Jared Franklin

Dieter Rams on Good Design...

Tue, 15 May 2012 11:02:58 -0400

Some excerpts from Dieter Rams on Good Design As a Key Business Advantage:

“The introduction of good design is needed for a company to be successful.”

“I am convinced that a well-thought-out design is decisive to the quality of a product. A poorly designed product is not only uglier than a well-designed one but it is of less value and use. Worst of all it might be intrusive.”

“Product design is the total configuration of a product: its form, color, material, and construction. The product must serve its intended purpose efficiently.”

“Functionality must be at the center of good design… A product must be functional in itself but it also must function as part of a wider system.”

“You cannot understand good design if you do not understand people; design is made for people.”

Another awesome Stanford ecorner video featuring Jack Dorsey...

Sun, 29 Apr 2012 20:11:00 -0400

Another awesome Stanford ecorner video featuring Jack Dorsey called The Power of Curiosity and Inspiration where he explains his background, some lessons learned from Twitter, and his three priorities as Square’s CEO.

A few things that I found most interesting were what he considers his 3 duties as CEO. They include recruiting, internal and external communication, and funding/revenue. He calls himself ‘chief editor.’

One of his 3 priorities includes storytelling. This is something that I’ve been trying to get better at for a while now. He said, “One of the biggest things that has helped me is learning how to become a better storyteller and the power of a story. And by this I mean, if you want to build a product and you want to build a product that is relavent to folks, you need to put yourself in their shoes and you need to write a story from their side.”

He left some advice for people at every level of every company… “You have to make every single detail perfect and limit the number of details.”

Phil Libin Keynote - Focus on Product & Design

Sat, 28 Apr 2012 20:10:00 -0400

Great Keynote presentation by Evernote’s CEO, Phil Libin touching on why he believes today is the best time to start a company (if you’re starting one for the right reasons). Reasons being…

App stores
Open source infrastructure
Freemium economics
Social media

He says to “focus on design and build the best product.” This wouldn’t have cut it five years ago but it does today. Advisors used to tell him that “the best product doesn’t always win” and although that used to be true, it’s not anymore, especially in the consumer internet space.

I also really liked a quote he provided from HBS professor Howard Stevenson explaining what he thinks entrepreneurship is:

“Entrepreneurship is the pursuit of opportunity without regard to resources currently controlled.” Phils interpretation is that if you have a vision or something that you really think the world needs then you pursue it without worrying about how you’re going to get there with what you have right now.

90% of the US are living in a radically different frame of reference...

Thu, 26 Apr 2012 13:54:00 -0400

Brian Roemmele wrote this great Quora post on the Accepting Payment Cards board.

The payments guru and Quora all-star wrote about a new program by Walmart that allows customers to order online > pay for the order with cash or a cash equivalent in a store within 48 hours > get the order shipped to their house.

To most Quora readers and even readers of my blog, this won’t sound very sexy. However, what Walmart did was very smart; from their product discovery process, solution definition and execution.

As Brian expresses, Walmart did what every product manager, startup and entrepreneur should do… they went out and listened to their customers. A Walmart survey concluded, “The majority of transactions at Walmart stores are paid with cash or cash equivalent, including debit cards,according to the company, and only about 15 percent of transactions are paid by credit.”

The tech world loves to harp on new and exciting technologies. Techcrunch writes about a brand new “innovative” payment service every other day. That’s great; innovation is great. However, what we all need to keep in mind is what Brian stated: “When I speak to, or in some cases, try to speak to, startup companies aiming to sell great Payment products and ideas outside of the tech savvy early adopters I bring up the 90% of the US that are living in a radically different frame of reference.”

My point here has little to do with the payments industry but just product ideas and startups in general. We need to put ourselves in the shoes of the actual customer and user. More times than not, it won’t be the tech savvy early adopter. It’s going to be people who are nothing like you or your friends. There is still lots of room for successful products and businesses to form around process improvements and experience improvements that don’t require crazy new technological advances as made evident by Walmarts new program.

I’m always looking to see what other people have in their...

Tue, 24 Apr 2012 08:44:24 -0400

I’m always looking to see what other people have in their dock so I figured I’d share a screen shot of mine.

