How do you decide what to build next? Let’s start with some high level categories: New Whiz Bang Features. Sales is going to love demo’ing. Marketing is going to love the story-telling. Polish the Apple. This is going back over existing features and making them better. More polished, more nuanced. Sales and Marketing won’t care,…
We switched to Verizon Wireless many years ago. We were using Cingular?AT&T and were greatly relieved when we switched. The network was much better. No more dropped calls, no more static. We were in “4 bar” nirvana. We got super simple clamshell phones with virtually no features. I bought a game for mine, Breakout. Fast-forward…
Firefox has been generally open source with their design process. It’s an interesting approach and bound to get people interested and possibily to inspire some great ideas. On the other hand, it’s alot of work to manage the flow of ideas. Their latest challenge is to re-conceptualize how bookmarks, history and other data are rendered…
On my blog, there is a Digsby widget that allows you to instant message me. The problem is that I forget to sign out of Digsby at night. So I come in to work in the morning and have 2 or 3 messages, but the person is gone from the website. I have to remember…
I recently watched Coraline with the kids. The movie was pretty clever and well done, but I found it highly derivative. Here is what it made me think: BeetleJuice (1988) – My goodness, the artwork was so reminiscent the genius BeetleJuice, but more importantly, I found a strong similarity to the main characters (Lydia/Coraline) and to her relationship…
I was listening to Barney Frank today on NPR. He said, regarding the healthcare debate, that republicans and democrats are basically on the same page on the big picture. They both believed there is a real issue that needs serious attention. However, he described that when you went into the details, that ideology created huge…
This happens all the time. You have a design and it could go in several directions. All directions have pros and cons. What do you do? My technique is to mockup (quickly) as many of the alternatives as possible. Give them all a chance to survive the bright light of day. You will find (quickly)…
I love well done satire.
The US Government started this program called “Cash for Clunkers“. It gives $4000 to anyone who is trading in an old piece of crap for a new shiny car. The goal is to increase the overall gas efficiency as well as spur the automotive industry. They allocated $2 billion dollars. The money ran out in…
What is the best way to gather user research? I believe Dian Fossey is a great role model for how to achieve great results and learn about your users lives. Dian didn’t ask the gorillas “So, tell me what kind of personality you have?” Obviously, the gorillas would not have intelligent things to say to…
I saw this fun contest on Twitter called PerfectBusiness. The rules were simple: Boil down a great business idea into a single tweet. Now here is a contest that I could do well with. Here was my idea tweet: @PerfectBusiness #micropitch : Pandora for unsigned bands. Seed real artists, listen to unsigned similar artists. Focused…
I need your help. It will just take a second. Problem: I think people are sending me mail which is not arriving at GMail. It’s not in the spam folder either. Could you help me? Send me a mail to glen {at} kokopop.com. No content needed. Subject: can be any word you choose. Post a…
What you call things is incredibly important. The words you choose carry baggage and implications that people will adopt. The words help people remember and frame an idea. Take for example the current Healthcare debate in the U.S. There is so much complexity and so much riding on one single monolithic bill. Everyone assumes that…
I have been reading this great book called Made to Stick. (Great so far) In it, they talk about Proverbs. Proverbs are short phrase-like ideas that encode a much deeper meaning into them. They are much easier to remember because of the encoding. Examples: A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush…