Pek Pongpaet

The Difference Between Just Showing Up and Moving the Needle

2012-01-25T18:59:47Z

According to Woody Allen, “80 percent of success is just showing up.” If that’s true, I would say the other 20 percent is sheer perseverance to make progress, or move the needle. Showing up is just the baseline, but it’s not enough.

Back when I practiced martial arts very seriously and it was a huge part of my life, I would train everyday or nearly every day. Sometimes I’d hit a plateau for months where I wasn’t making any progress. I thought that just by showing up every day consistently, that was making a difference, but it wasn’t. I wasn’t pushing myself so I wasn’t making any gains. I was in my comfort zone doing what I could do and not training trying to do what I couldn’t do.

If you want to move a stone to build the pyramid, it’s not enough to just show up and push. If there was not enough force to move the rock even an inch, simply showing up everyday to push it will not get you a pyramid. However if you put in enough force and effort to move it even an inch, eventually you will have something.

I think it’s like that with any craft. If you don’t the same thing you’ve always done, you’ll likely get the same results. If you do marketing and are not seeing new customers, doing the same thing over and over isn’t likely going to change it.

Why Products Suck

2012-01-24T19:31:18Z

TL;DR: Compromise

In our life, we come across a lot of products that suck. As a designer of digital products, I see a lot of products so that I can make better products. I play with a lot of mobile apps and web sites so that I can see what works and what doesn’t. The products I make, some are okay but many suck.

One of the major reasons that products suck is that the makers of the product compromise. We don’t set out to make suckey products, but we make little compromises, here and there. And they add up. Eventually the sum those compromises affect the overall impression of the product. There are many forces at play. Over on the business side you have people who want to launch by a certain deadline, so they compromise on time. There may not be enough money so we compromise on quality. A designer might come up with a feature that is a little too hard for an engineer to implement so that gets compromised. Heck even the designs might be compromised because one way is easier to do than the other.

When we lose focus on why we built the product in the first place – which is to make it easier for the user or customer to solve their problem and turn it around and make it easier for us to make, design, engineer, launch or whatever, we inevitably make a subpar product.

When I think of products that have few compromises, I think of the thin Motorola Razr, the Macbook Air, and the old Palm Pilot for those of you who still remember. I’m sure the engineers bitched and moaned when they saw what they had to work with. I’m sure some even said it was impossible. But if the decision makers had budged and placated the engineers, I’m sure we would have had a much thicker Razr with more moving parts.

When I look underneath other laptops, I see a bunch of panels and screws and all sorts of stickers. When I look at the bottom of the Macbook Air it’s one smooth piece with no extraneous panels. The whole laptop was engineered to be one unit as opposed to a Frankenstein of OEM parts clobbered together.

When the Palm Pilot was designed, Jeff Hawkins would walk around with a block of wood the size of the Palm Pilot. If someone had a feature that required hardware that would make it bulkier, they found a way around it. They weren’t going to compromise on the portability of the device because otherwise people wouldn’t carry it around in their pocket much less use it.

Customers may not notice a compromise here and there, but combined together, they create a slightly worse experience that they do notice. Be mindful of what you compromise.

Why Software Development Projects Fail

2012-01-13T21:34:43Z

I’m sure you’ve all seen it. Well meaning software projects where everyone seems competent, but at the end, the project is a failure. After seeing over a decade and a half worth of software development, I see a few recurring patterns.

Client doesn’t know what they want. This is a pretty common problem with inexperienced clients or ones that haven’t dealt with a lot of software development shops or consulting firms. This is exacerbated by firms that don’t know how to manage clients and projects properly. The combination is disastrous because clients have a vague idea of what they want and consultants don’t know how to get it out of them.

Client doesn’t know how to articulate what they want. This is very similar to the first problem but not nearly as bad. They know what they want, but don’t have the vocabulary to describe it or the breadth of experience to point you to what they want. It’s up to the consulting firm to be able to guess and point to existing examples in the real world that might be close to the client’s vision.

Clients want the wrong thing. I’ve had potential clients come to me who know exactly what they want and that’s great. However, sometimes the thing they want, you know it’s just a bad idea. By that I mean, they want stuff you know to be bad weather it’s a flash site with tons of music or a social network that bombards you with ads because they think that’s what people want to do: click on ads. I try to convince them that it’s a bad idea but this rarely works because you are basically attacking their ego. That’s their idea and you are saying it’s dumb. I usually just turn these clients down.

