thisMix

Time on Site is the Denominator

Roy Leban — Thu, 23 Jan 2014 17:58:00 +0000

A major media company recently did a major redesign of their web site. When users complained about all the problems, and there were many, the sites (re)designers said the problems were the users' fault for not being familiar with the changes, and they pointed to an increase in the time users were spending on the site as proof that the redesign was successful.

It didn't occur to them that there was another very likely reason for the increased time on the site, namely that users were spending more time on the site because the site was harder to use and harder to navigate. In fact, parts of the redesign increased the number of steps needed to perform a number of common actions, sometimes significantly.

Underlying all this is that this major media company seems to not understand what time on site represents. It's not really their fault. Time on site is a phrase so prevalent these days that it gets 138 million hits on Google.

But here's the pivotal question: does the company get value from users spending more time on the site? In fact, they do not. Think about it this way. Which of the following two customers is more valuable to a clothing store?

Alex goes to the store, spends an hour trying on pants to find one that fits and looks good, buys the pants and leaves.
Pat goes to the store, tries on one pair of pants and discovers that they fit and look good, so buys them and leaves five minutes later.

The answer is obviously Pat, who left a happier customer. Because they hadn't spent an extra 55 minutes trying on pants, they are far more likely to buy other things, even before they leave, and they are more likely to tell their friends about their good experience.

If the store had measured time in store, they would have thought that Alex was a happier and better customer!

Time on site is still useful to measure — but in a different way. Here are two straightforward equations:

value received by users
time on site

value received by site (e.g., ad revenue)

time on site

Notice that time on site is the denominator in both equations. The first roughly measures how well you're satisfying your users while they're on your site, while the second roughly measures income over time.

Having visitors to your brick and mortar store costs you money, in terms of employee costs, utility costs, etc., even if the visitor buys nothing. The more visitors you have, the more employees you need, even if the visitors buy nothing. The same is true of your web site. Every minute somebody spends on your web site costs you for server time. Although the absolute cost may be smaller, it is not zero. The formulas above are obvious when you think about that plus the old standard ROI, or return on investment. If you measure and worry about about the return on investment for time on site, you'll have a much better understanding of how your site is doing.

What if you have an entertainment property? My company, Puzzazz, is a puzzle technology company that has built a popular free puzzle app for iOS. You might think we should measure time in app because more time in the app must indicate happier users. Nope. Take the people who solve just the New York Times crossword in Puzzazz. Some people can solve a Sunday NYT puzzle in a few minutes; others take an hour or more. Can we draw any conclusions about a user's happiness from the time it takes them to solve the puzzle? No. Different users are not comparable to each other for many reasons and doing things like averaging their times across different puzzles to determine value is not mathematically sound. Instead, we can look at things like puzzles per session and puzzles finished divided by puzzles started. Whatever your site or product is, you should spend the time necessary to figure out what the relevant metrics are.

It's certainly true that measuring your site's value and effectiveness is far more complicated than I lay out here. But it is even more complicated than measuring a number like time on site and expecting it to tell you much by itself. Especially when you use it as the numerator instead of the denominator.

Lose the Landing Page, Redux

Roy Leban — Thu, 22 Mar 2012 23:23:00 +0000

I while back I wrote a blog post titled Lose the Landing Page. Today, I posted a link to it on a mailing list of tech startup entrepreneurs and discovered that some people didn't understand what I was saying.

So... some clarification.

When you get a new visitor on your site, what you do with them has nothing to do with how they got there, whether it cost you money to get them there (through a paid ad or however).You should want to convert every new visitor to a customer or repeat visitor (depending on what type of business you have). You just look worse if you don't convert a visitor you paid for.

I am not saying you should not do anything special depending on the source of the user. This can be appropriate, for example, you could do something different if a user comes via a particular ad campaign or through a particular search or from a partner site. But every such page has the same goal -- get the new visitor to become a customer or repeat visitor.

Every thing you show a new visitor can do one of two things: give them a reason to stay or give them a reason to leave. You want to maximize reasons to stay for people who are potential customers (and, it's also a good idea to give people who are not potential customers reasons to leave, so you stop wasting time on them).

One of the best things you can do is provide immediate value and one of the worst things you can do is waste the visitor's time with irrelevant information. Guess what an awful lot of "landing pages" do?

To cite a recent example, it's undoubtedly true that pictures of families perform better on a "landing page" than dancing squirrels, it is extremely likely that actually providing value to visitors would preform better. What is that value? Well, it depends on your business. Note the use of the word "business" there, not "site". You're running a business, right? Your web site is just a manifestation of your business -- it is not your business.

And what is the genesis of a typical landing page? It usually goes like this: "Gee, we don't know what to show people when they arrive at our site. Let's show them a page full of information." The process you should use goes like this "When somebody arrives at our site, what are they looking for? How can we provide value to them so that they turn into a customer of our business?" (again, notice the use of the word "business").

If you're building a landing page just because you think you're supposed to have one, stop debating between families and squirrels. Lose the page instead and focus on giving your visitors value.

Caveat: yes, there is a bit of oversimplification here. But not much.

The Business Card Experience

Roy Leban — Thu, 03 Feb 2011 15:08:00 +0000

One of the first experiences that many people have with your company is with your business card. In Japan, there's an art to presenting a business card -- you hold the card with both hands on one of the short ends and present it forward. When appropriate, give a deferential bow with your head.

While we don't do things so formally in the US, you can can either make a great first impression or you can blow it. Last night, somebody handed me a business card with an unreadable name on it -- it was his signature digitized. It didn't help that the card also told me nothing about what his company did. A card like that can be an obstacle, rather than an aid.

Fortunately, designing a good business card isn't hard:

It has to be readable. No yellow on green or psychedelic backgrounds.
Leave breathing room between elements. If it's all jammed together, it's not readable.
Cluster similar elements. Don't put your phone number in one corner and your fax number in a different corner.
A very common layout for business cards is a triangle, with information in three areas. For example, name and title in top middle, company logo in lower left, and contact info in lower right. Triangles are common because they work -- they allow people to focus quickly on each area. Other layouts work too -- just think about how people will read your business card.
Don't right-align text that's hard to read that way -- for example, a street address.
Usually, your name and your logo should be the largest elements. Put another way, whatever is most important should be the most readable.
The larger the logo, the smaller the company. Look at cards you've gotten from people at Microsoft, Amazon, Google, etc. If you want to project a bigger image, downsize your logo. The worst thing you can do is fill your card with your logo.
Unless you're a company the size of Microsoft, avoid putting multiple logos on your card.
Downsize the text too, but not so small that people need glasses to read it. I've gotten business cards with which they should have supplied a magnifying glass.
There's nothing wrong with a tagline, especially if your company name doesn't immediately tell people what you do. A tagline is not a paragraph.
If you want to do something unusual -- a photo of your product, an array of images, a QR code -- the back of the card is a great place to do this. Don't clutter the front. If you can make the back useful all the better. Many optometrists have space for your prescription on the back. Puzzazz business cards have a puzzle on the back.
If you're a normal business, don't go with an off-size supplier. Moo cards, cool as they are, are bigger than standard business cards. Use them for personal cards to show off your kids or your photography. Vistaprint cards are smaller than standard, which is a bit less of a problem. While you're at it, business cards are a different sizes in Europe, Japan, etc.
Ignore most of the blog posts on cool business cards -- aluminum, origami, little boxes, etc. If you're an artist, a designer, or Woz, these are great options. The rest of us should stick with something a bit more normal. There are plenty of simple ways to stand out, such as a color choice, an impressive back, a paper choice or even a cut corner. Puzzazz cards have eight different logo colors, so people can choose a card with their favorite color (and there are ten different puzzles that go on the back).
At least one side must be matte in a light color with room to write on. Everybody writes on business cards (except in Japan, where it's a major faux pas). While we're at it, glossy business cards are generally harder to read.
Did I mention it has to be readable?