Awesome talk about being the entrepreneur of your own life or...

Wed, 11 Apr 2012 22:47:00 -0400

Awesome talk about being the entrepreneur of your own life or living it in “Permanent Beta” from Reid Hoffman centered around his new book called ”The Start-up Of You: Adapt to the Future, Invest in Yourself, and Transform your Career.”

In short, the book suggests that you live your life and treat your career as if you’re a startup. He uses the term “Permanent Beta” to suggest that we recognize that we and our careers are full of bugs. We need to constantly be developed and tested like a product in beta or a startup company searching for a sustainable business model. If you don’t feel like you’re improving, developing and most importantly learning for at least 80% of your work time then you’re probably not in the best place. Reid is a believer that there is most likely significant upside in a career move that makes you feel like you’re in over your head.

Some of my favorites takeaways from the book were not those that were new but those that were motivating. Chapter 6 is “Take Intelligent Risks” and some of my favorite takeaways were:

“Neuropsychologist Rick Hanson puts it this way: ‘To keep our ancestors alive, Mother Nature evolved a brain that routinely tricked them into making three mistakes: overestimating threats, underestimating opportunities, and underestimating resources (for dealing with threats and fulfilling opportunities).’ The result is that we’re programmed to overestimate the risk in any given situation… Overestimating threats and avoiding losses may be a fine strategy for achieving evolution’s cold mandate to pass our genes on to future generations. But it’s not the way to make the most of this life.”
“When it’s not clear how something will play out, many people avoid it altogether. But the biggest and best opportunities frequently are the ones with the most question marks. Don’t let uncertainty lull you into overestimating the risk.”

As for the video above, I suggest watching at least the first half. Reid talks about why plans or roadmaps are embedded into the way we live… you are taught early on that if you work hard in school then you can get into a good college and if you get into a good college then you can get a good entry level job (maybe as an associate product manager) and if you do well then you’ll become a product manager > senior product manager > director > executive > la di da di da. Well, that’s what you’re supposed to do because that was the plan, right? Wrong… At least I’m starting to think that was wrong. You can take that path if you want simply because you were taught it was the right path but it may not be what you want to do; there is no ‘right’ path. Dead are the days of creating a 3 year career plan. Just like for web products, 3 years from now a product could be completely irrelevant; you can hardly roadmap more than 6 months out… The same goes for your career. In the book, he talks about how Detroit (well, the major car companies) became irrelevant after being too complacent. The book places an importance in tapping into your network and making the most of it. It provides lots of examples for when and how (and as expected, many incorporate LinkedIn).

What this means for me… I’m a product manager today and was originally an associate product manager and before that I was an intern and a student at a “good” college but that doesn’t mean I have to be a senior product manager on up to an executive next. The landscape is changing and what you do or want to do can change too.

I’ve used “you” and “I” in an annoying manner but that’s because I’m trying paraphrase what Reid suggests while relating it to my personal experiences. This book entered my life at the perfect time. I’m about to turn 25 and am feeling a mid-mid life crisis coming on. I own a great house and have a beautiful girlfriend so life is pretty good but I also care a lot about what I work on everyday of my life so it’s a great time to step back and reflect on my career up until this point to think about how I want to change it going forward. Maybe I can get off the stereotypical product management career ladder and become a “product guy” at a small startup. Hell, I could still become a fireman, a full time student, a scuba diving instructor, or an intern at a VC firm. I could take a gap year… I don’t want to look back when I’m 30 and say “now I’m too old to try this”.. whatever “this” ends up being in my career.

Watch the video and read the book. It’s refreshingly thought provoking and inspiring.

Pretty funny and often true representation (for product...

Tue, 10 Apr 2012 10:12:15 -0400

Pretty funny and often true representation (for product employees and others) at some gigs. Things are top down.

"This passion reflects, I think, something that we’ve always believed as a company. That is, that..."

Tue, 03 Apr 2012 08:44:08 -0400

“This passion reflects, I think, something that we’ve always believed
as a company. That is, that the best internet services aren’t just
ways for people to escape their everyday lives. Instead, those
services with longevity –- with real “legs” –- enhance folks’
day-to-day experiences, deepen their relationships, and show them
things about themselves they didn’t know before.”

