Accidentally in Code

Tag: nsconf

NSConf15: Marco Arment – App Marketing For Small Developers
My notes from Marco’s talk at @NSConf [video].

Credit: Flickr / Joe The Goat Farmer

Hopefully convince you to consider marketing in apps.

Truly effective marketing is a respectable part of business. As necessary as good engineering, and good design. Refusing to consider is just doing yourself and your apps is a disservice.

Marketing is fine. Even good. We need it. But we need the right kind.

Ensuring your app fits into a viable market, getting people to notice it, and giving them a reason to spread the word.

Waterfall is a widely despised development process.

We think the best products come from collaboration between engineering and design and product. But still expect marketing to be bolted on to the end. But this is not a recipe for quality.

What is your marketing?

A lot of developers think that the app store is your marketing. It will do marketing for us. We just need to put it out there and the app store will make customers flood in and give us money.

Maybe working for the top grossing ones. But chances are we are not going to be in this list. We treat the app store like we are waiting for this to happen to us. This is not going to happen.

We rely on what? Search. Generic search terms are really bad. Overcast is 21 in list for “podcast”, no-one will find it. Especially with so many irrelevant results.

Advertising can be part of marketing, but probably not best channel, especially if you don’t make enough per user.

1% response rate, $4 per user acquisition. Even a $5 app will make a loss. Can’t make it work.

Marketing is part of the process for Apple, part of product design.

Apple doesn’t need to do that much with marketing, because they make products that market themselves.

Marketing helps avoid wasted engineering effort. It doesn’t “just happen”, foreseeable if start thinking about things at the beginning.

Idea to do a podcast app for iOS. Scratching own itch. Most ideas are awful, talk self out of them, but kept going.

Made a demo app, and it works. But knew turning into a full shipping app would be a ton of work.

The lure of a difficult engineering problem is dangerous. Think effort will be rewarded. Reality is that nobody cares.

“The amount of effort you put into something doesn’t ensure it’s value to others”

Marketable foundation of the app has to succeed. Look at what succeeds, many of them take a lot of effort, many do not.

Try and balance developer happiness with success: a few hard things, and a lot of easy things.

Hard things:

Instapaper: text parser, kindle hacking.

Text parser really worth it. Kindle, not so much. Not marketable.

Podcast: custom audio engine.

Not sure marketable, had to make sure the rest of the app was marketable as well.

Started with a basic marketing outline and basic research. Sounds like a business BS term. Probably is. Think of it as a text file full of notes and bullet points.
- What am I making?
- Who might use it?
- How many of these people are there?
- What else is out there? What is your competition?
If no competition, this is a massive red flag. This is a pretty big world, there are a lot of apps out there. Should ask why you haven’t found it. Or the market is too small, for whatever you are thinking about making.

Big competitor: do they have some massive advantage you can’t compete with? E.g. network effect.

“It’s like popular thing but for X”

Lots of competition for this. Opportunitistic. A lot of people think they have some great idea for something that already exists, with just a tiny change.

E.g. instagram for dogs. Why not just use instagram for your dog pictures?

What you want to see: some small, medium sized apps. Maybe they don’t do it all the way, or don’t do a really great job of it.

Why would someone use my app instead of the alternatives?

The answer to this question is marketing. Big part of it is pricing.

Factors not causing low app prices:
- Apple
- no trials
- no paid upgrades
- top charts
- bad search
- star reviews
We live in a time of over-abundance, every single market is crowded.

So much out there, so easy for new stuff to be ignored.

Paid-up-front-pricing. Appeals because we don’t have to do much. Avoids tricky issues, and tricky coding. Avoids support issues.

Really big downside: Paid upfront prices give a lot of people a reason to ignore your app.

Can still work, but you face this hurdle for every new customer.

If you can make your app look free, that’s better. Will have to compare on other factors, like your merits.

Ideally want to be recognised by name. Avoid a lot of these challenges entirely. Not comparison shopping, they are looking for your app. Avoid so many problems.