Lack of communication. Software development is a collaborative process. Consultants rarely know everything about the business of the client and relies heavily on the client to bring their domain expertise. It’s not like going to a car dealership and just picking out the car you like and agreeing on the price. The software firm will need a lot of information from you. A lot of times, getting content, feedback from clients is like pulling teeth. This usually holds up the project and adds needless delays.

Client doesn’t know what customers want. This is a common problem among startup clients. The fledgling company may have a clear vision of what they want, however, that doesn’t mean that it will work. It’s merely a hypothesis. Even if everything is executed as the vision, there’s no guarantee that users will flock to it. Color comes to mind. Clients may think they know what users want, but that is not always the case.

Trying to finish a project by throwing more people at it. You can’t just throw more people at it. Nine women can’t give birth in 1 month. Software development is problem solving. It’s not a simple application of force like adding more people to move a boulder. Thus just throwing more people at it without understanding how to apply them doesn’t necessarily lead to project completion or success. I highly recommend this book “The Mythical Man Month” regarding this topic.

Software as a checklist. This occurs more at big organizations. Software is treated as little more than a feature list to be checked off. Little thought is given on usability, whether or not it actually solves any problem, or if people end up actually using it. When software doesn’t solve the problem or is so hard and unintuitive to use, even if it was delivered on budget and on time, it’s not a success.

Great Quotes from Steve Jobs Book

2011-11-27T23:12:04Z

I recently read the beast that is Walter Isaacson’s biography on Steve Jobs, creatively titled “Steve Jobs”. For those of you who have never followed or read about Steve, this book may be a shocker. He was not a nice man, but he did get things done and was very successful. CEOs view him as a visionary business leader. I found some really great quotes that I like to highlight and share.

On motivation:

(Y)ou should never start a company with the goal of getting rich. Your goal should be making something you believe in and making a company that will last.

On impressions:

People DO judge a book by its cover. We may have the best product, the highest quality, the most useful software etc.; if we present them in a slipshod manner, they will be perceived as slipshod; if we present them in a creative, professional manner, we will impute the desired qualities.

A great Jonny Ive quote:

Steve and I care about things like that, which ruin the purity and detract from the essence of something like a utensil, and we think alike about how products should be made to look pure and seamless.

On Apple stores:

Jobs decided that Apple stores should have only one entrance, which would make it easier to control the experience.

On problems:

If something isn’t right, you can’t just ignore it and say you’ll fix it later,” he said. “That’s what other companies do.

On how ruthlessly focused he was:

“What are the ten things we should be doing next?” People would fight to get their suggestions on the list. Jobs would write them down, and then cross off the ones he decreed dumb. After much jockeying, the group would come up with a list of ten. Then Jobs would slash the bottom seven and announce, “We can only do three.”

On the simplicity of the iPod:

In order to make the iPod really easy to use—and this took a lot of arguing on my part—we needed to limit what the device itself would do. Instead we put that functionality in iTunes on the computer.

On creativity:

There’s a temptation in our networked age to think that ideas can be developed by email and iChat,” he said. “That’s crazy. Creativity comes from spontaneous meetings, from random discussions. You run into someone, you ask what they’re doing, you say ‘Wow,’ and soon you’re cooking up all sorts of ideas.

On Apple’s approach to building great products:

We believe that it’s technology married with the humanities that yields us the result that makes our heart sing.

On focus:

Deciding what not to do is as important as deciding what to do,” he said. “That’s true for companies, and it’s true for products.

These quotes are courtesy of Isaacson, Walter (2011). Steve Jobs (Kindle Location 1601). Simon & Schuster, Inc.. Kindle Edition.

How to Become More Productive

2011-11-02T16:33:39Z

I feel like there’s just not enough time to do everything I want to do. I think many of you can relate. People want to be more productive in general. However much of the day is wasted in such unnoticeable ways. Also, some work rituals we cling to because of pure dogma not realizing it can be improved or streamlined.

For example, for years I clung to the ritual of paying my bills by writing physical checks. I liked going through the process because it felt like I was paying more attention to my finances by doing so. When I finally awakened to paying my bills online and even setting the recurring payments to autopay – it was amazing. You don’t have to pay attention to it anymore. It’s always good to every once in a while make sure you are not being billed for anything you didn’t want but in general, setting this and forgetting this task is an overal productivity plus.

As part of my work, I design a lot. I can spend hours on Photoshop. One thing I started to finally notice after years of using Photoshop was that I kept doing a certain task a lot. I would copy a Layer Style of one design element and apply it to another. This would take several clicks – Right clicking on the element I liked and click on the menu item. Then I had to right click the new element and apply that style. There weren’t any shortcut keys, or at least none that I saw. It dawned on me that it was so inefficient and time consuming and that there had to be a better way.