And, if you're still working on a logo for your company, check out these posts:

One Thing About Logos
Designing the Puzzazz Logo

Letting the Qur'an Burn Makes Us Stronger

Roy Leban — Sat, 11 Sep 2010 19:43:00 +0000

The phrasing in the headline isn't accidental. I said "Letting the Qur'an burn," not "Burning the Qur'an." Let me be clear that I think burning the Qur'an, the bible, any country's flag, the US Constitution, or even a copy of Fahrenheit 451, is a really bad idea.

Just in case that's not clear, let me repeat: it's a really, really bad idea. I do not in any way approve of anybody burning or destroying something that is sacred to somebody else.

But our country is strong because we allow people, even bigots and racists and just plain stupid folks, to have opinions which are -- you got it -- bigoted, racist, and just plain stupid. And burning stuff is just one way of expressing your opinion. If the Taliban or Al-Qaeda were in charge, you wouldn't be allowed to dissent. You'd have to do it in secret or risk being stoned to death.

If you're one of those radical, intolerant Christians who want to destroy something sacred to somebody else, you're not alone. In fact, you're just like the people you claim to hate the most. The Taliban destroyed buddhas, including the ancient and irreplaceable Buddhas of Bamyan. And as for Al-Qaeda ... maybe you've heard of the World Trade Center. Burn some Qur'ans and you'll be in great company.

We're better than that. We let people dissent. We know that a few bad people, like Qur'an burners, the Taliban, and Al-Qaeda, do not represent all Americans, all Christians, or all Muslims. Just like Timothy McVeigh and Terry Jones do not even come close to speaking for either all Christians or all Americans, the Taliban and Al-Qaeda do not come close to representing all of the Middle East or all Muslims.

So, hey, you want to be stupid, go ahead. The rest of us aren't interested in inciting more hatred.

Delivering UX

Roy Leban — Mon, 30 Aug 2010 19:47:00 +0000

In April, I ordered a pizza from Papa John's web site for carryout. And why is that important today?

Their web site isn't very well done, but, though clunky, it mostly works. This post is about one small but significant flaw.

You see, four months ago, I chose carryout instead of delivery. And today's order automatically defaulted to carryout as well. So, while we were waiting at home for the pizza to be delivered, it was sitting on a shelf at the restaurant getting cold.

I wouldn't be surprised if the Papa John's web staff thinks it's my fault. After all, the menu page has a small box off to the side that says "Carryout" on it. It's so in-your-face that I only noticed it when I went back to the site. It's sandwiched between the boxes for the shopping cart, Papa's Points, and an ad for their mobile ordering app -- on a page with more than 70 ordering options and tons of tiny text. It's also equally ignorable on the shopping cart page, and not prominent on the Checkout page (it's at the top, with my address, not at the bottom, next to submit order). Did the developers really think that this information was that unimportant? And did they really think that almost everything on the page should be the same font size?

And, aside from all that, is it actually true that people order the same way every time? Should have a default rather than a choice on the checkout page (like two buttons "Order for Delivery" and "Order for Carryout")?

There are so many ways to fix this problem that I'm going to leave it as an exercise for the reader. Pick one or two or three -- but there's no excuse for lack of clarity.

On the positive side, the Papa John's staff was quite courteous. They remade the pizza and delivered it, no extra charge. But the problem could have -- and should have -- been avoided.

No Tweeting During Philip Glass

Roy Leban — Sat, 03 Apr 2010 00:07:00 +0000

I saw Philip Glass with my son tonight at the Kirkland Performance Center. I know this may come as a surprise, but I didn't tweet once during the performance. It's impossible to not notice the trend where people engage in social networking like tweeting instead of actually enjoying what they're doing. Maybe that works at a boring restaurant while you're waiting for your food to arrive, but complex music like what I heard tonight takes concentration! I can't imagine interrupting to tweet.

And, yes, the concert was awesome. I'd seem him once before, circa 1987, with a whole ensemble performing Koyaanisqatsi live. That was amazing and engrossing in a different way. This was just Glass on piano, a more intimate performance. Koyaanisqatsi live was unforgettable. I don't think this reached up to that bar, but I'll let you know in five or ten years.

Favorite pieces were a few of the seven etudes he played. He said he's written 16 of a planned 20, but he's only learned 10 of them so far (writing them is evidently easier than learning them). I also loved Night on the Balcony as well as Closing from Glassworks, which he played as an encore.

Research Then Development

Roy Leban — Wed, 24 Feb 2010 15:46:00 +0000

A lot of companies talk about R&D -- Research and Development. If you're doing a startup, wipe that phrase out of your vocabulary!

It's simple, really. Investors don't want to pay for research. Research is open-ended. Research doesn't have an answer -- at best, it has a theory. I was talking with an entrepreneur recently who has an idea about something that might work. If it works, it might be cool. If it's cool enough, it might make money. That's all fine and good, but investors aren't going to pay for all those mights. They don't want to invest in a theory -- they want as much certainty as possible. Their ideal scenario is where you're already making money and you just need money to expand. Certainly, you can find investors who will take more risk, but the more uncertainty you can remove, the better.

Don't get me wrong -- research is important. Most of the time I spent on Puzzazz in the last year and a half was research. But unless you work at Bell Labs or Microsoft Research, don't count on somebody else paying you to do it.

Instead of R&D, you have to think about R then D, with investors coming after the R and some of the D.

What Are You Passionate About?

Roy Leban — Mon, 22 Feb 2010 17:40:00 +0000

Adeo Ressi of the Founder Institute likes to ask the question "What are you passionate about?"

I love this question because there are many wrong answers but there is no right answer. Adeo doesn't ask this question because he wants the answer, though he is interested in what you say. He asks the question because he wants you to think about the answer. If you don't think about your passions and if you don't do something that you are passionate about in some way, then your chances of success go way down. This is true in life, but it's even more true if you're an entrepreneur.