How do you do that? This is marketing.

Speading the word
- Advertise all over eyeballs
- Blast email all over people
- Make people connect all over your brand
- Optimize all over the app store
(Replace prepositions with “all over”, see if still makes uncomfortable. it usually does.)

Stand out from the crowd. Using design. iOS7 visual language much more accessible to developers. Much easier to stand out and be good, because much less cost in doing that.

Have notable features. If you can do that, you can stand out with noticeable features. This does not mean the most features. If you have all the features, very hard to make them stand out.

Knew wasn’t going to have all the features anyway, because other apps had years. Wasn’t going to match it. Concentrated on small number of big features to stand out.

Downloaded all the apps could find. Took pictures of every screen. Used it for a while. Wanted to know what they were good at, what they were not good at. Made an honest pros and cons list.

If you don’t make these comparisons, customers will.

For every advantage, is it compelling enough that people might use your app just for this?

How easy would it be for the competitor to erase this advantage?

Enjoy the big-company strategy umbrella. Apple focuses on the 80%, if you can live on the edge of that, can still be a big market.

Wrote giant marketing bullet list. Before building any of the app, just had the prototype. Before even built the app.

Smart speed – invisible feature. Recipe for a thankless job. The better it works, the less people notice it. Wasn’t first to market, RSS Radio was, but no-one mentioned it. Did a better job of marketing it.
- Gave it a descriptive but catchy name
- Made it prominent in the app
- Show people why it is good
Bring in testers
- Bring in testers. TestFlight has a 1K user limit. Use as many as you can.
- Invite the press (gently).
- If you can’t get more than a few users to try it for free before launch, red flag!
A lot of features look like, here are some options. No explanation. No tooltips on iOS.

Took a nameless feature and branded it.

When was done with the app, marketing was done. Knew how was going to sell the app.

Very simple stuff, if you plan for it from the start.

Here’s what I made, this is why it’s good, try it if it’s good.

Reviews knew what to focus on, reviews knew what to focus on.

Combining not just eng and design from the start, but eng, design, and marketing. Eng and design need each other, marketing ties everything together to make a more successful product.
February 12, 2016
NSConf – Jessie Char – Expert of Nothing
My notes from @jessiechar‘s talk at @nsconf [video].

Credit: Wikimedia

Going through a period of transition. Very fluid. Feel uncomfortable prescribing processes to people.

Ambivalence is not the same as apathy. Ambivalence – caring too much about both sides to make a decision. Apathy – not caring enough to make a decision. Same result, but different. Why process is so interesting.

Really easy to spout an opinion out and find people to agree with you. Like a drug. Feels so good to have people agree with you about things.

Then people grow these army of supporters, live in this world of everywhere they think turns to gold. And then why not profit about that.

Common in design critique.

Part of it is moving fast – want to make quick calls, save time for people. But realise later lost elements they liked, or gained elements they don’t.

What appears convictive and decisive crumbles.

Can be easier to be convictive when not constantly stating opinions.

State what isn’t working, not what should happen.

Prescriptive feedback can have good intentions, but if no description provided it can lead you down a rabbit hole.

Taking a step back from opinions can help you give a much more clear explanation of what you think.

White dress / blue dress – good illustration of how people can perceive the same information completely differently.

Develop a shared vocabulary. When you work with other people, important to have shared goals, want to have the same end goal. But some things can get lost in translation. Debates where people agree, but think they disagree because of the words they are using. Or the opposite, can really bites you in the ass later.

PSA: Sometimes you find someone’s understanding of something does not match up with your own understanding. Lot of people correct people on the internet. Starts with “Actually”, it sounds like a question, but not a question. Actually is a state of mind, where you feel the need to adjust everyone’s opinion. Sentiment – you hear something somebody else thinks and “actually, I disagree with you”. Actually is the truth or fact of the situation. Try and avoid that kind of interaction with people, that kind of corrective tone.