- From Pal Sciarra’s Pinterest blog post

"‘Managing the product’ means deciding what we do to the product and then making it..."

Mon, 26 Mar 2012 13:30:00 -0400

“

‘Managing the product’ means deciding what we do to the product and then making it happen.

When you unpack that, it involves strategy (what is important to do?), resources (how much time can we spend on it?), managing development (what do we need to build in order to do it?), managing experience (how will it look and work, how does it integrate into what we already have?). And all of it with regard to the bottom line of the business. Given a strategy, resources we have, a user experience bar to uphold — given all that, what can we do and why is it worth doing?

…

I try to lead every decision with user experience. What is the user-facing situation we want to change? Or if the motivation isn’t because of a user benefit, but a pure business reason — what is the impact on the user, and how can we align incentives so this at minimum makes sense to the user? This is critical.

…

Once the process is started, and programmers are implementing, we don’t bite off too much at once. We want to design one thing, implement it, and then see it in action. The design -> program -> review cycle is critical and it works best when it is a small and tight cycle.

Throughout the design -> program -> review cycle, it’s important to focus on flows not individual screens.

…

One of the best words you can internalize is “satisfice“ — in other words, “done enough” given a certain goal. There is no absolute measure of “done.” It’s up to you to decide, because all projects can go on forever. The best way to determine when you are done is to again lead with design, where the function of design is to reach a solution to a problem. When the problem is no longer a big enough problem to matter, you are done.

”

- Awesome post by Ryan Singer of 37Signals

I love this… The original sketch (6 years ago) by @Jack...

Wed, 21 Mar 2012 19:39:00 -0400

I love this… The original sketch (6 years ago) by @Jack that became what is known today as Twitter.

"If there is one constant aspect to work, it is change."

Wed, 21 Mar 2012 18:48:45 -0400

“If there is one constant aspect to work, it is change.”

- From “Axure RP 6 Prototyping Essentials”“

Some [more] Necessities...

Sun, 04 Mar 2012 13:16:00 -0500

I provided a list of a bunch of ‘things’ that I felt I couldn’t live without in June 2010. 1.5 years later, I’d like to add to it.

Evernote - Biggest addition. I knew about it for a long time but never dedicated myself to it. When I switched jobs, I did exactly that and I can’t imagine life without it now. If someone held it hostage, I’d probably pay a pretty penny to get it back.
Axure - This is a relatively new one for me but just like Evernote, I’ve begun to dedicate a lot of time to it and I’m starting to wonder how more people in my professional circle aren’t heavy users. This is already replacing the painful old processes of using Word, Visio, Mockflow, Invisionapp, and InstantShot! to produce requirements.
Readability - Super awesome. One of those products that “just works.” I try to read all articles online through here. They’re paving the way for easy integration with other services such as Pulse which is one of my other favorite ways to consume content online. Great experience across all of my devices.
Capri - my jug that I got 6 months ago. I can’t even remember what it was like without her.
Spotify - I bought a premium account the first day that it opened up to the US and I haven’t spend a dollar on an iTunes song since.
iPad 2 - I don’t think this requires an explanation
Pulse - My primary news source alongside Twitter
Quora - From day 1, I questioned how long Quora would last for me but it’s passed the test of time so I need to include it on the list.

Notable things that I’d remove from the 2010 list…

"Other aspects of PayPal’s pre-eBay corporate culture were also unique. Company decisions were..."

Fri, 02 Mar 2012 15:48:00 -0500

“Other aspects of PayPal’s pre-eBay corporate culture were also unique. Company decisions were made according to reasoned arguments rather than executive experience. It was allowed and even encouraged for low level employees to criticize executive decisions and lobby for their own positions. All employees, not just managers, were made aware in detail of company finances and performance. Levchin and Thiel intentionally looked for a specific personality profile in their early hires. They hired workaholic engineers, often graduate school dropouts with anti-establishment leanings, and avoided hiring MBAs, consultants, or people they considered “frat boys” or “jocks”… An intensely competitive environment and a shared struggle to keep the company solvent despite many setbacks, contributed to a strong and lasting camaraderie. All of these have been cited as contributing to the group work ethic that has led to success for so many of their newer start-up companies.”