There isn't a one-size-fits-all way to be passionate. It's all about you. My mother opened an optical shop and she wasn't passionate about eyeglasses -- she was passionate about service. She wanted everybody in town to be able to afford a pair of quality, stylish eyeglasses. She succeeded in her business because of her passion, which permeated every aspect of her business. And her shop changed how eyeglasses are sold in Lawrence. Yes, the change would have happened eventually (it's happened everywhere else), but her passion made it happen sooner.

As I wrote recently one reason that I killed my coordination services startup was that I wasn't passionate enough about it. I still think it's a great idea, but it's not my last great idea, and somebody else -- somebody else who is passionate about it -- will do it, probably even better than I would have. I wish them luck.

In case it's not obvious, passion is one of the big reasons that I'm jazzed about Puzzazz.

What are you passionate about?

Jazzed About Puzzazz

Roy Leban — Sun, 21 Feb 2010 11:47:00 +0000

It took me a surprisingly long time to come to this conclusion, but I'm taking the experiment that is currently Puzzazz and turning it into a real business, hopefully a big one.

I've been passionate about puzzles for most of my life. In my spare time, I'm a professional puzzle constructor, with puzzles published in the New York Times, GAMES Magazine, and plenty of other newspapers, magazines, and books. I've constructed thousands of puzzles. I also co-founded Microsoft Puzzle Hunt and Microsoft Intern Puzzleday, two events that are still going on long after I left the company. So what was the holdup? Did I think I was too passionate about it?

Honestly, that was part of it. I wasn't sure I had the proper distance. I was concerned that, because I loved puzzles, it would cloud my judgment and I wouldn't be able to accurately assess the potential business. But there were two bigger components.

Helping the World

Throughout my career, there's been a common thread. I do things which help people, enable people, or empower people in some way. Usually, it's been stuff which made them more productive, like word processors, web publishing software, databases, and personal information managers. But I've also done educational software (twice, most recently at DreamBox Learning) and even an embedded system for hardware that assisted the kidney dialysis process. How can puzzles stack up with any of that?

It took other people to help me realize what is now obvious. Mostly they just echoed back what I was saying, but hearing it from somebody else really helps. Puzzles aren't just fun. Like my current Puzzazz users who visit the site every single day, many people find the fun and challenge of puzzles an essential part of their life. There's a reason fifty million people in the US solve crossword puzzles regularly!

And, in the online world, there are an awful lot of crappy puzzles and puzzle games out there. Providing people who want puzzles, who can't live without puzzles, a better experience is definitely making their lives better.

Building a Big Business

How can puzzles and puzzle games be a big business? It took me a long time to see this, too. Sure, lots of people solve crosswords. Sure, people go nuts for Sudoku. But a big business? When I did some research I learned that the casual and mobile games markets combined are about a $5 Billion market and growing strong. About 20% of that is puzzle games -- honestly, not very good puzzle games. So, the market is there.

I had started Puzzazz as a fun experiment. I picked a narrow range of puzzle types and I did a number of different things to learn what would work, from the different perspectives of puzzles, site features, and revenue generation. Over time, I've come to realize that it's not just an experiment -- it's a successful one. Even though it's a tiny site at the moment, it's making a large amount of money on a per-user basis. Even if I did nothing else, Puzzazz could be profitable by just increasing the number of regular visitors. But I've got much bigger and bolder plans than that.

Learning from Failure

It turned out that by trying to make sure I didn't let my passion cloud my judgment, I allowed it to stop me from seeing what is now pretty obvious. Puzzazz has the potential to be a really great, profitable business!

I spent a lot of the time between the time I launched Puzzazz, in September, 2008, and now, trying to start another business that didn't make it. I'm avoiding the same mistakes. I have a good, practical plan, without unreasonable deadlines. I'm not trying to "boil the ocean" and the plan involves steady growth, with multiple solid revenue sources. I'm doing something I'm passionate about, where I already have a ton of knowledge, both in puzzles and in building large, scalable, quality web services. I've already gotten traction and revenue without requiring skills that I don't have (although I have started looking for my first business person). And I'm having fun with it. That doesn't mean it's a cakewalk. Nope, there are plenty of hard problems to solve to get it done right. And, though I've started the process, there's a long way to go before Puzzazz is what I want it to be.

In other words, like any good puzzle, it'll be both fun and challenging!

Learning From Failure

Roy Leban — Tue, 16 Feb 2010 22:38:00 +0000

What ever happened to Groupthink?

I get asked that periodically. If you don't know, Groupthink was the name I attached to the startup I was trying to build more than a year ago. I started with an ambitious, overly public plan, and an announcement that I was going to launch in 30 days. What I didn't say was that I had a huge, gigantic plan, and the planned 30-day launch was just the start.

If you've been reading my blog, you know the first thing that happened (I didn't launch in 30 days) and you probably know the second thing that happened (I didn't ever launch it), but now I'll make it official: it's dead and it's been dead for quite a while. I learned a ton in the process and I think my future endeavors will be stronger as a result, but I figure I might as well let everybody else learn as well.

So what was I building?

Put simply, I was building a coordination services company for small- and medium-sized businesses. I had what I thought was a pretty cool idea -- an incredibly simple, easy-to-use scripting language for coordination activities combined with a highly stateful backend system that let people build coordination functionality into their applications without having to know anything about how it all worked or even running a server. You could use the same scripts to send and receive emails, provide web forms, make phone calls, send SMS text messages, even contact somebody through XMPP chat. The system could work 24/7 with any application, even one written in Visual Basic in Microsoft Access, running on a single PC sitting in the corner of a small business that gets turned off every night. The system was designed so that anybody from an expert to a casual spare-time developer could use it, with the sweet spot being VARs and ISVs delivering custom applications to specific types of businesses. These VARs and ISVs don't have the experience (or servers) to do these things on their own, but Groupthink would have allowed them to add a wide range of coordination activities very quickly. It's not a perfect analogy, but think of it as Varolii for everybody else. And I envisioned that Varolii (a Seattle company) or one of their competitors, or possibly one of the giants like Google or Microsoft, would be the eventual acquirer.

I knew that I couldn't launch a platform without a product, so I decided I needed to build one. Plus, I wanted to keep the larger vision secret. After all, I was still figuring parts of it out. So, I made my first mistake -- I picked a first product that I personally wanted to have -- a group task manager I called Groupthink Projects. When people asked me how it was better than Microsoft Project or Liquid Planner, I said "they don't make phone calls." Unfortunately, my little demo problem was just a bit too big. I spent time on Ajax UI that it needed but that wasn't critical to my overall vision. Because I'd publicly said I was going to launch in 30 days, I ended up cutting some of the critical features (including mobile access) in order to try to make my deadline. Then, I got sick for a week and lost another week to moving my father-in-law into an Alzheimer's facility (which I talked about at Ignite Seattle 6). When you only have a month, two lost weeks is huge. By this point, I also knew that I'd pick the wrong first product, but I kept going. In retrospect, it's pretty obvious I shouldn't have, but, at the time, I felt I ought to make my deadline and shipping would be good for me.