Communication on a scale: literal meaning, to colloquial understanding. Sweet spot in the middle. Then buzz words, the aspirational words that people use. It’s like language inflation, and even appropriation.

Rock star. What it really means is a celebrity known primarily for making music.

Means: we want someone who is good at their job

Read: an entitled engineer who sends passive aggressive emails to the office manager when the kegerator is tapped out.

Raconteur. A person uses captivating narrative to convey a story.

Mean: A person who cares about the overall experience of a project to which they contribute.

Read: A marketing person who didn’t get their MBA but still wants to sound fancy on LinkedIn.

Bespoke: Made to order clothes.

Mean: Artisanal solutions for discerning customer.

Read: Regular work with a different name.

Ladies

Commotion over GG. Feminism finally became widely discussed topic. Think she might be exempt for it, because doing pretty well. But death threats and violent comments are not the entry level to sexism.

“But you can fix a computer but I bet you can’t cook an egg!” ~Guy at the Apple Store

Used to get way worse comments than this working at the genius bar. “Are you sure”, wanting 2nd opinions.

“Since you are competent at a traditionally masculine activity, you must suck at traditionally feminine activities.”

“I’m sorry but we just have to ask: are you an escort?” ~Dudes at WWDC.

“It is so unimaginable that a woman would attend a tech conference. You must be here to serve us in some way.”

“I work on things that make your computer work” ~Bro at a party

“I bet you don’t understand what I do for a living, so I’m going to make myself sound really impressive.”

(He worked on Yahoo Weather)

“You might make a good junior recruiter.” ~Tech Recruiter

“You don’t look like a senior manager”

“Mike, you sound calm knowledgable and respectful.

Jessie, for how cute and bubbly you sound, you know what you’re talking about” ~Podcast feedback

“Complements I receive because the bar is set so low for me, that anything I do is over it.”

Unconscious bias. Not about being a good or bad person. Insidious. Not just about how people view her, about how she ends up viewing herself.

Feedback most often get is about how her voice sounds. Sounds like nails on a chalkboard. Fast forward through every time talks. Other person said they had to stop listening to podcast because voice is so annoying. External say, that is a jerk. But wondered if just had a high pitched voice, not for radio, but podcast okay.

NPR feedback on women’s voices.
- Too high.
- Too child like.
- Lacks authority.
- Vocal fry.
- Uptalk.
- Too low.
We don’t really know why this phenomenon happens, but probably, you know, “unconscious bias”

Might put a target on her back, but putting it out there, because men need to know. And women – to know that struggle with things do.

Talked about language, and how we should adjust, but ladies we have already adjusted too much.

It’s important to cater to the way people hear you, but it’s important that you don’t change who you are.

Kanye West “Everything in the world is exactly the same.”
February 5, 2016
NSConf: Halle Winkler – Duck Taping the Gates of Chaos Shut
My Notes from Halle‘s amazing talk at NSConf.

Credit: Pixabay / geralt

Terror – have people who have had great app indies for 5-10 years – real experts. This has been working 3.5 years. Been an interesting and challenging 3.5 years.

Started because was “meh” at apps. 3 paid apps. Got positive feedback, but couldn’t crack the marketing code. Decided to pause, reconsider, decide what the next thing should be.

This isn’t really a failure talk. Failure tolerant industry. Used to be the case that one big failure could take you out. Now maybe we’ve gone too far the other way – glamourising and valorising failure.

Suspicious about how much data you get from failure. Can fail on the app store but not know why.

Focusing on failure may lead us to mis-categorised success as failure. Leading us to abandon a strategy that is working, but slowly.

E.g. hit 75% of target – do you have a failed product? Did you estimate the wrong timeframe? Do you have a resource allocation problem?

If looking for a failure in that scenario, you’ll find it. But maybe it’s an undersized success.

When you stop, and reconsider, how do you proceed.

With intention, that is how you carry on.