I finally started researching this and found that you can create your own shortcut keys and I did so. Now I can do the same set of routine tasks that would take at least 4 steps and reduced them to 2.

Of course not everyone uses Photoshop but if you generalize this lesson, you have to be aware of the things you do. You have to be critical of all the steps you take to accomplish a task. Ask yourself, can this be simplified, reduced or automated in any way. Can you systematize this. Even better, can you remove yourself from the steps. I’ve really started to think about this and it has helped streamline my day and focus on the things I have to focus on.

My First iPhone Game: Outlaw Poker

2011-10-23T23:13:43Z

This is the story of Outlaw Poker, an iPhone game I just launched that is equal parts Tetris and Poker. It’s a western themed puzzle falling blocks game. The object is to make 5 hand poker hands with the falling cards. The cards can be rotated just like in Tetris-style games so that you can arrange the cards into Poker hands horizontally or vertically. It is available here on the iTunes App store.

I initially had the idea almost a year ago. I wanted to make an iPhone game just to go through the process of making one as well as to have potential for some passive income. For those of you who are not familiar, developers can sell apps in the iTunes App Store and make money. The developer determines the price and whatever you make, Apple keeps 30% for facilitating the transaction and taking care of the distribution, billing, etc. Not a bad deal especially considering there are over 100 million iPhones in the world.

So how did this game come about? I was thinking about games I liked and games people liked in general. If I had to name one game that had mass appeal, it was Tetris, hands down. Another trend that has caught on in the recent years is the popularity of Poker. My thought was to combine the two popular concepts together: a falling cards game where you have to make Poker hands.

There wasn’t anything out there like this and I wanted to play it. People say one way to make a successful product is to scratch your own itch – that is, make something you want and hopefully others will want it too.

Since I wasn’t an iOS developer but designed stuff, I went about looking for a developer who would want to partner with me to develop this game. Initially I had recruited a lead Creative Designer who would lead the charge on the design direction of the game but he was quickly overwhelmed with his own work. I also managed to find an iOS developer who was initially interested but was also too busy to take the project on.

So the project never went anywhere for a good six months. I would design some screens and work out some details every now and then, always keeping an eye out for an iOS developer looking to meet a cofounder and have a game under his/her belt.

One day I went to some developer meetup and met my cofounder Ben Roesch. He was a friend of a friend and worked at Accenture Tech Labs, where I used to work. I was straight up with him. I told him about the concept, showed what screens I had to him and asked if he wanted to work on this app. I basically told him everything. If he decided to decline but run away and take my idea, he had it and I would be screwed. He was game though. Within 2 weeks he had a rough prototype of the game that basically worked but had none of the bells and whistles. It was a very good sign.

Over the next months, we would hash out the missing artwork/screens, tweak the gameplay, find the sound and music. One of the hardest things to come up with was the new company we formed. I love puns and wanted this new game studio to have a witty name. Since it was an game app company, I thought it would be cool to have the word ‘app’ in the name. Unfortunately anything that I came up with like ‘tap that app’ was already taken. I think I finally came up with Appuccino Games because I’m a big coffee drinker and it reflects the fact that coffee helped us make this game. I wanted the logo to reflect the dual nature of the word play (app and cappuccino). Once the name came together though, it was easy to come up with a concept for the logo – an iPhone that looked like a coffee cup.

I wanted to take this moment to thank everyone who had a hand in making it. A big chunk of this goes to Ben who without him, my concept would never have been realized. Thanks Ben. I also owe Matt Jensen a big thanks. He came up with the original art direction. Even though you didn’t have the bandwidth to join us on this, I still want to thank you for all the work you put in. Don, thanks for forming our new company. I look forward to more business with you. I also want to thank all the beta testers who gave us valuable feedback. I won’t remember everyone but here goes: Craig, Ulliott, Sami Rageb, Christian Arca, Joe Dwyer, Christopher Lee, Brad Flora, Ravi Singh, Tal Liron, Nick Aiello, Brandon Leonardo, and more.

I also want to take a moment to thank Steve Jobs. He’s been an inspiration to my career. Without him, this game would not be possible. The platform this game was built on would not have existed. You have enabled me to not only create this game, but to be able to distribute it to the world. Thank you.

Without further ado, our game is here on the App Store. There’s also a free ad-supported version here. The difference is that the free version has ads AND the ad takes up one whole row so you end up with less playing area.

