Developer team structures, and growth

By chris on May 25, 2013

Working with a dev team? Check out Scott Porad’s The Best Developer Team Structure blog post.

Notes that I’ve also found to be true:

  • Let people work on their passion
  • WIP is deadly (I’ve begun to recognize it as a likely indicator of problems with the goals, design, or passion)
  • 1 PM to 3-5 devs
  • Teams, not groups of people
  • Teams need time to gel
  • Teams have leads
  • Teams share dirty work
  • Coordinating designs is a hard role and requires lots of back n forth
  • Force people to share work

Money quote:

Okay, saving the most important things for last. As your organization grows, the most important things will be “soft management”. Things like documented organizational values. Documented, as in, written down somewhere on paper (by which, I mean, a wiki). Having your company’s mission, values and vision statement written down. Having your product strategy written down. Having your technical design written down.

Nobody, especially, pointy-haired bosses, wants to spend time on this stuff. Those people are fools. That’s why comic strips are written about them.

The fact is, these are the most valuable tools in helping coordinate teams of people to get a job done. People don’t think of these things as tools… they think of them as management fluff. But, that’s exactly what they are: tools. Devices which help get a job done.

These are the tools that allows large groups of developers to have a shared understanding about the job they are working on, and the expectations for how they are to complete it.

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The 3×3 Rules

By chris on May 24, 2013

From one of my heroes, @umairh. For the past year I’ve been grappling with some version of his #7 rule, which I phrase as “epitaph, not resume.”

  1. Time will go by (a lot) faster than you think, want, or need.
  2. Most of the stuff you think will make you happy won’t.
  3. You’re capable not just of a tiny bit more than you believe. But of a huge amount more.
  4. The more yourself you are, the less timid you’ll be. The more haters will hate you. It’s a sign you’re living it right.
  5. Never waste a second working with people who don’t support you, or loving people who don’t love you.
  6. Any idiot can be cynical. Most are. You must always believe in love, life, and truth.
  7. The question you must answer isn’t how to get ahead. It’s how to go somewhere that matters. And have fun on the way.
  8. (Bonus rule: ) Learn to compromise. Learn never to settle.
  9. If your life doesn’t surprise you, it’s going to bore you. If your life never satisfies you, it’s going to stress you out. Balance.

I also enjoy that he opened this list with “Three Rules.” Overdeliver!

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How to compose link text

By chris on February 26, 2013

When linking part of a sentence, what words belong inside the link? This seems to be a lesson that every new UI designer stumbles on.

Bad

Click here to see the next page.

Because readers scan text, the link is read as standalone (“here”) text and is unintelligible.

Still bad

Click here to see the next page.

Link includes the verb – at least the reader knows what action is expected.

Better

Click here to see the next page.

When this link includes the whole sentences as context, it can be scanned and interpreted.

Best

Click here to learn how to compose link text.

Now the link includes an indication of what to expect after clicking. Also note that the destination page’s main heading mirrors the link.

Going overboard

Click here to learn how to compose link text.

Because the destination is the primary goal of the link, you can emphasize it to help the reader focus on the meat of the interaction — the destiation.

Cleaning it up

Learn how to compose link text.

At this point in the life of the Internet, users know that links are clickable. No need for “click here” if the link is styled to look like a link.

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Models for defining a social network user experiences

By chris on November 21, 2012

As we’re making OpenSky more social I’ve been spending a lot of time looking at social networks and recently realized that social interactions on social networking sites can be reduced to verb-noun-verb definitions that:

  • Outline a share-object-consume chain
  • Have simple, well-defined verbs

Here are some examples of those definitions:

Twitter
Tweet links to click
Facebook
Share photos to comment on
LinkedIn
Post resumes to recruit
DeviantArt
Post art to fave
Meetup
Announce meetups to attend
Yelp
Review restaurants to visit

Facebook sort of breaks the definition with their shared focus on both loves and comments, but their feedback loop focuses on notifying sharers (and other commenters) of comments, so I think it’s the more central user experience.

The best share-object-consume chains are designed so the consumption gives the sharer direct positive feedback. In cases like Yelp where attending a restaurant doesn’t feed back to a reviewer, a scaffolding of alternative feedback becomes necessary. This is where Yelp beat Citysearch: their review tags and compliments are likely precursors to the reader visiting a restaurant. It’s a stretch to scaffold the feedback in this manner; Yelp nailed it with solid product design while Citysearch never seems to have recognized the problem.

Another goal for a successful network is making consumption easy, so positive feedback happens often, thereby encouraging additional subsequent shares. This is typically solved by going one step upstream from the consuming action to the indicator of intent: Meetup talks about members more than attendees (and Twitter focuses on followers more than clickers).

Abstracted in this way, social networks are marketplaces where sharers play the role of vendors and consumers are buyers. So social network design needs to solve many of the same user experience problems as marketplaces:

  • Is there a large population of interested consumers?
  • Is it easy for them to find good vendors (where “good” is a function of quality and relevance)?
  • Are consumables cheap to generate?
  • Is it easy to put consumables into the marketplace?
  • Is it easy to consume them?
  • Is it clear to what makes a consumable valuable?