“What do I want to do?” – one of the scariest first world questions. When we answer it, we might actually be able to do that thing.

Let’s not make it too complicated.

We want to make something useful. We can make something entertaining. Entertaining is a use.

Wanted to build on something that was already demonstrably working.

Had released a library – making offline voice recognition look good. Wanted to make offline speech recognition look good. Improve UX by stealth.

How to make it into a business?

Unusual as a sector – most businesses aren’t a single isolated thing. They usually have some diversity and consonance.

In a lot of businesses, diversity, protects you from a shock. Consonance – multiple products build interest in each other.

How to do that with OpenEars?

Wanted it to be free. Didn’t want to do the selling support business model – selling support creates perverse incentive not to make it as simple as possible. But believe it should be as simple as possible.

If something is a core value for you, the best place to put it is in your business model.

In a lot of places where there is one app, there is a quiet second business. Often a media channel. A fantastic blog, or a fantastic podcast. Has a halo effect, your audience is with you in social media. When you talk about your app, that gets amplified by your audience. Don’t do this cynically, but if you’re interested, good way.

Now have 5 plugins, 6 integrated products. One developer.

Little Things

Meet the Neighbours – step from the agile manifesto. When you start a new software project, look at who is nearest and reach out to them. Decide what relationship you want to have with them, and create that. Asked “how can I be of use to them” – this is the question.

Software projects that work, last for years. So decide at the beginning what kind of relationships you have and make that happen.

Having a role model is good. Having an idiot role model is better. Had another software vendor, her vendor, was so angry with them all the time. Doing everything wrong. Wanted to rant about twitter every day. Realised, their product structure is a bit like Politepix. “They could be a lot like my company in 2 years!” Became fascinated, why do they make such terrible decisions, what was going on. Read all of their apology blog posts – it was like a visit from bad decisions future.

You can learn from mistakes. There are enough mistakes to go around, you don’t have to make them all yourself.

Learn doubly-entry book-keeping. Fired accountant, didn’t understand what he had done. Had to learn it. Like getting an introduction to the history of capitalism from first principles. Will let you do great projections for your business, if you understand it. Once you learn which side of the ledger capital is on when you hear about a terrible startup raising a series A, you will have the appropriate response, which is sympathy.

Big Things

Industriousness

Small business can take up all your time. Have to focus on improving your product. Use programmer laziness. Automate everything you can.

Don’t repeat yourself
- Automated documentation pushing this in all formats. Most important, documentation is really pretty.
- Code snippets. If you don’t give them snippets, they will go to stack over flow and get a snippet. Then you will have to support it. Created a customisable tutorial tool.
- Forums – main problem was pointing people to the right answer when not finding it themselves. Wrote a tool, dealt with 90%. Macros for other 5%.
The third time you do a production task, and it’s not improving your app, automate.

Support became a much less big job, but 1 in 3 shot it would be a horror scenario. Started to dread looking at questions. Wrote a sentiment analysis tool that helps. If sentence particularly negative. If sentence is particularly subjective. What the worse sentence you wrote is. And makes suggestions, “maybe go take a walk before you answer this.”

Tool is “Me on my best day giving advice to me on my worst day” which helps respond to people when they are really stressing you out.

Anything you are doing that requires manual intervention, you can probably automate that.

Automated automated testing. Wrote a fuzzer, called HWHorrorShow. Randomised cross-thread stress-test.

You can automate all kinds of things that you wouldn’t necessarily think you could.

Agreeableness

Learn to say no. Bootstrapping through contracting is great, but you have to stop when you stop.

If you run a product company and it works, you’re probably really good at executing. You don’t know if they are going to be.

No to free updates.

No talking about future plans. When someone asks you, they are asking you because they are making a plan. You only have control of the plans you make at the beginning, things change.

No spending all of your money on the products of famous luxury brand, Apple. Cost control is a real thing. Isn’t discussed that much. Standard business model high growth low revenue, not sure about the end game. Small, sustainable indie – want to be profitable in 12 months.