Steve Job: More Than a Man

2011-10-07T23:09:06Z

Earlier this week, Steve Jobs passed away. I don’t recall the many CEO passings but it was all over the blogosphere and social media on top of being over the regular news channels. Many fans of Apple mourned him including myself. He was many things to many people. To CEOs, he was a visionary leader – able to see trends and industries well before others could. To other business leaders he was an amazing CEO, able to turn around a struggling company. To many he was an inspiration. A baby born out of wedlock, who was adopted, dropped out of college to pursue a dream, built a successful company, got fired from said successful company, start a few more (NeXT and Pixar), and went back to the original company and created wave after wave of hit products. To consumers, he was the guy who they associated with their wonderful Apple products.

What struck me was how many people mourned him. This is a man who runs a company, not a Hollywood celebrity or a rockstar. I doubt many CEOs would have this much impact when their time comes. There are so many products that are much more fundamental to our everyday lives yet we hardly think of them. For example electricity and clean water are essential necessities, but I doubt people care for say Thomas Edison or the CEO of ComEd the way they do Steve Jobs. The other CEO that I can think has this much fame would be Bill Gates who I think mostly people associated with being the richest man in the world at the time. No other person I can think of has been so closely associated with their brand. For example, I know people love their Wii or Xbox, but could they identify the creator? Probably no. People also love their cars and expensive watches, but I also highly doubt those people could identify their makers.

With every product launch Steve Jobs has been at the helm of the presentation giving every keynote until he was no longer able to physically do so. By doing that, he made him and the brand inseparable. When the products and the company became successful because of his absolute focus on quality, design and the whole user experience, he became a pop culture icon. People loved Apple products – Steve’s products, and thus they loved him.

Not only did he represent great products, he symbolized an ideal. His commencement speech at Stanford in 2005 revealed a man who believed in only doing things that mattered because life was short. In his own words, he wanted to make a dent in the universe. He believed in not living someone else’s life. I can’t imagine how this message could not resonate with most people.

Prototyping Mobile Apps Without Having to Learn How to Code

2011-10-01T03:30:06Z

Prototype Jujutsu – Prototyping Mobile Apps Without Coding

View more presentations from Pek Pongpaet

I recently gave a presentation on building mobile app prototypes without coding. This came from my own experience of fully prototyping the SpotOn mobile app without writing a line of code. The benefit of it was immediately apparent when all the stakeholders could touch and play with what seemed to be the real app. Having something that could run on the phone is so much better than looking at screenshots on the computer or looking at wireframes or documentation.

Why is this a better approach? For one this brings a whole new meaning to rapid prototyping. Being able to eliminate what used to be a key player in the iteration loop (the developer) made developing the app so much faster. I would screen the screens, load them up in a prototyping tool, start clicking around, find problems, immediately fix them and retouch the screenshots, rinse and repeat.

Another benefit is that there are so many people who have skills and ideas who cannot code. Now they too can start building their ideas and proving their concepts rather than just talking about it. Having something that is clickable on the phone is priceless compared to having sketches on a napkin or even a powerpoint presentation.

What do you need to do this? My current favorite tool of choice is this brand new app called FieldTest. Load this URL https://go.fieldtestapp.com/13zlx82 on your phone. You can click around some of the buttons to get an idea of how the app works. Keep in mind no code was actually written. I uploaded a bunch of screenshots to the tool and wired it all together using their user interface. I can then send people this link and have them open it on their phones. They can click around and get a sense of how the app will work.

I strongly encourage designers to try this approach as it will really improve their workflow.

Why Google Plus Won’t Kill Facebook

2011-06-29T20:10:54Z

Just played around with Google Plus, Google’s new “Facebook killer” social network. On the surface it looks almost exactly like Facebook. They have a main stream or feed in the middle. It has navigation on the side like Facebook and even let’s me post different types of content, like photos, videos, and links – just link Facebook. I have to say, they are trying to solve the one problem that Facebook has failed to address really well – that is groups. Right now, with around 2000 friends, my Facebook is like my Twitter feed – a lot of noise. I know there is Facebook Groups, but it’s clunky and I don’t like to use it. Google has built a neat UI to segment people into groups like Friends, Family, and Acquaintances. They may well solve the groups problem and I commend them for that. However, if they think this is what is going to take down Facebook, they are wrong.