The deadline came and went, without me launching. I started spending much more time on the backend -- the important stuff. I took time out to build a couple demo apps, including a version of Eliza that I built in a day. Talking with your psychiatrist via email or text messages didn't seem so compelling, so I added voice recognition functionality to my backend just so you could just talk to Eliza. It worked quite well, except for the huge delays caused by telephony provider Twilio's incredibly slow voice recognition.

The second first app

Although I never announced it, I decided to completely abandon the Projects app and concentrate only on the platform, but I still needed a first app. When I'd been talking with people, the coordination problem that resonated with everyone was the scheduling problem, and I had identified a very solid market in restaurant schedule coordination. I knew from field research I'd done in visiting restaurants that it was a huge problem, that paper, computer-based, and even web-based scheduling system hadn't solved the coordination problem of rescheduling people and dealing with missed shifts. You should see some of the workarounds restaurants use! So, I latched onto this as my new first product.

Dumb move. It was even bigger than the first problem and I had no passion for it. Worse, everybody thought I had morphed into a scheduling company or a restaurant software company. And all the potential investors I talked to wanted to see traction there first. Yup, traction in the first app which was really just to demo the platform. And I didn't succeed in finding any customers for the platform. Truth be told, I didn't try hard enough to get those customers -- after all, I'm not a sales guy.

The skills you have vs. the skills you need

And that relates to the final problem. I had picked a problem where I couldn't succeed without an early business partner, because way too many of those skills. I advise people all the time that they should pick problems that needs the skills they already have, yet here I'd picked a problem where about half of the skills I needed at the beginning were those I didn't have. Without a business person with marketing and sales skills, I couldn't get traction that would matter to investors.

I still really like the concept I had and I think it's inevitable that somebody will build a platform like it. I learned a ton from failing. I've moved on and I'm trying to make sure that I don't make the same mistakes next time around.

I'll write about that next.

When is Bad Good?

Roy Leban — Sat, 16 Jan 2010 18:00:00 +0000

I frequently give people conflicting advice in both my UX consulting and my UX Office Hours. What's right for one product is frequently wrong for another product.

Case in point: two people, one after another, one of whom I told that he should get rid of all his icons and use text, and the other who I told to get rid of all the text and use icons.

Person 1 had an interface where each icon appeared exactly once. All were cryptic. The icons needed to be large because they all represented complex functions, so there was no text with the icons (even if there had been, it would have been tiny). Better to use just text and lay things out neatly as in an on-screen menu.

Person 2 had an interface that included a monthly calendar. Inside the days, there were one- and two-word indicators that applied to the individual day. A small calendar filled with small words just becomes a big mess, hard to see what's going on. But, since there were only a half-dozen different things in the calendar, and each was easy to represent by a simple, highly recognizable icon, switching to icons would instantly make it less cluttered and more usable.

But, yesterday, I gave some advice I've never given to anyone before. For a commercial product, I told him his input format should be a text file.

Why? Well, his product has two classes of users, like many crowd-sourcing products. The millions (hopefully billions) of people who will flock to his site to use it, and the thousands (and hopefully millions in the long run) who will provide the content for the first group. Initially, the people in that second group is probably tens of people. Every bit of energy he spends on them is time he didn't spend on the group that matters more, the visitors.

Is there a risk? Certainly. There's always a risk, and we talked about how to minimize the risk by what the text file looks like and how it's used. And we did spend time talking about a design for a "v2" that would be a step up from the text file. But I think the risk of not shipping while trying to build the perfect product for the content providers, or even trying to build the v2 we talked about is greater. Shipping is about focus and, in this case, I think focus is about delivering the right product for the people that matter the most. If he hits his goals of billions of visitors and millions of people putting content up, then he'll have ample time for v2 and v3 of the content provider tool.

Enabling Experiences

Roy Leban — Fri, 15 Jan 2010 18:19:00 +0000

Something great happened during my free UX Office Hours at StartPad yesterday.

Usually, I help people, then they go off and I never get to see what's happened. Occasionally, I see a product launch (like PicTranslator). The same is largely true in my consulting practice, though there have been a few notable exceptions with really big companies.

This isn't by accident. As you might expect with a UX consultant, it's by design.

I've noticed that many consultants see it as their job to make their job take longer. And many companies see consultants in that role -- they hire consultants to fill chairs. Instead, my number one goal as a consultant is to enable my client -- enable my client and then leave. We've all heard the old saw, with apologies to vegetarians, "Give someone a fish and they eat for a day; teach them to fish and they can eat for a lifetime." I want to enable my clients to build their product without me, rather than convince them that they can only build their product with me. It's probably not the business-savvy way to build a thriving consulting practice, but I sure feel better about it and I have happy clients.

Enabling is even more important when you only have an hour, which is what you can get for free in my monthly office hours. I can draw you a pretty picture or design some piece of your system, but then what?

Back to the great thing that happened yesterday.

A few months ago, somebody came in and asked me to critique the design he'd been working on. I told him to throw it out. Sounds harsh, I know, but it was completely wrong for what he wanted to do, the customers he wanted to serve, and how he hoped to enable them. I'll could go on. We spent most of the time talking about UX strategies that would work for his customers. I even drew some pictures on the whiteboard showing some examples.

Yesterday, he came back and showed me his new design. It bore almost no relationship to what he'd brought in earlier -- it was light years better. Honestly, it didn't look like the stuff I'd drawn on the whiteboard either. He learned something and then applied it, and he applied it in the way he thought made the most sense for his customers. I told him that he could ship with his design as-is and be ok. Yes, we could make it better (and we spent the hour discussing how to do that), and, yes, if he spent oodles of time on it (which I recommended against), he could make it way better, but the difference between the first and second versions was great to see, and it looks like he's on a good path.

It was one of those rare instances where I got to see what happened, and it felt pretty good.

Tomorrow, I'll write about another lesson from the same session: When is Bad Good?

So You Got A Camera

Roy Leban — Thu, 31 Dec 2009 00:03:00 +0000

So, you just got a camera. And the folks in the store are anxious to sell you an "accessory kit". They're anxious to do this because it's a high-profit item -- put a bunch of low-quality items together, give it a name, perhaps a name for a specific camera model, and sell it for a premium.

Ignore the accessory kits and instead think about what you need. Here are my suggestions:

A memory card. Probably the one that came with the camera is too small. You need a minimum of one decent-sized card and a maximum of two. The price per GB is constant up to 16GB, so forget the idea of getting more smaller ones. The only advantage of two is the ability to transfer pictures from one card while you're using the other one. Always transfer the images to your computer and delete them off the card. Calculate how much space you need by estimating how many pictures you'll take between opportunities to transfer to your computer and then multiply by the space needed for the size you'll be shooting at.

