Designing for the first 15 minutes

March 26th, 2010 • 1 comment Digital Content, Social Media

• We are designers are very attuned to bad experiences.”
• Designers are designing for themselves – but the philosophy falls flat for the new user experience because we’re only a new user once. Esp. true for social networks because we can’t go back and feel what it’s like to discover and become friends with a new group of people for the first time.
• Ask for registration after users have done something worth saving – after they have invested time in your site. Another strategy is to prove that what’s over the registration wall is worth registering for. (Gowalla does it well)
• Design a roadmap around an ah-ha moment. Let people continue with the new user flow even if they haven’t confirmed their email yet so they can get to the ahha moment sooner.
• Eliminate everything before the ah-ha oment.
• The feedback cycle for getting a user from new user to very engaged and active user is important but a lot of this hearkens from game design – (eg. spore. mint.com, bejewelled.com) At Facebook, the high level feedback is around sharing.
• User education is an experience – not something they have to read out of a textbook. (eg. glitch.com, yammer, games)
• Games teach you controls as part of the gameplay – go left, right  try. “In Super Mario Galaxy, the first task is to jump over the bunnies, which is fun. You don’t even realize you’re being taught because you are so immersed in it.”
• Tumblr is great example as well.

Social media is your bubble. Not mine.

March 26th, 2010 • 2 comments Culture Briefings, Social Media

Umair Haque’s controversial post has caused quite a stir in the community. Bud Caddell’s response mirrors my thoughts and brilliantly articulates the flaws in Umair’s argument. I wanted to share a few thoughts of my own to add to this debate.

It’s largely home to weak, artificial connections, what I call thin relationships. Today social media is trading in low-quality conncetions – linkages that are unlikely to yield meaningful, lasting relationships.

Umair assets that thin connections offer no value and I have an issue with that. His statement assumes that people are not smart, in that they let crowd their lives (and social networks) with meaningless relationships that add no value to them. I look at it differently. For one, and this is mostly a nod to Bud’s point, social media isn’t meant to help you create new relationships – but to help strengthen existing ones. Frequent interactions whether they are by sharing information, inconsequential tweets or debates, help cement an existing relationship and give it a foundation.

Regarding thin relationships, Haque assumes that they don’t already exist in our “offline” lives. Neighbors, car-pool groups, the yoga group, parents of your kid’s friends – these are all thin relationships. And they do add value to your life – even if the only value they add is convenience. Social media has helped accelerate the quantity of thin relationships we can now create – AND it has created new kinds of value we can extract from these relationships.

I frankly also believe that as a culture we are past the point where an “online” relationship doesn’t constitute a “real” relationship. I look at an online friend, acquaintance or person as somebody I have simply not met in-person yet. Social media tools and technologies have afforded us the ability to get a proper picture of an “online” person’s personality, likes, dislikes and thought processes. We aren’t in the 1990’s where an “online” person was just a username in an IRC chatroom. As such, our definition of the word “relationship” has evolved. Perhaps it hasn’t been verbalized yet.

The “relationships” at the heart of the social bubble aren’t real because they’re not marked by mutual investment .

Social media is an investment that works for multiple relationships. The design of the technology allows your investment in it to affect and reach more than one person at any given time. That said, naturally, if you develop an affinity towards someone thinking, you are bound to communicate more often with them and as such “invest” more time into the relationship. What Haque misses here is that the relationships in social media begin by mutual interest and have the flexibility to grow together or apart into various branches.

In response to Haque’s point about social media’s inability to replace traditional gatekeepers – I think that Social media is not meant to replace or dis-intermediate any gatekeepers but complement their efforts.

People invest in low-quality content. Farmville ain’t exactly Casablanca. Third, and most damaging, is the ongoing weakening of the Internet as a force for good. Not only is Farmville not Casablanca, it’s not Kiva either. One of the seminal examples of the promise of social media, Kiva allocates micro-credit more meaningfully. By contrast, Farmville is largely socially useless. It doesn’t make kids tangibly better off; it just makes advertisers better off.

Calling games like Farmville socially useless, is the biggest and most profound logically flaw in his argument. What differentiates useful from the useless? Because kiva.org is impacting change and Farmville is largely creating entertainment – is that the basis for dismissing the value games like farmville add to the social and cultural environments we thrive in?

If that’s the underlying principle for Haque’s argument, he is essentially implying that entertaining pursuits that don’t make us better off, are useless. And that’s bullshit. We are multi-dimensional people, with multi-dimensional skills, interests, hobbies and desires. If I can donate $50 to Kiva.org, I am also capable of engaging with farmville for two hours. And no other platform reflects this better than social media.

As a society needs a balance of do-gooders, entertainers, bankers, artists and critics to flourish and grow, the evolution of social media and social technologies will only happen with a balance of similar pursuits. For every kiva.org, we need a farmville. At the end of the day, it’s not just about how we are impacting change, but also about how are we constantly challenging the status-quo and enriching our critical thought processes, that creates value and elevates the society as a whole.

Social media, the buzz, the conversations are not in a bubble. They are happening all around us – in our physical world. They are shaping and re-shaping our offline cultures constantly and with that, it is constantly challenging how we look at the world. We are all re-evaluating our opinions and ideas with an acceleration that wasn’t really around before.

Social media is a bubble, because we call it so. We (digital strategists, social media “gurus,” adagency and creative types) live in our own bubble only listening to, responding to and exposing ourselves to each other’s thoughts and ideas. The minute you step out of it and surround yourself with a different set of people, a different set of voices – you’ll notice that social media is not really a bubble anymore.

Just my two cents. Would love to hear what you think.

Things I learn

March 17th, 2010 • 2 comments On my mind...

I have a new perspective on my job and what I do: I’m a problem-solver and thanks to a strong team and a terrific boss who never shies from giving me feedback, I’m a good problem-solver. The thrill of working on the agency side is you never know what type of challenge will come your way. Every once in a while, I like to look back and take stock of things I’ve learned and become good at and new weaknesses I’ve identified in myself. Perhaps because it is spring and the weather is getting warmer, I’m in more introspective mood… or perhaps it’s because I’m at a roadblock regarding a current challenge I’m working on! But I wanted to capture these thoughts before losing them.

1. I’ve noticed I’ve become better and I continue to become better at presenting my case, argument and disagreements. It sounds so peculiar. But as responsibilities increase and my work touches more people, I have had to sometimes fight harder to protect it or to simply make sure its message doesn’t get diluted. And I suppose after trying every sort of communication skill, I’ve come to realize that data is the best way to win my case. It’s not about I like or I think. It’s about, this will work for three reasons, 1) 2) 3)

2. I’ve also become very good at identifying the problem and framing the right question. Client assignments are sometimes, very specific but most times they are very broad. The onus then is on us to put smart and intelligent thinking to the issue at hand and before even crafting a solution, frame the right question.

3. Constraints make my work better. Budget constraint? Speed-to-market? Timing? Resources? Tight boundaries around a project result into a smarter output.

4. Tell a story. Tell a story. Tell a story!! Solutions to a problem don’t mean anything when they are not framed in the right manner. And after 5 years of creating decks and presenting “solutions,” the most effective way to present it is in form of a story.

5. Visuals make an idea or a solution ten thousand times more effective. I am not a designer, but I’ve learned how to become resourceful. Powerpoint and a MAC are my best friends.

6. My most successful meetings happen when everyone in the group know exactly what is to be achieved out of the meeting. I am not an expert yet – but am getting better everyday at running very effective meetings. Also, something I learned from Behance (make things happen!) and I put to use everyday is: action steps. Once the meeting is drawing to a close, I make it a point to recap the responsibilities and duties assigned and make sure everyone is on the same page about next steps before leaving the meeting.

7. Details matter. I’ve learned this from my boss. He must have been a journalist or a teacher in his previous life. He’s a stickler when it comes to grammar, typos, alignments and using the “right” word to convey an idea. It a very frustrating process to go through a deck with him and have him point out numerous seemingly minor mistakes in wordings everytime. But I’m glad I’ve taken them to heart – because the resulting end product is impeccable. Brilliant. Stellar. When I am managing my own teams, I know I’m going to demand perfection of the details.

8. My personality is such that I get bored easily. The ebb and flow of work life means that you aren’t always working on the funnest or the most interesting problems. To deal with this, I’ve resorted to teaching myself new skills. Here’s what I mean by this – taking a class or reading a book about design is not going to make me a designer. But it’s going to give me a different perspective on problem-solving. It’s giving me a new lens to approach a problem and that excites me. My current obsession is with web usability and user experience. Why are certain things the way they are on the Internet?

I am indulging my obsession and I’m realizing that I’d be good at developing digital products and experiences. Not the best – but better than I am now. And as long as I’m learning – even if what I’m learning is just a new way to think, I’M LOVING MY JOB!

9. The most important skills I have learned however is to believe in myself. And to not lose conviction. I’ve learned to be assertive in situations that required me to step up to the game and demand due credit or attention. Being assertive has actually made me respect myself more and made me enjoy my job more and I cannot thank my boss and my work environment enough for helping me indirectly develop this skill.

I suppose neither of this is rocket science. If I’d taken notes of everything I’d learned from business books, I’m sure these five things would top the list. But I’ve learned these things by doing and making mistakes and I think they are now indelibly imprinted in my head.

I’m sure there are other areas I need to get better at and constantly improve. One of them is to better manage a client. I’m getting there… but would love to hear some feedback. What are some of things you have learned and what are some things you are hoping to get better at ?

MoleSkine Secerts!

March 11th, 2010 • Life in the big city

I made a very interesting discovery last night.

My MoleSkine ran out of pages and I desperately needed a new one. So I walked to Strand. (FYI – They always have a terrific collection of Moleskine’s for atleast $3-$4 less than traditional venues)

I’m pretty loyal to the black hard-covered ruled notebook. It retailed at Strand for $14. As I was buying it, I noticed a fatter, thicker version of a ruled notebook and I picked it up to discover it wasn’t a notebook but a 2010 Daily Planner. And it was on sale at Strand for $7.95!!

I quickly scanned through a open copy of the Planer and noticed that it was just like the regular notebook! (Only with dates and times on every single page – but who cares?!)I’m only concerned with writing and anyways my Moleskine, by the time I finish it, is barely recognizable. I liked the idea of having more pages to write and doodle on.

For $8, I not only ended up getting twice the amount of pages, but also a cool little telephone booklet and all these fancy features like a calendar, travel planning page and such.

So yea – a little known secret of the publishing industry. Yearly Daily Planners become quite worthless after December and come January, you’ll find most of these in sale racks. The logic is that most people do their planner/ calendar shopping before the new year begins and they don’t quite enjoy the idea of starting a new planner a few months into the new year.

Works for me though And if your concern is the pages and the writing, it should work for you too.

Social Media for Small Business Owners

March 3rd, 2010 • 1 comment Social Media

My talk about Social Media for Small Business Owners along with Morgan Johnston of Jet Blue was a huge success. I went in wondering if I needed to down a few shots of vodka before giving my talk, but turned out that I had a very attentive audience who was hungry to learn! And how!

Like I mentioned earlier, I wanted to focus on talk on giving SBO’s a framework to think about their social media strategies. I still think that was the right approach. The crowd was a mix of SBO’s at all levels – there were folks who had no idea what Twitter or a Fan Page was and folks who were still wondering how to use Linkedin.com to grow their business. While I found most of the attendees very warm and eager to learn, it was a little disheartening when a few still referred to social media as a quick solution to “send more traffic” to their site. You can’t lose weight without working out- how can you then gain the benefits social media offers without putting the time and effort into it?!

Anyways, here is the final presentation that I shared with the SBOs:

Social Media For Small Business Owners

View more presentations from Jinal Shah.

Would love to hear your thoughts. I was psyched that my presentation was featured on the home-page of Slideshare.net