- From the “PayPal Mafia” Wikipedia page

Gamification as a Staple in Health

Mon, 20 Feb 2012 18:19:00 -0500

I’ve read Vinod Khosla’s guest post (“The ‘Unhyped’ New Areas in Internet & Mobile”) on Techcrunch yesterday several times now. We should feel pretty fortunate to be able to obtain this type of information for free.

Of the 12 opportunity areas that he details, Health 2.0 excites me the most (for now). I’d love to take a stab at working on something in this pool in the next few years. I think devices and apps that let you measure for the sake of improving are really neat and could be extremely important in advancing us to the next step in preventing health problems. Apps and services that really excite me include Jawbones UP, Glooko, Withings connected devices, CareZone.com, and HealthRally.

My dog has been having a lot of health issues lately and I’ve already trashed a bunch of the paper receipts and didn’t keep a log of each problem, vet visit and medication administered and I’ve only had her for 6 months. I started using Evernote to keep track but it’s just not made for something like this. Then I thought about how important this would be for people as well. The next day, Techcrunch wrote an article about Carezone.com. I think that’s why this space is soo exciting. It’s relatively easy to find problems and think of solutions. As usual, implementation isn’t as easy but I can’t help but think that I’ll dedicate some of my time to working in this space in the next few years.

I think Vinods article had an important and probably overlooked common theme. He mentioned gaming and gamification almost 10 times. For several months now, I’ve been realizing how important and powerful incorporating game mechanics into pretty much everything (along with a strong emphasis on design) is and will be in creating rich and engaging experiences that are fun and instill trust which will be extremely relevant in “Health 2.0” and “mhealth.” Just the other day I thought of a game that incorporates a lot of the game mechanics in popular Zynga Mobile games (Words With Friends & Scramble) such as Catch Up, Turn Play and Randomisers that I believe would get many people to do a few more exercises each day. I think the average person would play/exercise on average for 2 minutes a session, 3 times a day which could result in an average of 100 push ups (or other exercises) per day more than that person previously would have done. That’s only 6 minutes a day but that equates to over 36 hours a year and over 36,000 push ups. I truly believe that a game and fun factor could be the difference in somebody cranking out thousands of push ups, sit ups and other exercises each year versus not.

Straight from Vinod himself:

“Both gamification (separate from gaming) and social may become basic tools that enable many of the areas I mentioned.”
“One could reasonably put gamification of everything from health to education to training to shopping as a new emotional tool for applications.”
“This is starting to change; it makes me optimistic that what has not worked so far can now work, especially given the role gamification can play in increasing student interest and social can play in increasing peer and teacher support and assistance.”
“Alpha geeks have been hacking together solutions to track various types of personal data for years, but with the advent of open source hardware, cheap sensors and smart mobile applications, we believe that there will be a new class of applications unlocking the value of this data. And, in doing so, they will reshape the understanding of our own health and the health care industry as we know it and probably provide a lot of fun, games and motivation along the way.”
“One of the evolutions we will see is that these utilities (and other real/virtual crossover areas like gamification) will require less, not more, input from us as they evolve – as the virtual bleeds into the physical, the enhanced experience will become more seamless and a natural part of activity”
“There will be both large permanent innovations and categories established as well as passing fads (especially in gaming). I don’t list games as a “new pond” here, though it will continue to grow and surprise us in categories—whatever the next Angry Birds/Farmville phenomenon will be—while gamification will become pervasive in everything from education to health to shopping.”

Sadly, I haven’t been to a doctor in months or maybe even years now that I think about it. I can’t help but think that I’d go at least 1 more time a year if it were more fun, rewarding, and less of a pain in the ass. I’m sure the wave of advancements that will come with “Health 2.0”, “mHealth” and gamification will do just that. Or better yet, create solutions that prevent me from physically having to actually go to a doctors office for 2-3 hours at a time to get a 20 minute check-up and get some tests ran that only take 10 minutes especially when those tests will just be sent somewhere else.

"Defend and respect the user’s voice"

Wed, 15 Feb 2012 19:28:12 -0500

“Defend and respect the user’s voice”

- One of Twitters core values

"we frequently make product decisions that may reduce our short-term revenue or profitability if we..."

