusive, and the repeat offenders get put on my spam list even if the service/product is actually pretty cool.

But Dropbox’s email actually made me smile:

It’s got three key attributes that make it much less annoying than other reminder emails:

1. It’s visual.

I get it, you want me to use your service. But please don’t show me a long bullet-point list of why you think you rock.  Dropbox gets this, and replaces long text with an image instead.

2. It’s funny.

The picture did actually make me chuckle.  It won’t win any best joke awards on BET and Carlin certainly wouldn’t be impressed, but in my book any laughter is better than none (and certainly better than a groan as I hit Spam). Further, it shows they have balls, which is always a good thing.

3. It’s human.

This is the most important part: the hand drawn image really lets me connect with the company.  Dropbox isn’t just a bunch of faceless programmers shoving their product down my throat - somewhere somebody actually sat down to draw this picture, and that’s a powerful thing.  So powerful that I actually pictured him or her doodling away with their tongue stuck out. Pretty cool.

Even though in the end the email didn’t get me to keep using Dropbox (I honestly don’t have a need for it), it did get me to take the time to write about it, which in the end is almost as good.

When San Francisco banned plastic bags 2 years ago, my whoops of joy could be heard across the Golden Gate in Marin.  Having grown up in the developing world I grew accustomed - sadly - to seeing plastic bags everywhere they shouldn’t be: the streets, clogging drains, polluting rivers, the ocean, even stuck on phone lines. Everywhere except in garbage cans. You can be sure that I for one wasn’t going to miss their absence at all.

So imagine my surprise when last week my local Delano’s bagger put my groceries in one of these:

That’s funny, I could have sworn that plastic bags are illegal in San Francisco. So unless I’m missing something, this shouldn’t be allowed.

On second look, the makers of the bag have done their utmost to convince everyone that this is anything but a plastic bag with the liberal use of clever marketing copy.  Phrases like “no trees were harmed in the making of this bag”, and a cute little “nutrition” box highlighting exactly how it hasn’t hurt trees are nice tries - but belie the fact that eventually this bag will no doubt end up in a dump, where it most certainly will hurt a tree.

I get what the folks behind the bag are getting at: we have so many bags in production already that it certainly makes sense to train people to reuse them, thereby preventing more bags from ending up in landfills. Indeed, these particular bags do seem more durable than their crappy white plastic counterparts, so I could definitely imagine using them for more than one grocery run - but let’s face it: I can count on one hand the number of people I know who bring eco bags to the store every time they go.  Heck, I have 3 such bags in the trunk of my car, and I still manage to forget them each and every time.

As luck would have it, these bags have an answer for our laziness, too - a message nudging us to take them to “participating stores” for recycling. Good idea in principle, until my roommate tried it: turns out our local Delano’s isn’t one of those stores.

Go figure.

A last minute glitch and I could not get international roaming activated on my cell phone. This was the first time I was going to be without a convenient access to a phone while on an international trip. I wasn’t happy…

First stop Hong Kong airport, and I was pleasantly surprised to find the complete airport WiFi enabled. I was able to use Skype on my iPhone to talk back home, check my emails and send updates to my Facebook and Twitter accounts. So far, so good…

My entire stay in San Francisco, I must admit I never missed not having cellular connection…it seemed like the entire city was WiFi enabled even though it was only in parts. Any restaurant, shop, pub I found myself in had WiFi so staying connected was a breeze. In all my years in the US and my trips there over the last 3 years, I never saw WiFi so entrenched in the ecosystem until now.

It goes without saying that WiFi enabled Internet access on mobile phones is the way of the future (Virgin America has even started offering WiFi on their domestic flights).

Suddenly, with broadband data access, 3G seemed a bit too slow, cumbersome and a hindrance to the overall user experience.

In almost all aspects of consumer consumption behaviors in India, there has been a leapfrog like trend where the Indian consumer has bypassed some of the technical/behavioral aspects of adoption due to the late entry of some technology or product. Jumping from having no phones to the cell phone, getting introduced to the Internet directly on the mobile are some classic examples.