No to being a fan of Apple. You can like, respect, but you should be clear – if you want to be a fan, be a fan of your peers. They are doing amazing things, it’s going to mean a lot more for them.

No features for individual people.

No to the avoidant decision process. Because you’re afraid of people’s negativity.

The Philosophy of Death

Anxiety is normal. Confusion about your sphere of control. You control your planning, part of your execution, the way that you respond, basically nothing else. If you react to these worries, everytime something awesome happens, there’s something that can bring you down.

A business entities life is not a human life. When fearing business will tank, you will look at doing things that you would not normally.

Looked to ancient greek philosophy to deal with anxiety. Not big fans of positive thinking. Visualise that every morning, and then put it away and then you’re done.

The Doldrums

Not becoming such a dull person that new ideas can’t find your address.

Small business problems can be addictive. You can fill 100% of your time with that. But your creativity is your most important tool and characteristic.

Cultivating your spark is a really big part of your job – like taking care of your health and psychological well being to the best of your ability.

Berlin is full of hidden courtyards. Become obsessed with getting into all of them in neighbourhood.

Find the source of the delight that leads to making delightful products. Don’t think you find that behind a screen.

Don’t eat the seed corn – your creative capacity is what got you into this, it’s the only thing that can move you forward.

Closing Thoughts

Irony in making something very self-sufficient, makes less need for collaboration. And that is a huge loss.
May 22, 2015
NSConf: Scott Little – Ultimate Spirit

My notes from Scott Little‘s talk at NSConf.

Credit: DeviantArt / Aseniya

Real training was in zoology.

What ultimately drives this independent developer and keeps me focused and motivated?

Most of life been an ultimate frisbee player. At least as much a part of him as being a developer.

Started to think about linking how frisbee is important to him with being a developer.

There’s something in ultimate called the spirit of the game. Key component. Not just informal. Actually formally integrated into the rules of the game.

Idea of spirit is ingrained into the rules. The first rule is:

“Ultimate is a non-contact, self-refereed sport. All players are responsible for administering and adhering to the rules. Ultimate relies upon a Spirit of the Game that places the responsibility for fair play on every player.”

The idea of the spirit of the game, is that you play not according to the letter of the rules, but according to the spirit the rules are trying to create.

Spirit is not just accepting they have accidentally fouled, but saying “I did accidentally foul, here’s the disc”

Self-refereeing creates a different feel. There is no hierarchy of ref to player. Creates equality on the field.

Women and men playing on the same team, making passes together and so forth. 3 divisions: mixed, women, open. Prefer the mixed edition, different dynamic. Competitive, but not as competitive as open which is mostly just guys.

Game is very easily accessible, it’s a game where you don’t need a whole lot to get into it. You just need some place to play, and a frisbee.

The way you play, positions. 3 main positions: handler, middle, forward. You play everywhere on the field.

Feel of egalitarian play. Something that is similar to this group of industry and indie devs. There’s a great potential there, for everyone to come in and access it. It takes a computer and access to the internet, but those barriers are getting lower and lower.

There’s a huge potential for equality. But we have historical issues that have pushed some people out and kept them out. Groups trying to get things.

One of the biggest divergences and the values on the field and the larger group of our industry.

Thinking about equality and doing the right thing, got thinking about other influences. Star Trek. Great moral structure to the universe. Star Trek next gen. Built upon the moral structure, started to give names and definitions to things that hadn’t understand. Started to link specific episodes to specific instances that were happening in his life. Still have that. Think about instances that weren’t so great, refers back to specific episodes.

Canadian rock band called Rush. Incredibly relevant lyrics for all kind of things. Created strong references to various lyrics. They want to do what they feel is right, not necessarily what fans want or labels want.

Integrity, and doing the right thing.

Other reference a lot of people have, and that’s Apple.

How does independent spirit fit into independent developer? We can easily see examples of it in our work.

