SensoryMetrics

Matt just posted a terrific overview of the amount of work, money and foresight it took SiGe to become a “Chip-Champ”. His main point was that success does not come easy.

That brought to mind the FASCINATING Canadian web2.0 success story that also highlights that the right mix of business model and design can make you a hero. The hero I’m talking about is Markus Frind – creator, CTO, CEO, developer, board member, and part time support worker of the world’s FIFTH largest web-based dating site, PlentyOfFish. The company is HUGE! Based in a Vancouver apartment it boasts 2 employees (him and his girlfriend). It also boasts 13 million page views per day. Via AdSense he has become a millionaire (he’s pictured here holding up a $900,000 Google check). Not bad for a project he launched in 2003 – just “to learn ASP.NET”.

The most clever thing Markus did was design a web 2.0 dating site that doesn’t punish people for trying to interact with other people. The user experience plays a big part in its success. Don’t get me wrong – it’s not a pretty UI… no flashy AJAX features. in fact it looks very plain. BUT it’s well designed to meet its value proposition: FACILITATING people getting to know other people.

The big shift is that POF is free – completely. No hidden credit card verification scams, etc. connect all you want. Markus DOES NOT WANT YOUR MONEY. By comparison, the other commercial dating sites allow you to browse for free – but as soon as you want to message someone, you pay. In the case of Microsoft-owned LavaLife, it could be as much as $1.50 to send an initial message to someone you don’t even know exists.

Part 2 – I’ll explore how POF’s business model radically alters the user experience model.

[tags]PlentyOfFish, Markus, Web2.0, Dating sites[/tags]

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Business, Innovation, SaaS, User Experience Dating-sites, Markus, PlentyOfFish, Web2.0

If you used to assemble plastic model cars as a kid (or adult), you’ll remember those great little bottles of Testors acrylic paints. I was thinking of those little bottles while looking at DoCoMo’s line of kids’ phones available in Japan: lots of fun colors! It would be nice to get a plain white, paintable phone that I could customize how I wanted.

[tags]DoCoMo, customize[/tags]

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Gadgets, Mobility customize, DoCoMo

Last week, Microsoft was granted US patent 7,180,987: “System, method, and apparatus for tracking on-call activity.” In it, they refer our Call Context patent. Microsoft’s main claim is that mobile user A can attach some data to a voice call made to mobile user B. User B can then see that data in the context of the call from User A. That’s it. In the abstract, Microsoft explains the value of their innovation:

Thus, a human user of the first electronic device is relieved of identifying data within a context, and relieved of the task associating the data with other data.

Uhhh????

At least we should be thankful that we can now relieve ourselves when mobile!

[tags]call-context, Microsoft[/tags]

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Mobility, Patents, User Experience call-context, Microsoft

Back at anbiun, our main product focus was to build a suite of tools to allow end users of a web site to “choose their experience”. The working name was Sybil – named after the book. This past week, Jobe has been experimenting with this blog to allow our readers to switch experiences on the fly.

It used to be that designers tried to find the one user experience that was the most usable. Now, personalization is a big deal. This is an important evolution. It’s a great solution to the impossible task of providing power-user functionality in a one-size-fits-all-so-your-grandma-can-use-it UI. I wish some of my complex tools had an “easy button” – for example, PhotoShop scaling right down to MS Paint. For certain tasks that would make terrific sense.

So, equating on-demand personalization with Sybil and multiple personality disorder may not be the smartest marketing strategy. In my search for a company that actually has a product named Sybil, I found the Marsh federal credit union. yep a bank. It’s too funny that they named their interactive voice response system “Sybil”.

[tags]Sybil, UX-slider, anbiun[/tags]

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Business, Innovation, Usability, User Experience anbiun, Sybil, UX-slider

One of Freud’s big legacies is to popularize the notion of the ego. Out of context, in 2007, ego has become a BAD thing. But Freud intended to represent the ego as a participant in a person’s ecosystem of checks and balances. There’s three big forces keeping people from going crazy: the ego – the balance mediator, the ID – the uncontrolled energy of what we really want, and the Super-Ego – ones conscience.

From a design perspective, Freud has a lot to offer. Design does not equal art. Art is a personal expression – once it’s created it lives foreever – not to be altered by opinion or censorship. Design should always be tested. The designer shouldn’t feel bad. They should feel good when their process identifies significant problems.