Speed does matter. With most cameras, faster cards let you take pictures faster. The cheapest cards off-brand cards seem to be the slowest.
If your camera uses Compact Flash (CF), consider a UDMA card and a UDMA reader (see below).

A UV filter, if you have an SLR. The real purpose is to protect your lens if it gets knocked. You don't need to pay absolute top dollar, but the cheapest ones may introduce distortion.
A bag (not a case). You want a bag to stow the camera in when you're actually using it and possibly when you're using it not at home. I have a small Velocity 7 for active work. You don't want any case that is supposed to be used *while* you're actually taking pictures. They get in the way.
If you have an SLR with multiple lenses, consider a backpack. I have an excellent one from Kata.
Stability aka a tripod. You probably want some combination of the the following.

A tripod. The best recommendations I know of are by Thom Hogan of bythom.com (he also writes great books). Most people can get by with less, maybe even just putting the camera on the edge of a table and using the self timer.
A small tripod. Gorilla pods aren't bad (get the larger one, not the small one, it also comes in green). Or, maybe a Green Pod.
A monopod. They're lightweight and good for added stability. Even a really cheap one can make a big difference. I've heard good things about the SteadePod.

If you don't have one, you need a card reader for your computer. I have a Lexar dual-slot reader that supports UDMA. It does not have an attached USB cord (more convenient for packing) and closes to keep dust out.
Consider a cheat sheet from Bert's Cheat Sheets. Small and handy. I also got one for my external flash.

Don't get:

A memory card that's bigger than you actually need. Bigger is not always better: with some cameras, particularly point-and-shoots, larger cards mean the camera takes longer to turn on.
Additional batteries or an external battery charger. You can always buy them later.
An external flash, unless you know what you're doing (in which case, you probably don't need my advice anyway).
Any lens adapter that goes on the outside of your lens.
Remote control, unless you know you'll use it.
Anything labeled an accessory kit.

And don't forget: enjoy your new camera!

Opportunities

Roy Leban — Wed, 02 Dec 2009 20:24:00 +0000

One of the speakers at Ignite Seattle 8 was Wendy Chisholm, who works for the UW and is co-author of Universal Design for Web Applications. Her talk was about incorporating accessibility into design. I won't go over what she said here -- it'll be up on YouTube soon enough and you can watch it for yourself (I recommend it).

But I want to write about the following equation that she included in her presentation:

Inclusion = Innovation

Her point was that many things that are done for the purpose of inclusion (to make things more accessible) result in innovations from which far more people benefit. It's a good argument, the same one made for the space program and I agree with it completely. I would go further, though:

Constraints = Opportunities

This statement is fundamental to the way I design things and the way I approach many things in life.

One of my favorite personal examples is the competition to design a memorial for the World Trade Center. I entered, along with more than 5,000 other people. There were a lot of requirements given for the memorial, including such things as boundaries, elevation, and required ramps and staircases. I looked at each of the requirements and asked myself how the requirement was an opportunity. How could I design a memorial such that not only was the requirement met, but it was essential? What design would make it so that people visiting the memorial could not even imagine it being any other way? Maybe they'd even think the requirement was my idea rather than something forced on me. This is one of the hallmarks of great design -- when the design is so obviously correct that you can't imagine how it can be otherwise.

My design met every single requirement and it did so organically, embracing the requirements, not fighting them. I was particularly proud of the way the ramps (that were complained about by entrants) were the linchpin of the experience my design would have provided. In contrast, every finalist ignored many (sometimes most) of the requirements. And in the other entries that I looked through -- and there were many great entries beyond the finalists -- the ramps requirement was the most ignored. It turned out that the requirements weren't really required, something I might have known if I had any background in architecture. To state the obvious, no, I didn't win the competition, not even close. As was clear from the finalists, they were looking for something monumental and my entry wasn't monumental -- I designed an experience, not a monument.

It shouldn't have been too much of a surprise that the constraints were fluid. This happens all the time in the world of computers. But that shouldn't stop us from embracing the constraints as we know them. By turning constraints into opportunities, we get innovation.

Yes, Companies Do Listen

Roy Leban — Tue, 01 Dec 2009 11:38:00 +0000

In October, I blogged about a major flaw in the Tully's web site, tullys.com -- basically, there was no way to find a Tully's location unless you knew about their secondary site, tullyscoffeeshops.com. Yesterday, Tully's fixed it, not only providing the link but making it prominent. Yes, it could be better still, but now it's a lot better than plenty of other sites.

The surprising thing was the post on their Facebook page (The Power of User-Generated Feedback for Companies) where they credited me with inspiring them to action. That's great to hear. Helping people improve the experience for their users and customers is why I write it. When I help people in my UX consulting practice or for free in my monthly UX office hours, I get to see the benefit firsthand. But, with my blog, it's hard to see the direct impact.

Thanks, Tully's.

The Founder Institute

Roy Leban — Tue, 24 Nov 2009 11:25:00 +0000

At first glance, I might not seem like the typical candidate for the Founder Institute. I'm not a fresh entrepreneur. I've been doing it a long time and I've had both favorable outcomes (acquisitions) and failures (losing a lot of money). And I even serve as an advisor and mentor to a lot of other entrepreneurs. But, through it all, two things have remained constant: I'm an entrepreneur at heart, and I have a lot to learn.

And those two things are the key reasons that I'm excited that I just got accepted to be part of the Founder Institute's winter session in Seattle.

What is an entrepreneur anyway? I'm not giving anything away to tell you that the first question on the application form is why you want to be an entrepreneur. And I certainly hope I'm not giving anything away by saying I think it's a trick question. Maybe you can want to be a good entrepreneur, or a successful one, but I think being an entrepreneur in the first place, like being a writer, or a musician, or an artist, is about being true to yourself. Do you want to build things? I know I do! I love the challenges of figuring out the problem and figuring out the solution. And I love making something out of nothing. The opportunity to be around a bunch of other like-minded people over a three-month span would be valuable all on its own.

What do I have to learn? Tons, it turns out. Earlier this year, I wrote the absolute best business plan I had ever written. I created the best presentation decks I had ever written (although I didn't present them that well, ironic for someone who's a very good public speaker). I had a pretty good prototype to go with them. And it was for a business that I really think could make it and be hugely profitable. I'm a CTO, a product guy, and, yes, a visionary (though I don't really care for that term). But, I'm not a CEO and I was trying to start a company that really needed one. In looking at the Founder Institute curriculum, about 90% of the content is centered around the areas that I'm weak in, the places where I still have a lot to learn. If this were CTO camp, I could teach it. But it's a business camp and I'm happy to be a student.

