The Wave UI

Google is largely an engineering driven company. I think if it wasn’t for the hip Product Managers running around trying to keep up with the PhDs, their UIs would be composed of mainly command line interfaces with maybe some SOAP calls if you wanted to get fancy.

With that said, I thought the UI they pulled together for the demo, albeit a little clunky in certain parts, was by and large quite impressive. The first thought that came into my mind when I saw the UI was “holy shit, that’s what Rikk and that other crazy guy was trying to pull for Plaxo 3.0“

At the time, we just couldn’t make the damn thing fast enough, nor intuitive enough, and here it was, in all of it’s glory, with the strech and contract, working perfectly.

Was it that we had sucky engineers? Has the web really matured that much that they can finally managed to make this UI fly (and fast)? Is it just demo magic?

I think Google pulled it off because the Web has really matured… I’ll tell you why, but it connects more with the next section, the Wave’s architecture.

The Wave Architecture

I think the Wave is one of the first cases on the Internet where we are truly changing the trajectory in how we develop our systems and their architecture. To put it in context with a maturity graph that we are familiar with, it’s like we’re finally moving away from coding our applications procedurally to a paradigm that is closer to object oriented. Furthermore, we’re finally moving away from the concept of a Request -> Reply, or a Ping -> Pong, or even a Poll -> Resulset, to a truly event driven system where each aspect of a page is operating semi-autonomously.

Congratulations Internet, in some twisted backwards yet forward way, you’ve finally caught up with best-practices of Enterprise Architecture.

I think the federated model that Google is proposing, and the architecture and framework that they are bringing to the table is truly exciting and will hopefully take us in a new direction in not only increasing developer productivity but also improving in our ability to develop truly rich and scalable internet applications that do no rely on sucky inaccessible frameworks (i.e. Flex or Flash).

Waves, the concept

The second part of the demo moved beyond the UI, and the architecture, and more to some theories around the application of this technology.

Now, I don’t know about you, but co-editing a document sounds like a utter disaster to me and beyond being amazing demo-candy, I can think of very few real world uses for it.

But even beyond that, I couldn’t help but think of that “3rd window” showing the content of the wave as being just one giant fucking iFrame throughout the whole demo. Here’s why:

When you look at technology over the past 10 years, especially internet technology and technology for solving real world problems and actually making people’s lives easier, us, as an industry, have pretty much failed!

I think with stuff like microformats and other such semantic markup, we were finally moving toward making data more accessible, open and meaningful. But with Waves, with this munging of all kinds of data, with free-form typing, just with this whole WAVE, I’m starting to fear that we’re once again regressing in our goal of making people’s lives better through technology instead of more complicated.

It is clear that with Google making APIs available and their encouragement to build widgets and integrations, the onus is on us to create meaningful technology. Let’s just say we’ll have to keep a close eye on things… are we truly improving our lives with “more” or just complicating it even more? Creating more jobs for low-end data workers to deal with shitty technology solutions munged together for the lack of a proper technology solution that reduces human involvement rather than increase it.

Still an amazing achievement

In case I haven’t made it clear, I think the Wave team, after about a year and change of work has produced something extraordinary and potentially game changing.

Lastly, as another meta-level thought, I wonder if Apple’s technology supporting the iPhone, iTunes and even their Web Offerings are just as fancy and forward thinking. Apple’s presentations always focus on the end-user experience, whereas Google focused much more on the infrastructure-level stuff. Just a thought, Apple, are you there? Want to provide something game changing to the developer community (through a federated model perhaps?)

Instead, I think there is a lot to be said about why BIGOmaha turned out to be so awesome, beyond just the content of the keynotes. Furthermore, I think anyone can follow some of the tactics Dusty and Jeff used to host their own regional conference and make it awesome. Here’s what you have to do:

Keep it intimate

When all the Ruby developers in NYC get together, or the new-media types congregate for SXSW Interactive, you get a crowd of hundreds if not thousands. With BIGOmaha, albeit not by design but more because they’re just starting out, they sold out to their capacity of ~300. This meant a crowd of locals (and a handful from far away), that got together at the conference and first felt a feeling of serendipity (”oh my..you’re in Omaha and you love Ruby too?!”) followed by a feeling of intimacy since as this small crowd of cool people all went through the journey that was BIGOmaha.

Make it a journey

BIGOmaha was more of a journey than just a conference. It started with an opening wine show along with a live band. Breakfast was served in the morning, we all travelled across the street for lunch, had a post-conference wine party and then had a closing party at a lounge come art gallery.

As we walked from event to event, ate food, drank, listened, talked and shared, it all become much more than just going into a conference; it became an experience and a journey. Strange unknown faces or what once was just a twitter username you followed became familiar faces and even friends. Sweet.

Think User Experience

To go from Keynote #1 to Keynote #2 for SXSW, I once had to take two escalators, and elevator and then jump into the staircase only to realize I was on the “wrong part of the building.” The wrong fucking part of the building?! With BIGOmaha, even the bathroom signs had more thought given to it in terms of User Experience.

Here was the awesome, awesome, Blogger’s Lounge…awesome!

Be a gracious host

Dusty and Jeff didn’t look at their jobs as just throwing a conference together with hot speakers, I think they looked at it as hosting a party in their own home town. I felt like I was invited to their own living room, where they gave us a tour of their house, made sure I was comfortable, and took me to all the hot places in town to make sure I have a good time.

This not only made BIGOmaha great, but also gave it a humanistic feel, where it made a New Yorker travelling to Nebraska feel like I was visiting an old friend…rather than a strange city for some random conference.

With all that said.. I think Dusty and Jeff came across an incredibly awesome formula for throwing a conference. It wouldn’t have been as awesome as it was without their hardwork, but I think there is lots to learn from these two. With their techniques, I’d love to see a BIGNewYork, BIGAustin or even a BIGIowa.

We’re bringing forward-thinking, creatives, entrepreneurs, and innovators to Omaha.

Something about that just clicked. I had gotten bored of SXSW after going for two years, which left a void in me from getting my web-conference fix. I promptly booked my tickets and was psyched!

Although I immediately had extremely high hopes about BIGOmaha, I expected very little from Omaha itself. “Why’re you going to Nebraska?!” asked family and friends when I told them about my plans.

To my utter surprise, while BIGOmaha itself far exceeded my already high expectations, something magical happened: I fell in love with Omaha itself…and here’s why.

I did not take these pictures, which is why I am linking to the original photographer’s flickr page, feel free to compliment them for wonderfully capturing Omaha’s beauty

The thing that I loved the most about Omaha was it’s pure authencitity. Not just the place itself, but the people, the things, and even the concepts.

Maybe it was all the brick buildings, sure, they were old, but they showed their age with class, with character, almost like a broken in leather jacket instead of the crumpled faux leather most other small cities exhibit ….so authentic.

The restaurants weren’t your standard Chinese place, Italian place and Steak house, it was a plethora of restaurants, with distinct styles, outdoor seating, people buzzing, even some random kid playing the violin on the street corner.

And as for the concepts adding to it’s authenticity, take for example this two-screen theater only playing classics and indy films, started by a young entrepreneur that has never done anything like this before.

Or even these converted warehouse come lofts, all part of a revitalization project running over the past decade through Omaha’s downtown.

Sure BIGOmaha was great, but I think an even greater success was for Dusty and JS to show all of us a place where creatives and entrepreneurs are gathering and making things happen. BIGOmaha wasn’t just a conference to me, it was a wakeup call that you don’t necessarily have to be in San Francisco to drink tea, tweet and create the next web innovation that impacts the world. Omaha has a community of like-minded thinkers waiting to welcome you.

I am simply amazed at how much “aesthetic” you can add to a design simply by using a concoction of elegant typefaces.

The web happens to have a ton of great resources if you want to learn more:

• 8 Simple Ways to Improve Typography In Your Designs

• Five simple steps to better typography

• The Elements of Typographic Style Applied to the Web

What is a Location Based Service (LBS)?

According to the Wikipedia article on LBS:

A location-based service (LBS) is an information and entertainment service, accessible with mobile devices through the mobile network and utilizing the ability to make use of the geographical position of the mobile device.

In other words, it is what an address book should have been since day one. A typical LBS service today will show you where your friends are on a map, along with a one-liner describing what they’re up to.

The biggest problem with LBSs

LBSs today are facing an identity crisis: They don’t quite know what the right combination of services should be to achieve a profitable business model.

Since all of them are subject to the network effect, no service has truly gained traction by meeting the common needs of a large base of users.

Instead of identifying this as a truly different experience that solves a real-time problem, most LBS services have instead jumped onto the Social Networking bandwagon, touting as me-too services, except with location, except on your mobile phone. This is dumb.

LBSs are not stepping up and providing the users a brand new experience. They are trying to fit themselves into the mold of existing social networking paradigms.

My ideal LBS

Alright, enough complaining. I think the core features that are important in an LBS app already exist out, however it is the extra crap that get in the way that really bother me.