TextWrangler from Barebones software. Could be seen as a competitor to their main product, BBEdit. Nice to see them put out a product that everybody has access to.

Daniel from RedJumper software – does rockstar, kickass, ninja support.

Marco, Overcast. Listed his competators and direct links, incase his product wasn’t the right fit.

Omni products fight the demon that is syncing.

Khan academy. Free world class education for everyone.

Blogs and podcasts, “as I learned watchkit”, “vesper sync diaries”. All of these are great displays of the spirit of the game, of development, or whatever. Aspire to those same things.

One of the reasons like NSConf and Singleton are important. Get a chance not only to see that, but also to participate in that.

We don’t want to tear something down, we want to build something up. We need to make a living, but it’s not really the primary reason we do things the way we do them.

Try to apply them to the work. Use to figure out how to motivate yourself, how to get yourself up every morning, make yourself work.

Scratch your own itch is good advice. Have something that was that, but business wise is not sustainable. Have another product that is more sustainable, but small business CRM, has no intention of ever using.

How do you keep motivation for that? Different. Focus on creating a solution for the user, listen to their needs. Ask “how do you like the product, what do you like? what don’t you like? what could be added?”

Focus on that idea – totally unopinionated from him. If not an itch you are scratching, get someone else’s opinion and pull that in.

Customer side of spirit driven development.

Technical side. 5-6 months ago, working on plugin for mail. Bug seeing in mail, trying to figure out what it was. This was a bug in mail. Inbox rules wouldn’t fire on some types of message. Fired up debugger, started tracing through the assembly. Found a call to get an attributed string off the mime body of the message. Then it calls initWithData. Spins for 60 seconds, and then comes back and it’s nil. Then call to append, throws an exception, and therefore the rule doesn’t apply.

Super happy to find this bug – actually 2 bugs. First is a bug in mail. Filed a radar. Elated to find the other bug, which was something that had been chasing for years but hadn’t been able to consistently reproduce. In foundation. Felt great about himself, because was contributing back to the platform.

So why is ultimate relevant here. One of the things found, in over 30 years of playing ultimate, it’s not just a game like playing, something that really touches inside, makes feel really good. Because physical manifestation in a game of his moral values. Strong influence of integrity, and doing the right thing. Being competitive, but being respectful. Get the same feeling about doing development. Bit more personal and isolated. But feel really strongly about, can do something that fits in with values. Something applied not just to own work, but looking at things other people do.

Our emotions evolved over a long time, tool to tell you what is good and what is bad, what is nice, and what isn’t nice. Take advantage of those millions of years of evolution.

It’s not about winning…

It’s not even just about how you play…

It’s about how you play makes you feel.

April 3, 2015
NSConf: Jamie Newbury – Design Skills that Saved My Life

My notes from @jaimeejaimee‘s fantastic talk at @NSConf.

Credit: Flickr / Scott D Welch

We’re going to talk about burnout.

Before graduated college was dishwasher, waitress, heavy equipment washer, pilot car driver, sign painter, production assistant, bank teller, park ranger, metal sculpture (that was degree).

After graduated realised need to figure out what to do for a living. Decided to be a web designer. Taught herself.

Dad was a U.S marine, sky diver, scuber diver, karate instructor, occasionally big jerk. Taught 1) life is short. Be smart be kind, life is short don’t waste time doing you don’t like doing. 2) love what you do, because life if short.

Loss of 15yo brother at 11, learn – life is short. At 27 lost her mom, reinforced this message. Taking the positive, love her work. In a time of loss, found that work was thing that could poor pain, passion, love energy into. Made her work better. Sure that work saved her life, was a sanctuary.

April 9, 2012. Dad was doing something he loved – riding his motorcycle from her house to his, didn’t make it. Again found, positive from something negative, he died doing something he loved. Lived a life of making decisions to do things he loved, so the odds of him dying doing something he loved were pretty high.

Thought it would be the same, work would be saving grace, everything would be fine.