What’s going to kill Facebook in the end isn’t necessarily a better social network. It’s going to come out of left field and they won’t know what hit them. Here’s an example. If you were a very popular radio station in the 1940s, you were probably very worried about new radio stations popping up and becoming more popular. What they didn’t realize is that another radio station wasn’t going to be the end of their station. Televisions were just recently introduced at the time. At the end of 1946, only 44,000 homes had a TV set; by the end of 1949,there were 4.2 million TV homes. The reason people weren’t listening to your popular station wasn’t because they had found another popular station where all the cool kids were listening to. It was because they were spending their time watching broadcast television. When video games came out, kids spent less time watching television and more time playing games. When the internet came out, more people spent time online than watching TV and playing games (some people anyways). It’s like the guy who sold horses back in the 1900s worried that people are going to buy better and faster horses from another stable when he should really be worried about this little automotive company called Ford. My point is if Google is really serious about taking down Facebook, they should be thinking about fighting them on their turf on their rules.

There are so many new apps and services now other than Facebook that are all legitimately interesting. I myself have been spending less time on Facebook and more time on services like Instagram where all people can do is post interesting photos. I also spend more time playing with iPhone apps that aren’t necessarily even social. I agree with the Gigaom article that the way to beat Facebook is death by a thousand cuts. I’m sure people spend an unhealthy amount of time playing games like CityVille or Farmville – and even though that’s still within the Facebook ecosystem, those people are spending less time on Facebook proper because of it. There are only so many hours in the day and when the next big fun thing comes out – whatever that may be, that is what’s going to take attention away from Facebook, not another social network.

Why All The Groupon Hate?

2011-06-15T05:27:16Z

I’ve been reading a lot of negative articles on Groupon, and I want to offer a different perspective. I’m not trying to play devil’s advocate, and I am not affiliated with Groupon in any way.

Many merchants have a negative experience with Groupon. It usually goes something like this: Groupon sends a lot of people their way and they are unprepared for it. Groupon customers are cheap rarely pay more than the deal value. Groupon customers aren’t repeat customers.

From what I understand Groupon does give you an idea of when to expect the flood gates. I mean, the merchant has to say yes to the deal and then the Groupon must be sent out and people must buy. To me, getting on Groupon is something like getting on Oprah, or to some people TechCrunch, Mashable, Digg, or Slashdot. If your website isn’t prepared for it, massive traffic sent from Slashdot can take down a website – called slashdotted. The difference is unlike a website that can get featured any second without any notice to the website owner, the Groupon merchant does have a heads up. Just like it’s not TechCrunch’s responsibility to make sure your website can handle the load, it’s not Groupon’s job either. Theirs is to feature the merchant and drive eyeballs and foot traffic.

The second common complaint I hear is that Groupon customers are cheap. As an occasional Groupon user myself, I always make it a point to tip on the full value. I’ve worked in the food service business and realize how little these people make. To friends who don’t know how Groupons work, I always try to explain to them the Groupon business model and how basically the merchant’s taking a huge hit to give them this great deal. However I am sure that there are Groupon clippers out there who are bargain hunters. I think it’s the merchants’ job here to upsell as much as possible to offset that. One example business that does a good job of doing just that was featured on Hacker News.

Lastly, the other common problem I hear is that Groupon users aren’t really repeat visitors. Related to that I also hear that sometimes people with Groupons are offered a different menu or a different level of service (usually lower). I am not sure how this would encourage anyone, Groupon or not, to want to come back. If I am offered a lower quality menu or lower quality service than the customer next to me, coupon or not, I am not coming back. The merchant must understand that it’s their responsibility to offer an amazing experience to create a customer out of that visitor. The Groupon user – I would not consider a customer – just a lead. In web terms, that’s basically a high bounce rate. They come and they leave. To me, as a web guy, it’s not too dissimilar from buying web traffic. I can buy a lot of Google adwords or Facebook ads and generate a lot of traffic to my site, but if my product sucks, nobody’s going buy or come back. It’s solely up to me to create a compelling product that users want to buy or create a website that users want to come back to. Getting all the foot traffic from daily deals can work for these merchants, if they are prepared to engage these customers and make an effort to get them added to their mailing lists to get them back in the door.

When we hear stories of merchants who have lost their shirt doing a Groupon, I always think that part of the onus is on Groupon’s salespeople (who are driven by their commissions to sell the biggest deal they can get manage), and the other part is on the merchant, to understand the math and economics of their own business. Groupon also doesn’t provide adequate tools to provide real transparency to their merchants, which is why companies like mobmanager.com are picking up where Groupon has left off, providing fraud prevention and ROI analytics for merchants.

The way I view Groupon is very much like buying web traffic in many ways. You have to be able to handle the load, you have to do a good job of selling and upselling so you can justify your ad spend, and you have to have a good product so people come back. Just as it’s easy to buy ads on the internet and write them off if they didn’t result in any sales, it’s easy to get burned by Groupon. In both cases, people didn’t know what they were getting into.