If I were to create my own LBS app, here is how I would design it.

Top Use Cases

1. Post my location
2. See where my friends are, and what they are doing
3. Find places near me
4. Coordinate a meet up

Navigation

By the way, I am a huge fan of paper prototypes, so I will be using some sketches to illustrate my points.

Confusing navigation is one of my biggest gripes with existing LBS apps. Cutesy tab labels like “What’s Up?!” and annoying navigation that go three levels deep make these apps very difficult to use.

No matter what I am doing in my ideal LBS app, it falls under three high-level categories:

Me — Post my location, Post a picture, Update my status, etc.

My Friends — See where my friends are, and what they are doing

A Place — Find places nearby, and once I do, contextually schedule a meet up.

My LBS app will only have 3 “tabs.”

Me

This is the “Me” tab. This tab only has one purpose: enable me to tell my friends where I am and what I’m doing.

It shows some basic things: 1. My profile picture 2. My current one-liner “status” 3. My last posted location (on a map) 4. Some indication showing me how long it has been since I have posted my location

The only action that you’ll see in this tab, is “Update Location.”

When you tap Update Location, you’ll get still be in the “Me” tab, but you will be able to update your status. This includes: 1. My current location on a map (this is automatic, thanks to GPS magic) 2. What I am up to (simple text, think Twitter) 3. Attach a picture (from my cameraphone) 4. And a simple checkbox stating “Alert my friends.”

Friends

Onto the “Friends” tab. This is where I find out where my friends are, and what they are up to.

Another gripe I have with today’s LBS apps is that they keep insisting on showing my friends on a map. I find this to be useless for a couple of reasons: 1. That location marker is probably out-dated (i.e. he posted his location 2 hours ago and is no longer at that exact location) 2. The map view limits me to find out about my friends in my proximate location, whereas what I really want is to get an idea of where “all my friends” are regardless of how far or near they may be.

With that in mind, my ideal LBS app would give me a list of my friends ordered by “proximity and freshness.” Proximity meaning the closer they are, the higher up they’ll be on the list. Freshness meaning, the more-recently they’ve updated their location, the higher up they’ll be on the list.

Also, my list also shows me my Friend’s profile picture (or the latest picture from their latest updated), and it even tells me the general location of where they are right now.

Where’s Alok?

We’re still in the “Friends” tab, but I wanted to see more about what Alok is doing in Palo Alto.

So, in my ideal LBS app, when I tap on his name, I get a similar screen as the “Me” tab, showing me details about Alok’s whereabouts and what he’s up to.

In my ideal LBS app, there is also a simple “send message” link which will let me send Alok a SMS right from the app.

You could also imagine adding a “Call” link here as well.

Places

The “Places” tab is where it all comes together. You know where you are, you realize a couple of friends are nearby, why not meet up and grab lunch?

The initial “Places” screen shows you a list of your Favorite Places, and then helps you find other places nearby if you’re looking for something new.

Another powerful idea here are the contextual links. Being able to find a place nearby, and clicking “Call” or “Get Directions.”

I think being able to link across applications to leverage other competencies is going to be a strong trend (especially on the iPhone) in the near future.

This means that my ideal LBS app will not be collecting reviews, but you can imagine my contextual link for “Get Directions” will link to the Google Maps app, or the “Read Reviews” link going to the Yelp app.

Want to meet up?

This is the true value add for LBS apps, but none of them have truly cracked it yet. Once you know people are nearby, and your favorite hangout spot is nearby, the killer feature for the LBS app will be to quickly coordinate a get together.

You can even imagine a feature saying “Hey, 3 of your best friends are nearby, want to meet up at your usual hangout, which is also nearby?”

I purposefully didn’t sketch this one up. I’ll leave it to your imagination, or for the LBS company that offers me a consulting gig to help fix their broken LBS app

After much introspection, I found that while I banged out certain tasks very easily, I consistently kept on putting off certain tough tasks day after day. As I drilled in a little deeper, I really came to face the fact that I was simply scared of taking on some of those tasks.

Doing a project with a team of one is tough. In actual startups with teams, you can usually turn to your partner to talk through certain things that you get stuck on. This does not happen when you are trying to think through problems and pain points in your head, regardless of how good of a problem solver or thinker you are.

Faced with this problem, I came up with an aide to help me think through these tough tasks. The whole idea is to drill down into a task that I’ve been putting off in a systematic manner. Whenever I find something that I’m scared of tackling, I pull up my MacJournal and start writing a journal entry with this template:

What’re you trying to accomplish?
This is where you put a simple one-line sentence describing your intent.