Apart from the government run service providers, 3G in India is still some distance away. Can India leapfrog in this aspect of adoption as well? Can we jump directly from Edge to WiFi? One can argue that carriers like TTSL, Reliance and Airtel are well positioned with their already existing home based broadband service to provide blanket (to some extent) WiFi coverage in metro cities. This could earn them enhanced revenue from their broadband service and also help bypass 3G. They could focus on mid/high tier WiFi enabled mobile phones, and generate greater ARPU through a much enhanced user experience of their VAS services.

It will be worth investigating a two-tier strategy - A limited 3G rollout to cover the rural geography in India for enhanced voice/data services and WiFi rollout in metro cities for data services.

Great weekend turning three years old. All that hard work that you don’t normally see in the day to day was on full display. I love it when the whole team gets together. It was also much fun sharing with all our friends.

We pontificated in our global all hands.

We partied at the Epicenter Cafe.

We partook at the Slanted Door.

A lot of fun things to celebrate. First, simply making it to three. There are several “business” books out there that say we’ve beaten the odds. We had a global all hands! Who knows when that will be practical again. We opened EchoUser India, who joined us in San Francisco. Several cool people have came on board over the last year. They definitely bring passion and moxie to our company. Client work is rocking. All our tools and methods are constantly innovating.

It’s a lot of fun and very rewarding working with the EchoUser crew. (That’s a personal statement from me, not an advertisement, but definitely something I hope that everyone else in the company feels.)

The delicious dining and fun happy hours were highlights, but for me it was the brainstorming session that made the weekend. It was great to reflect on where we’ve been over the last three years and all the hard work we’ve put in. It was also highly insightful to brainstorm about where we will go in the future. We’ve taken a lot of strides in the last three years, but it’s good to realize that you’re still growing and have a long way to go. Several exciting new ways to think about ourselves came out of the weekend. Each time we’ve had an event like this we’ve made significant changes. I’m eager to see what they will be this time.

I also can’t wait to see what next year will bring before we turn 4. (Protip: It’s going to our most important year. I have inside information! )

Cheers,
Mick

I’m currently working on a usability and design prototyping project for a San Francisco-based iPhone app company (that shall, for now, remain unnamed).  So far it’s been fascinating, and lots of fun figuring out new ways to test the app, record the sessions, and integrate rapid design prototypes from week to week.

One of the more interesting parts of the project revolves around a diary study activity: we’re basically following half a dozen app users over a month to see how their experience with the app evolves, for better or worse.  I’m currently sending out 2 mini surveys a week, and have a shared “whiteboard” google doc where they can jot down any thoughts they have on the fly.

Experience Blogging

The neatest trick to the diary study, in my opinion, is the inclusion of what I’m calling “experience” blogging: basically, I’ve encouraged the participants to send screenshots of interesting moments they encounter while using the app by using the iPhone’s built in screen capture function (”On/Off” and “Main menu” simultaneous click).  I set up a dedicated photoblog on Posterous.com, and the participants basically send along their screenshots - which are automatically populated on the Posterous site.  The end result is a very neat live stream of app moments, sort of like the “pulse” of the app.

It seems like the native screen capture functionality of the iPhone makes this particularly easy, though I don’t know if any other phones do the same.

Has anyone else tried anything like this before?

You always hear about people doing A/B testing “out in the wild” (as well as examples of how it can be misused) but it’s rare that it is ever noticeable (which is kind of the point).

So when my colleague Aaron and I were working next to each other and happened to visit Salesforce.com at the same time, we were surprised to see the following:

and this…

Notice the difference? Someone at Salesforce is testing out whether people will sign up for the free trial (top menu, red button).

Does anyone have any other examples of A/B testing you’ve come across out in the wild? Would love to see examples.

Much of our work results in our clients having to make changes to an existing product or service.  It’s kind of the point of usability and design: unless everyone loves your product, careful research and testing will be sure to raise a few things that could be changed. Whether it’s the color of an icon or the entire product concept, design leaves no stone unturned.

One of the common refrains we hear from clients is this:

“But how will users know what we’ve changed??!”

(implication: they will hate it…)

We have lots of answers to that question, but here’s an example of my favorite (and perhaps the simplest) answer:

The lesson, it would seem, is to just tell them.