Thu, 02 Feb 2012 14:53:47 -0500

“we frequently make product decisions that may reduce our short-term revenue or profitability if we believe that the decisions are consistent with our mission and benefit the aggregate user experience and will thereby improve our financial performance over the long term.”

- I love it. Excerpt from Facebooks S-1.

My Nest thermostat. I’m wondering what the faint blue...

Wed, 25 Jan 2012 23:14:00 -0500

My Nest thermostat. I’m wondering what the faint blue light at the top is for… It’s only visible via the iPhones camera and not the naked eye.

"Incentives matter and if you can figure out what peoples incentives are, there is a good chance..."

Mon, 02 Jan 2012 20:06:00 -0500

“Incentives matter and if you can figure out what peoples incentives are, there is a good chance you’ll figure out how they’ll behave”

- Freakonomics

"We’re not social. We’re not viral. We just focus on trying to make a product that’s great for us...."

Thu, 08 Dec 2011 08:27:37 -0500

“We’re not social. We’re not viral. We just focus on trying to make a product that’s great for us. And be as open and transparent about it as possible.”

- Phil Libin - CEO of Evernote

Jawbone UP Review

Mon, 14 Nov 2011 22:16:10 -0500

The lack of Jawbone UP reviews has inspired me to write my own. I’m hoping other early adopters will find this and share their thoughts. The inability to find many reviews also shows that either the product isn’t considered to be as “cool” amongst the tech world as I had anticipated, that people are skeptical of its accuracy, or that it’s priced incorrectly.

Note: I’ve only had the wristband for a couple of days and I’m not using the social/team features or food tracking.

Is it “Cool”???

If it’s not cool then I’m a much bigger dork than my girlfriend claims. I’m fascinated by the product and I’m super stoked for the future based on this first gen. Being able to analyze your life (activity and sleep) is very fucking cool and quite frankly, I’m shocked it’s not something that most common folk have been able to do until now. The products tagline, “Make Healthy Living Fun & Social” doesn’t actually interest me. I’m more interested in just knowing and being able to quantify my daily activity (or inactivity) for no other reason then the fact that I think it’s cool to be able to do so.

Why I Bought It

The cool factor obiously played a role in my purchase decision. If I could have bought a $100 iPhone app, $100 ankle band or a $100 business card sized device that offered the same ability to track and analyze my activity and sleeping ‘performance’ than I would have. However, I was not interested in the identically priced Fitbit because I knew I’d wash the clip in the washing machine or forget to attach it on a daily basis.
I wouln’t have bought the UP and wouldn’t find it nearly as “cool” if it didn’t track my sleeping patterns. In fact, I may have bought it if the only thing it did was track my sleeping patterns (which shows that there’s a unique market opportunity there). Sleep interests me because it’s mysterious… we don’t know much about our own sleeping habits or what goes on while sleeping. I’ve long suspected that I’m a light sleeper and hopefully I’ll be able to quantify that soon.

Secondly, I wanted (and still want) to see how they incorporated game mechanics into the UP experience. As I disclaimed earlier, I have not taken advantage of any of the social features (which itself looks like the primary game mechanic). I’m a true believer that everything we do in life will be ‘gamified’ over the next few years because games are true motivators. It’s hard not to believe this after watching Jane McGonigal or Seth Priebatsch speak.

I primarily bought it because of a developing personal fixation to work on things that improve peoples lives (which involves incorporating gaming). This is a fire that has been slowly spreading inside and products such as the UP wristband and the Glooko glucose monitoring solution make this seem like an area I could realistically work in because I know I could help improve the applications by making them more useful and user friendly. As an old mentor had written on his whiteboard for over a year, “Data, data, data.” Collecting this data is the first step but making it pretty and helping its owners visualize it and make meaning of it is extremely powerful. This is a world in which I could make an impact on technology and peoples lives while thoroughly enjoying doing so.

Product Improvements

The majority of my recommended product enhancements are obvious and shared amongst the other early adopters’ reviews that I’ve found.