What do you need to accomplish this?
Usually, I write out a list of what needs to be done. Think of these as sub-tasks. Don’t think so much about how these will be done, just focus on what actually needs to be done.

What’s easy to do?
Simple enough right? Take the stuff you need to do, and list out the things that are easy to do. Try not to regurgitate the items on your sub-tasks list, but make it more of a free flowing thought process.

What are the roadblocks?
Start reading through what you’ve written. At this point, it really should be becoming clear in your head why you’ve been putting this task in the first place. But don’t stop now. This is the section where you just start listing out all of your roadblocks, all of the things you’re scared about, all of the things you don’t know (how to do). Again, don’t worry so much about how you’re going to solve these problems; instead, focus on the what the actual roadblocks are and list them out.

What are some possible solutions to each roadblock?
Alright, if you’ve been diligent so far, you should be feeling a lot better about this task now. Hopefully you are already feeling excited about truly understanding this task and at this point your mind is flowing with ways to solve the roadblocks you’ve identified. List them out, don’t worry as much about whether they can actually be executed on, but focus more on possible solutions. You don’t want to go completely out of touch here, so I’d recommnd you list possible solutions in the order of feasibility.

Action Items
This is where it should all come together. You should read over everything you’ve written, digest it, and finally come up with some real action items for yourself to tackle this task for real.

This technique has been working amazingly well for me. I’d love to hear from you if you decide to try it out.

It’s amazing how much can change over the span of a year (different job, different place, different coast) yet how some things can still stay the same. The same passions, still the same good friends and no shortage of good ideas that are probably going to be as popular next year as social aggregators are becoming in 2008.

Last year’s SXSW

The best panels from last year were held by industry mavens who had gone up on stage to show the battle scars they had just incurred from their recently successful startups and businesses. They talked about how they fixed scalability, how they increased clickthroughs, how to improve design and even talked about perfectly executing on your idea as if it were a heist. It was great… and I think that is one of the key things that’s so great about the conference (as opposed to random boring MSFT conferences)… it’s run by humble people that have real concrete experiences from the real world to reflect upon.

This year

This year, certainly felt different. There were definitely a good number of panels held by people who thought they had real battle scars, but really all they had to show was giant pictures of hearts in different shades and blabbing on about how websites should have tactile feedback. And then, there was the Facebook fiaso. I thought Zuck would be the one to screw up trying to quote exactly what his PR team had prepped him. Instead, it turned out the interviewer herself upped him in screwing up and stealing the limelight. Either way, I was smart enough to skip the Zuckerberg interview, but only after being subjected to a million different shades of powerpoint slides showing just Hearts (what? That’s how you get your users to love your products… didn’t you know?).

Next year?

All was not lost. It was still a worthwhile conference in my book, and probably the only conference I’ll go to this year. In fact, I’m pretty much ready to book my tickets for it as soon as they announce SXSW 2009. Here’s why:

Jason Fried’s “10 Things We’ve Learned at 37Signals” was quoted and referenced again and again through the many lunch, dinners and happy hours that I attended. That’s no surprise either right? He perfectly fit the ideal SXSW presenter’s profile: someone with actual battle scars with experience to reflect upon. But what about the humble part? I’d say that was one of the best things about his talk: people accuse Fried and DHH of being arrogant, thinking their principles apply to everything and people are stupid for not following it. On the contrary, Fried, with the utmost humbleness completed each and every one of the ten things by pretty much saying: “this worked for us… it may not apply to you, but we think this is a pretty damn good way to go.” Humbleness. Love it.

Another awesome panel was one held by Bijoy Goswami of Bootstrap Austin: “Bootstrapping 101.” I went into the panel thinking “I know everything about Bootstrapping, hell I’ve helped in doing it atleast twice and succeeded.” Well, I was wrong. Once again, not only was he a guy with real battle scars, he brought along a couple of people from his network that also had scars. Even better was the fact that he brought on bootstrappers that were creating businesses that had nothing to do with technology! I think the most impressive thing was the fact that Goswami was able to break down the seemingly straight forward concept of Bootstrapping into individual stages each with it’s own set of guiding principles.

Finally, a real surprise was the keynote delivered by Frank Warren of PostSecret. Not only was his presentation incredibly touching, he even hooked up a guy by helping him propose to his girlfriend on stage.

In conclusion

Sure there was a lot more crap to sift through, but the few goldmines were certainly worth it. I’m very glad, and for those of you that have yet to discover SXSW Interactive, I really urge you to check it out.

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