And that brings up the third piece of the picture. I had the good fortune to run into Chris Early, the local person from FounderWise who's running the Seattle session, at an NWEN breakfast a week ago. I'd been thinking about applying but wasn't sure. Chris impressed me with his vision, understanding, and focus. He pushed me over the edge with information. They're looking for a wide range of people, from fresh entrepreneurs to veterans, they're hoping for a mix of talents, meaning both technical people and business people, and they're expecting a variety of representative industries, not just high-tech. But the common thread they're looking for is people who will take what they learn and run with it. All the mentors (aka instructors) are selected for the sessions they're teaching based on their specific knowledge. Each week, there are three different instructors who are best suited to the topic at hand. The sessions aren't those cattle call lectures we all remember from college. They'll be much more interactive and there's out-of-session "homework" every week. I can't predict exactly what all that means, but I loved how Adeo asked each person who asked a question at the UW session what they were passionate about. The Founder Institute isn't about one-way communication or lectures from on high. It's about guidance and learning. And that sounds good to me.

I don't know if the Founder Institute is right for you. It depends on who you are and what you want to do. But I'm really looking forward to it.

I Want To Like Microsoft Azure

Roy Leban — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 21:53:00 +0000

I want to like Microsoft Azure. I really do. I've been using Google App Engine for more than a year now (Puzzazz, SeattleTechCalendar and the FriendMosaic front end run on it). I'm also familiar with Amazon's Elastic Computing Cloud or EC2 (the FriendMosaic back end runs on it). Both have advantages and disadvantages.

Google App Engine is a wonderfully scalable system that requires programming to a very specific, narrow API and use of Google's BigTable database rather than a more traditional SQL database. It's super easy to get going (literally, you can have an app running in the cloud within minutes of installing the SDK). Scaling is completely, totally automatic, and you pay for the capacity you use, when you use it. But, App Engine isn't appropriate for apps that require a lot of processing power, and you can't easily take the application elsewhere.

In contrast, EC2 is very flexible. You can run Unix, Linux, or Windows on virtual machine instances and you get pretty complete control of these instances, as if they were real servers. And, if you grow big enough to afford your own servers, its easy to move those instances to your own physical boxes. But, it's much more of a pain to get going and scaling is awkward. You have to allocate complete instances of different sizes as if you're deploying real hardware and to change your capacity to respond to changing needs, you have to add or remove instances. If an instance crashes, you lose any local storage on the machine. And, you pay for active instances even if they are sitting there doing nothing.

When I first heard about Azure, I thought it was a brilliant way to split the difference and get the advantages of both systems -- a wonderfully scalable system with great flexibility. Sadly, Microsoft has produced the exact opposite -- a poorly scalable system which requires developing to a special API that limits flexibility. In other words, the disadvantages of both systems.

Azure uses instances, just like EC2, which means that scaling is by instance, not automatic. At launch, apparently you'll be able to configure this to happen semi-automatically, but it's still the case that you have to run an entire instance even if you have no traffic for it and you have to decide when additional instances get added and what capacity they have, instead of having it just work, as Google has done with App Engine. And, Azure isn't Windows. You can't just take a Windows application and plop it onto the box. In fact, you don't control the virtual box. You can't install helper applications on it. Instead, you have to program to the Azure APIs, meaning can't easily take an Azure-based app elsewhere (or take a non-Azure app and just have it work, like you can with EC2).

It's not too late. Azure does have some of the advantages of both App Engine and EC2 (a simple model, flexible, powerful), plus Azure has some nice advantages all its own. The way they've defined roles is very nice (especially if they clean up the definition of the worker role, which I'm assuming they will) and potentially more flexible than the App Engine way of doing everything through a URL. A certain amount of sandboxing can be a good thing. And, of course, C# can be a joy to program in, with the best IDE and debugger on the planet (I'm still waiting for a decent Python debugger).

And, really, there's only one (big) change necessary. Azure needs to automatically scale, so developers just create code for the roles and everything else works, with as much hardware as necessary allocated on demand (and not allocated when you don't need it). With their architecture, Azure could accomplish this really well, if they choose to do so. Then they can add additional role types with different feature, performance, and scaling properties. But, if they don't do this, I don't know why anybody would use it over the competition.

Update: Microsoft has created a new site MyGreatWindowsAzureIdea tbat's worth taking a look at. It's a voting site using UserVoice. The current top votegetter is "Make it less expensive to run my very small service on Windows Azure," with twice as many votes as the runner-up.

You Can't Outsource Yourself

Roy Leban — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 23:19:00 +0000

Outsourcing is a buzzword these days, but you can't outsource your core competency.

Three times in the last few weeks, I have had meetings with consulting clients or potential clients who believed that they could build a technology company with no developers -- in essence, that they could outsource their core competency. I'm not talking about a remote developer, or a virtual development team. I'm talking about companies that believed they could hire a consultant or a code shop who would build their product for them. After all building the product is the easy part. It's the idea that's the hard part. Or selling it that's the hard part. Here's a tip: it's all hard.

There's a simple, important question you have to ask when deciding what you must do and what you can outsource. What is your core competency? What is the thing which is essential to your value proposition? What is the unique value that you provide that your competitors don't? Who are you?

You can't outsource whatever it is that defines you. It's not possible that your unique value proposition can just be put together from off-the-shelf components by a rent-a-coder shop. If it were possible, then your unique value isn't very unique, is it? And if you actually pay a lot for consultants to build you something truly custom, what happens to all the lessons learned during development? If there aren't a lot of lessons learned, chances are the product wasn't developed correctly. You need to own that knowledge -- it's essential for you to grow as a company.

I'm not saying that you can't ever outsource software or software development. For example, I've outsourced the software that powers my blogs -- they're built on Blogger. But, the value of my blogs is in my content, not the code that runs on the server. By using Blogger, I can concentrate on my blogs' unique value -- my unique content. But I'm not about to outsource software development when I'm building a software company.

Why You Need Anecdotal Evidence

Roy Leban — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 11:44:00 +0000

Have you ever heard the phrase "That's just anecdotal"? Usually, it's used to discount somebody's opinion about the way something should be. In UX terms, if you've observed a user, saw them have a problem, and want to respond to what you saw, you may have someone tell you it's just anecdotal -- in other words, you don't have hard, objective, statistical evidence, so forget it.

But there's a contradiction here. There's a belief that, if you gather enough anecdotal evidence, it magically becomes hard evidence. You can even see this in the latest ad campaign for Windows. Millions of people sent in their ideas, or were surveyed or studied, and their opinions -- anecdotal evidence -- is now real evidence. How does this magic work? Well, it can't. Two people who said different but similar things, or even the same things under different conditions, can't be lumped together in some statistical box.

But that doesn't mean that anecdotal evidence is worthless. Quite the contrary. It's invaluable (and Microsoft should be commended for actually listening to users). Anecdotal evidence provides you with something that hard data can't -- feelings. In a typical usability test or, these days, a web site A/B test, success is measured by whether or not somebody succeeds in a task. How about whether they frowned or smiled, tapped their fingers on their desk impatiently, hummed to themselves, or cursed at their computer?

I recommend that you gather as much anecdotal evidence as you can and let it infect your world view. Try to feel what your users feel, think like they think, and use that to design your products. And, after that, gather hard evidence on whether you were right or wrong and move forward from there. But, if you don't start with a feeling about what's the right thing to do, no amount of hard evidence will help you.