An accompanying Website - The current website allows you to sign in and manage your Account Info (Name, Gender, Address, Password, Email Preferences, etc.), and … Oh wait, that’s it. I’m assuming Jawbone will roll out a full fledged website to accompany their native app before the next gen wristband comes out but I’m pretty disappointed that they don’t already have one, considering how underwhelming the native iOS app is. I want to see detailed reporting including actual analysis with intelligent tips. I want to be able to export data and add notes inline with the graphs. Data, data, data… I bought this to track and make use of data so please help me do that, or better yet, analyze it for me. Also, what is a step exactly? What exactly is light sleep versus deep sleep? According to my math, a step has been 2.5 feet for me but I want to be told this by Jawbone. Please improve your help and education.
Ability to Set a Default Sleep Time Range - I and 75% of other UPers will forget to manually put their wristband in sleep mode at least once a week. I’m rarely awake after 1am and sleeping past 7am so let me set my default sleep mode to those times in case I forget to push the button one night. If I manually throw it in sleep mode then great. I’m pretty sure Jawbone could roll this functionality out with a software update.
Wireless Syncing - This seems to be the most common complaint but if you bought the first gen, you shouldn’t be complaining… It’s not like Jawbone didn’t make this known ahead of time. I’m assuming that bluetooth or wireless hardware would either not have fit inside the wristband, and/or would have blown up the price. Either way, I understand it and accepted it but most consumers won’t. Wireless syncing isn’t just becoming expected anymore, but more importantly it improves the overall experience. It’s about creating magical products that just work the way they’re supposed to without any human intervention. Consumers don’t want to think. They want and need their interaction with products and services to require little to no thinking. They have to be effortless. You look somewhere and you see what you want. Not, you plug in, look, and see what you want. Not a huge deal when reading it in a blog but it becomes one when you’re interested in seeing your data several times a day but need to plug it in to do so. Like I said, I accepted this by buying it but completely understand why most people will wait until the second gen comes out with wireless syncing capability.
Expose Network Data - Jawbone has probably refrained from doing this to push their social features but I still think they should expose top level data. I want to know how I stack up against others in my demographic and across the entire UP network/community. You’re starting to collect a wealth of knowledge so share it!
Inactivity nudges - I literally laughed out loud when my band vibrated while working today. It tickled and I wasn’t getting up to walk around or stretch. Perhaps I would have if it vibrated repeatedly until I moved around but since it was one quick vibration, I wasn’t motivated enough to remove myself from my computer screen.
Improved Native iOS App - The app has a loonnngggg way to go (even though I think it’s a great start). Considering there is no web app yet, I’ll put all of these recommendations under the native iOS app but I’d expect them to persist in the website as well once it’s up and running.

Actual Analysis and Tips - I got 1 hour and 28 minutes of deep sleep and 5 hours and 28 minutes of light sleep last night. Awesome. That’s great to know. It would actually mean something if I knew that was average (or good or bad) from a medical point of view. It would be great to know how I stack up against other 24 year old males. It would be great to know how I may be able to improve it. Thanks for telling me that my sleep quality is 69 but what the hell does that mean? Tell me all of that!

I walked 4.6 miles today… Awesome. How far did I walk at 7:34pm? How does that compare to the same time the previous day or the average for the same day the entire month before? How does this stack up against the rest of the network? I have no clue because the app can’t tell me any of that.

Recommendation

Don’t buy it. “WTF, Why not!” …

Despite my abundance of excitement, I don’t recommend buying the product yet. I’m soo happy with the first generation that I’m convinced the next generation will be worth the wait. Jawbone doesn’t need to make many improvements but the few they can (and I think will) make will be worth the wait.

With that being said, this market is extremely young and I’ll be proud in 5 years when I say that I bought and still own the first generation UP wristband and am thrilled (but not surprised) by how far we’ve come since then.

Holes

Because of the fact that I’ve only had the wristband for a few days, I didn’t talk about a lot of things including but not limited to the social and gaming elements (challenges & goals), food tracking, or accuracy (which is probably more important than anything else). More notably, I didn’t talk at all about whether I feel encouraged to live healthier. I can’t yet say that I want to walk 100 more steps tomorrow than I did today or sleep for 10 more minutes. That’ll determine the true verdict. If that happens then the $100 price tag may be a bargain and this thing will really take off. Until then, I’m going to continue collecting my own data and thinking of ways that I can make positive impacts on peoples lives with unobtrusive technology.