As Product Managers, don’t be afraid to backfeed your designers!

I designed products for a company a few years back… the VP of marketing had the same feedback – it’s great…the customers are really penting up on this… it’s awesome. Meanwhile, design changes would be churning the product delivery. Why? If it was so awesome in the first place – why change it?

Common problem – people don’t want to hurt other people’s feelings. This doesn’t help the designer. Doesn’t help the business.

Be honest! Not everything is “awesome”!

(iceberg pic from wikipedia.com)

[tags]Freud, Ego, Ego-less,design[/tags]

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Innovation, Usability, User Experience design, Ego, Ego-less, Freud

So we get asked a lot lately why we bother blogging… Does it make you any money? No. Because you’ve got nothing else to do? Big No. Because it gets you invited to swanky celeb parties? huh, No. Right now, it’s more of a karma, technology, and marketing brain gym.

As for the monetizing part – try out this cool little tool called DNScoop. It will estimate how much your DN is worth, and what price you should command for ads… As for SensoryMetrics – we’re currently worth $4,747 USD… By comparison, WORLD-FAMOUS VoIP blog Alec Saunder’s log is listed at a whopping $117,936!

[tags]monetizing,DNScoop[/tags]

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Business DNScoop, monetizing

ok – so no mitch-posts today. bad day. my crappy car died and has been declared DOA! My usual 85 km commute was cut short to the nearest hotel… thanks to Jobe for bailing me out!

UPDATE: Maggie Fox tells us about Pontiac’s new “social media site” – Pontiac Underground (BETA, no less)… yeesh. I wonder if they’ll accept this post?

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Events

The latest patent law sideshow is now playing out in a Washington DC court. Here’s the 30 second version: Microsoft stole IBM’s method for compressing audio and built in into their OS. Microsoft admits it’s wrong – but only in the US. Internationally, Microsoft takes it’s source code (burnt on a special disk nicknamed “The Golden Disk”) and ships it outside of the US as the master disk for manufacturing. It claims US patent laws can’t be applied to other countries – so it can’t be infringing AT&T patent there.

The interesting sideshow to this sideshow is that the lawyer representing AT&T used to be Clinton’s solicitor general. The lawyer representing Microsoft – Bush’s former solicitor general.

Implication to your highly prized UX design? Don’t save it on a golden disk!

source: Washigton Post

[tags]Microsoft, patents, golden-disk[/tags]

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Business, Innovation, Patents, Pirates golden-disk, Microsoft, Patents

This is a great example of bad UI impacting support costs. Unbeknownst to me, my IPAQ 6500 turned on its flight mode. That’s when the radio is turned off, but the device still works as a pda. My IPAQ has a habit of doing things on its own. Unfortunately there’s no obvious UI telling you that flight mode is on. When you try connecting you get an error “Cannot connect: Make sure your phone is turned on or check your connection settings” Bad message. It knows that it can’t connect because flight mode is turned on… Subsequently, after a bunch of support calls to my wireless provider (validating my account, checking the SIM card etc) I finally noticed the problem. There’s a tiny link that reads “turn on flight mode” and “turn off flight mode”. If you blinked you’d miss it. One golden rule of UI design – make sure any STATE change stands out visually. Burying near identical words (on – off) in the middle of a sentence is not evident.

This must have been a big issue for HP – the new 6900 IPAQ has a great big red icon appearing on the main screen alerting you that flight mode is on. Meanwhile, I still have to wrestle with the ghosts that control my device. Maybe they should call the feature Fight Mode.

[tags]Usability, Support, IPAQ, Flight-Mode[/tags]

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Business, Mobility, Usability, User Experience Flight-Mode, IPAQ, Support, Usability

Just after I poked some fun at Google for buckling-in to Chinese censorship… Telus announces today that it’s cancelling its mobile porn service because it received a few hundred complaints from Catholic groups. That’s a few hundred complaints out of 5 million customers. Although I don’t understand the appeal of mobile adult content, this is a censorship issue. I assume the next step is to block Planned Parenthood’s 1-800 numbers. The future is fiendly!

[tags]Telus, Mobile-porn, Censor, Monkey-business[/tags]

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Business, Mobility censor, Mobile-porn, Monkey-business, Telus