Be The Change

Roy Leban — Wed, 28 Oct 2009 14:34:00 +0000

My wife, Emily, and I celebrated our 20th wedding anniversary today by signing up to be bone marrow donors. Yes, you read that correctly.

Twenty years is quite a milestone. The average length of a marriage in the United States is just eight years. Knowing how much work it is to keep a relationship working, I can understand that statistic. We've had twenty great years, but not every moment was perfect. It takes work and compromise and love. We spent a lot of time thinking about how to commemorate this special milestone and we both wanted to do something special. But what?

Then I saw a tweet and a blog post from a friend of mine, Scott Porad, who wrote about his cousin Katie who needs a bone marrow transplant. There are 12 million people on the registry as potential donors and none are a match for her. And there are thousands of others in Katie's plight.

Organ donation isn't something that we're new to. Emily and I have both been signed up as organ donors since before we were married. When my sister and father died, tough as it was to make the decision at a time like that, we donated their organs. We heard back in both cases that their organs were used successfully (I don't know if that still happens). We've also both had close relatives die of cancer and we've donated money to cancer research. But we'd never signed up to be on the bone marrow registry. What was stopping us? Mainly lack of knowledge. Not knowing how trivial it is to sign up and how simple the actual donation process is -- in most cases, it's a relatively minor outpatient procedure. Once we learned the reality, it became a no-brainer to sign up, and it seemed like a pretty good way to celebrate life.

It costs money to add people to the registry, so you may be asked to defray the processing costs with a donation. If you can't afford to donate, they won't turn you away, but do think about donating if you can afford it. For us, the donation was an anniversary present to ourselves and two other people we'll never meet who will have their registration paid for. If you're excluded from registration for age or health reasons, I hope you'll consider donating to sponsor the registration of someone else. And, as long as we were at the Puget Sound Blood Center, we decided to donate blood too.

Will our signing up help Katie? Or any specific person in need? Chances are low. Very low. And that's why it's so important to get as many registrations as possible. It's a numbers game and, right now, the numbers favor cancer. Every person who registers helps to change that.

To join the registry anywhere in the US, visit the Be The Match Foundation at http://www.marrow.org/

For more information about Katie, check out http://www.kancerclub.com/

If you tweet about this, please use the hash tag #savekatie and reference @BeTheMatch. The short URL for this blog post is http://j.mp/bethechange.

"Be the change you wish to see in the world" -- Mohandas K. Gandhi

Can UX Swing an Election?

Roy Leban — Sun, 25 Oct 2009 11:23:00 +0000

In 2000, the infamous "Butterfly Ballot" probably threw the election to George W. Bush, costing Americans more than a trillion dollars and who knows what else. Can it happen again? Unfortunately, the answer is yes. Right now, in King County, Washington, an abysmally designed ballot runs the risk of driving the state into the ground. The problem has two parts.

First, the State of Washington is unfortunate enough to have an idiot named Tim Eyman who makes his living on proposing initiatives. He doesn't do anything else. Initially, he denied that he was making money off the initiatives that he proposed, but enough information was made public that he had to admit it. When he proposed his first initiative, he apparently sold watches, but I think that business is long gone. His first initiative was a "$30 car tab initiative." Eyman picked that number out of thin air (literally, it came from Colorado, with no relationship to the cost of anything in Washington). Some of the people who voted for it who promptly lost their jobs after the election because of all the programs that were slashed, but they didn't see the connection. And Eyman, who said repeatedly that the initiative wasn't about him, went out and bought an expensive SUV right after the election. Amazingly, Eyman managed to garner a following of people who'll vote for anything that will supposedly cut their taxes without regard to what it actually means. This year, Eyman's initiative, I-1033, is one more poorly thought-out proposal. Pick the worst state budget in ten years, in the midst of a recession, and force the state to stick with that budget, essentially, forever.

So what's this have to do with UX? Well, Eyman is only thinking about himself. What provocative initiative can he propose to guarantee that he's still paid a salary? He doesn't care about the experience of the average Washingtonian. I don't even think he cares if the initiative passes. If it fails, he's got another one to propose to pay him through the next election. This is no way to design a government that works for all the people. With good design, you need to think about the whole range of people that will be affected -- and, funny thing about it, that's what our whole legislative process is designed for. Gadflies and devil's advocates can be extremely useful and have a long, rich history in this country. If Tim Eyman actually cared about the state, he would work with our government rather than against it, but, alas, there's no profit in that.

On to the second issue.

King County royally screwed up the ballot, literally marginalizing I-1033. Take a look:

The first column of the ballot contains the instructions that nobody reads, and the top of the second column looks like the start of the ballot, not the middle. This means that some King County voters, perhaps many, will start in the second column and miss voting in I-1033.

The naysayers argue that it's trivial and that, even it's not, it doesn't matter because both people voting for and against the initiative will miss it. On the trivial argument, go back to the top and think about the Butterfly Ballot and what an effect it had. On the second argument, that would be valid if every ballot in the state had the exact same problem, but only King County has the problem. And it is not the case that voters in King County and the rest of the state vote for and against initiatives in approximately equal percentages. In fact, King County voters are more likely to vote against Eyman's initiatives. Combine that with the fact that King County is the most populous county in the state and you definitely have the possibility of a fraudulent election. Despite a large push by the No On 1033 campaign to alert voters to the problem, I am sure that we will see significantly fewer people voting on I-1033 than on other ballot items.

In summary, design really matters and bad design hurts. The only question here is whether the bad design will be big enough to swing the election.

Does Tully's Want Customers?

Roy Leban — Tue, 13 Oct 2009 10:47:00 +0000

Suppose you want to go to Tully's. You know how this works. You just go to tullys.com and type in your zip code, perhaps your address, and you'll get a list of nearby Tully's. Or at least that's how it's supposed to work. Give it a try.

Can't figure it out? Neither could I. It turns out that there is an entirely separate web site, tullyscoffeeshops.com for that purpose. And tullys.com does not contain a link anywhere to that site. Do they want customers?

This is a surprisingly common problem. Usually, it's just sites trying to be too subtle, favoring conforming to some style sheet over actually being usable. Look at bestbuy.com, for example, where Store Locator is mixed in with the non-parallel Weekly Ad, Outlet Center, Services, and Gifts. or costco.com, where it's even smaller and in an even bigger list.

But Tully's has taken it to a new level by removing the link completely!

Update: Yes, Tully's does want customers. Read what happened.

Does T-Mobile Want To Steal My Identity?