All of this points to designing networks where there’s a clear way to share a specific object via a consistent, easy process, so that it can be consumed in a specific manner (and making sure that people want to consume that thing).

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Growth School

By chris on September 6, 2012

A few months ago, I began to focus heavily on driving organic member growth at OpenSky. Since then we’ve seen significant gains to viral coefficient and we’ve only begun to scratch the surface.

Step #1 for anyone should be a hyper-detailed cohort report. Looking at organic growth, I maintain a day-by-day funnel report of how new users come through our system, both the inviters and the invitees. Record numbers at every point where a user can make a choice, because some growth tactics will have a positive impact in one area while damaging another.

Here’s a list of articles and that got me started in this area:

a. Andy Johns, previously from Facebook’s Growth team, explains things on Quora:

And another good growth page: What are some top strategies for conversion optimization?

b. Andrew Chen on growth

From an OpenSky perspective, ecommerce emails in inboxes seems like “the last war,” so we’re actively looking at alternative channels. Honestly, any marketing email is probably a “last war” – while still valuable, it’s a declining option so you need to look elsewhere.

c. Turntable explained by Quora:

d. Mint:

e. Badoo. I thought their recent NYC subway ads were beautifully designed as a “platform with a voice”, so I looked them up and it turns out they know a thing or 2 about growth:

f. And random answer re address book imports:

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Nice little data visualization tools list

By chris on May 29, 2012

DataVisualization.ch offers this selection of data visualization tools that they use frequently.

They include a nice note in the footer of their page that this isn’t a comprehensive list of information visualization tools, just the libraries that they prefer for their own work.

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Urban Rainbow

By chris on July 7, 2011

Rainbow over New York City
Shared with me by Andy Fisher, a photo taken by his bro from an NYC office.

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Creating from sun and sand

By chris on July 1, 2011

The output is pretty raw, but this is an exciting first step.

Markus Kayser – Solar Sinter Project from Markus Kayser on Vimeo.

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Think anew, act anew, disenthrall ourselves

By chris on June 30, 2011

The dogmas of the quiet past are inadequate to the stormy present. The occasion is piled high with difficulty, and we must rise with the occasion. As our case is new, so we must think anew and act anew. We must disenthrall ourselves and then we shall save our country.

Abe Lincoln, 1862

Via Sir Ken Robinson at TED 2010

This statement resonated with me in a couple of contexts: first in my daily work as I grapple with defining new commercial interactions (and attempt to avoid falling into existing patters) and then, later, as I recalled a moment yesterday when Shannon and I visited our obstetrician with Winnie in tow.

When the OB entered the exam room Win asked a ton of great questions about the various tools and equipment that adorned the shelves and walls. I was so proud that I transformed into a leering adult and asked “do you want to be a doctor when you grow up?”

“No, Daddy,” she shouted, suddenly intent on twirling the doctor’s stool with her hands, “I want to be a… a… spinning ball!”

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Join OpenSky again, for the first time

By chris on June 23, 2011

Back in 2009 I invited all of my friends to join me at OpenSky. We were young and enthusiastic and naive back then; in the intervening 18 months we’ve become less young and naive but more enthusiastic than ever, because we relaunched OpenSky just a couple of months ago and our growth and shopper responses have been phenomenal since then.

I’m finally at a point where I’m proud of the work we’ve done and eager to give you an inside look. And if you know me then you know that’s saying a lot.

I’d also like to offer you a couple of incentives for joining right now with this link:
http://osky.co/jdxP0r

First, we typically only allow shoppers to follow 10 curators (and access their sales), but if you join with my link and send a quick email then I’ll use my secret powers to allow you to follow an unlimited number of OpenSky curators. (Be warned, though, that each curator’s weekly sale triggers an alert email – we’re working on improving that.)

Second, there’s a fair chance I owe you an email or call, a lunch, a beer, an alibi, or something else. If so, I promise that if you join OpenSky today then I’ll finally stop wasting my time wondering how to make OpenSky better and start talking to you instead. Yes, it’s sad, but I’m a man obsessed.

Again, the link is: http://osky.co/jdxP0r

You’re smart, empathetic, and generally good looking. I’d LOVE to hear your thoughts about OpenSky and the experience in general, so I can continue to improve it. Please leave a comment and let me know.

Here are some quick questions to get you thinking:

  1. How would you describe OpenSky to a friend? Why would you suggest they join?
  2. What other sites or services would be effective alternatives to OpenSky?
  3. Do you think you’d ever want to use OpenSky? What type of person do you think would really like OpenSky?
  4. What’s the single most important thing we could do to improve OpenSky?
  5. What curators should we add to OpenSky?

Finally, I’m going to stretch my luck by asking you to please tell to your friends about this blog post and ask them to join and post their thoughts as well.

Again, the link to join is: http://osky.co/jdxP0r

Thanks, and have a wonderful weekend!
Chris

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