This time it wasn’t. Work was the balloon, string cut, drifted away. Fell to the ground like a limp noodle.

Thought could just keep going.

It’s important to understand the difference between dissatisfaction and burnout. Wasn’t dissatisfaction. Was different.

When designing experiences for people, you need to be able to connect.

Single mom of two beautiful girls, could not give up, sell everything and run away to the mountains.

Dad was into self help, was so cheesy to her growing up. Thought, dad really found something in it, threw herself into it in search of something that she liked.

Reinforced – needed to pick self up, and carry self through this.

Movie Rocky – unconventional training methods. Drinking raw eggs and punching meat.

Seen movie hundreds of times, “It doesn’t matter if I lose this fight, all I want to do is go the distance”. Realised most important part of the movie.

Started looking design process. Realised. “I am a designer I have 15 years of tools in my Mary Poppins bag for solving problems.” “I have what I need”.

You could design your life, just like your life is a product. We’re making stuff. We pour all this emotion and soul into the stuff that we make, had never before thought of flipping it onto herself.

If my life is the product, and I can control the outcome, what do I do?

No one size fits all, basic process.

Step 1: Understand.

“Breakdown occurs when clarity of vision is lacking.”

First mobile product was the zappos mobile app. Had been working on website for about a year, was approached to look at the mobile apps.

You can take these questions and turn them at yourself. Her goal: to get unburntout.

Stakeholders are really important in this too – these are the people who depend on you and you depend on.

Whatever the goal is, have clarity of vision.

Step 2: Discovery.

Context – users – this applies to life too. To be a better mom, did stakeholder interviews with kids. Interviewed teachers, talked to their friends.

Brand – can take that at a personal level. Need to decide what the personality of the brand is.

Existing patterns – hugely important, what patterns exist in user behaviour, what patterns exist in the world.

Feasibility.

Behaviours – want to understand the environment, look at day to day rituals, what is working what is not working.

Existing processes.

Once gathered – can brainstorm things that are targeted at a very specific problem. Then you get solutions, and puzzle pieces.

Side-note: What’s good – looking at product, looking at what is wrong, don’t forget what’s good.

Step 3: Design

Once you understand what problem you are designing, you have puzzle pieces. Design is nothing but solving puzzles.

Problem is carrying stuff. Hate bags. If has a bag, leave it.

Disney came up with a solution – band, magic band, photo ID, credit card, hotel room key. All these things in one magic band, don’t need to carry stuff, they have solved that problem! If only we had that in the real world (apple watch).

The Power of Habit – story of convinving americans to become a nation of people who brush their teeth. Trigger, action, reward.

These are patterns we need to think about when designing products, but also when designing your life. The reward re-enforces the action.

BJ Fogg tiny habits. Improving health. Drinking water feels small and insignificant. Fill my water glass – do it after waking up. Automatically drink the water after fill the glass. Break it down so small, impossible not to do it.

Because of little things, was able to fold this sort of habit form into life.

Break it down so small that you can’t deny it in your life.

Celebrate the little things.

Do some kind of physical manifestation of the reward.

Get something out there – whether it’s your product, a beta, or your life, then you can immediately get feedback on it. That feedback helps you.

Step 4: Iterate

Once you have feedback you can start iterating on things and make it better!

Jesse James Garret – watch, fail or succeed, learn, try again.

We need to iterate.

Really rare that we throw something perfect out there the first time.

“All I want to do is go the distance” – Rocky lost, but he went the distance. Then there was Rocky 2 and he totally kicked ass.

Test, tweak revise. Don’t give up. There’s so much out there.

Wrapping Up

The tools – you have the skills. Whatever you do to build the products you’re building, you can use these.

Worked on products. Works on life. Learned take these skills, and coaching, can not just help people inside companies, can actually help companies. Came back around, now focused on people, not products. Means that people are building better products.

Everything needed to get out of burnout was inside, just had to figure out how to apply it.

March 27, 2015