Roy Leban — Sun, 11 Oct 2009 10:52:00 +0000

It can be hard to tell real companies from scam artists sometimes. I got a call the other day from T-Mobile about my bill. They had overcharged me by $24 and I was late paying the bill because I wanted it fixed (and, in this economy, they call the day after it's due!). The discussion of why they would possibly think I wanted text messaging turned off on my account when I switched from a BlackBerry to a MyTouch is a topic for another post in the future

The T-Mobile agent who called me asked for part of my social security number to verify that I was who I said I was. I refused. Hey, you called me! How do I know you're not a scam artist? He told me that he was from T-Mobile and I should believe him, that, if I didn't give him my social security number, he couldn't help me. All things a scam artist would say, of course. The fact remains that I had no proof he was who he said he was.

I tried to explain to the guy that T-Mobile should never, ever ask a question like that because, to the extent that people answer it, you're training them that it's OK to give your confidential information to somebody who calls you on the phone. You're enabling scam artists. Unfortunately, he just didn't get it.

The rules are simple. In the world of client-server architecture, it's known as "never trust the client". In the real world, it's "never trust somebody who calls you."

Never, ever give confidential information to somebody who calls you, even an innocuous thing like an account number. You don't know that they are who they say they are.
If you call somebody, never, ever ask for confidential information when you call somebody. If you need confidential information, ask them to call you back at a number which is posted prominently on your web site or which is well known (like 1-800-T-MOBILE).

Is Comcast Helping Scammers?

Roy Leban — Sat, 10 Oct 2009 18:06:00 +0000

Comcast wants to fight scammers, but they're inadvertently going to help them.

Comcast, like all Internet service providers, is directly impacted by so-called botnets, machines that have been hijacked by viruses and other malware to serve as robots in the service of scammers. The botnets are useful to the scammers because it allows them to send spam and launch attacks from many locations instead of a single location, which makes them much harder to catch and shut down.

Comcast's idea is to inflict popup ads on their customers that appear to be compromised. which provide them with information. According the the AP article, the ad says "Comcast has detected that there may be a virus on your computer(s). For information on how to clean your computer(s), please visit the Comcast Anti-Virus Center."

There are a couple of problems with this:

To the extent that it works, it trains people that popup ads that claim to be helping you clean your computer are legitimate. The problem is that, with this sole exception, none of them are.
It trains people that clicking on a link in an unexpected popup ad is an ok thing to do, when it almost never is.
It trains people that something like this can be trusted, when it's very easy to fake it.

I don't like the popup in any event, but, if they're going to do it, I think there are a couple of things they must do:

The popup shouldn't look at all like an ad and it certainly shouldn't mimic any OS feature.
The popup should contain no (that's zero) links in it. Just to be clear: None. Instead, the ad should say "... please visit comcast.com in your browser and click on the xyz link ..." Train people not to click on links like that and train people that the only way to know for sure that they're actually on the comcast site is to go to comcast themselves, not to trust a link.
The popup should not have any button in it. No close button. Nothing to click on at all. Just "Close this window after you've read it." Don't train people to click buttons in unexpected popups.

And how about thinking if there's a better way to attack the whole problem, like doing something in concert with Microsoft and Apple (OS vendors), or Microsoft, Mozilla, and Google (browser vendors).

The Message is Love

Roy Leban — Sat, 12 Sep 2009 10:53:00 +0000

No, I'm not a day late on my September 11th anniversary blog post. This is a post-9/11 post. In 2001, my wife wrote the following poem shortly after 9/11. You may have already read it as it was distributed fairly widely on the Internet and read at some events and eerily echoed in the opening monologue to "Love Actually".

The Message is Love
by Emily Dietrich

© Copyright 2001 by Emily Dietrich
Redistribution permitted for non-commercial purposes
Contact emily@magentic.org for other uses

Unlike the Titanic and Oklahoma City, this tragedy contained a window, created by a coincidence of technology and a few moments of life before imminent death, that allowed some victims an opportunity. They could send a last minute message, put one more thought out into the world, and they could know it would be heard.

This is what they said.
"I just wanted you to know that I love you."

They said,
"I love you."

That’s what becomes urgent.
That’s what a person wants to say,
wants the world to know when death is certain.

"I love you."

No one called to say
"Get these bastards."

No one spent dying breath to say
"I want revenge."

The calls were made to say
"I love you."

And in 2001, a time when technology has brought cell phones, voices from the sky, we are able to hear their last words. With our own ears, we hear those who will die in seconds say their last words, a rare privilege.

They said,
"I love you."

The answer to hate is love.
The opposite of terrorism is charity.

Let’s cherish the great gift these victims of terrorism have given us.
Let’s honor the promise implicit in the privilege of hearing their final words.
Let’s fulfill the obligation to life that our dying brothers and sisters ask of us.
Let’s use our lives to say
"I love you."

Open Source Client Simulator

Roy Leban — Tue, 23 Jun 2009 16:47:00 +0000

In these days of web 2.0, it's quite common to build clients and servers that communicate with each other. Debugging the communication can be a pain, especially if you're not in control of one end of the connection. This is particularly the case with a service like Twilio, one of a bunch of telephony providers that you can connect your server to. With Twilio, every live test you do requires making or receiving a phone call. This is arduous, takes time, and costs money in phone charges.

So, I wrote a simple simulator to simulate the Twilio server contacting my server, which I released today as open source.

Chlorine is a simple, small (400 lines of JavaScript), and easy-to-use client simulator. It doesn't do much but it does the essentials to allow you to debug a protocol:

Submits requests to your server via GET or POST.
Displays the results back in a readable fashion, minus the contents of comments and CDATA blocks.
Supplies a link you can use to GET the raw response from the server if you need to inspect it (for example, when the server doesn't actually return XML, so it can't be parsed)..
Turns any attribute or text value in the result that looks like a URL into a form which will submit that URL back to the server, along with any parameter values you specify.
Allows you to configure it to add additional parameter fields to each form that is created.

Chlorine itself is generic, but I've included a version which is configured for use with Twilio.

Chlorine is available at http://chlorine.googlecode.com

Heads I Win, Tails You Lose

Roy Leban — Thu, 18 Jun 2009 09:07:00 +0000

I couldn't believe this question that I ran into on the T-Mobile site:

Which would you choose?

Make a Difference - Play Scrabble

Roy Leban — Wed, 17 Jun 2009 12:50:00 +0000

When big companies make big donations to charity, they get a lot of publicity out of it. Today, I got an email from a small company that's giving back in a (relatively) big way. The company is Protiles and, as of June 1st, they are giving 10% of every sale to charity. Even though I've known about this company for a long time and think their products are fantastic, I had no idea what they were already doing for charity.

If you play Scrabble, Clabbers, or Anagrams, check out their products. They're the best Scrabble tiles available and are required use in most tournaments. I like the white injection-molded tiles myself, but they're all good. They have some funny videos too.

Here's the message from Protiles:

For several years Protiles has been selling sets of white tiles with pink letters and a pink breast cancer ribbon on the blanks. Five dollars from every set sold is donated to the Susan G. Komen Breast Cancer Foundation.

Last year Protiles donated over 240 sets of Protiles to the 2008 Players Championship in Dayton, OH.

In the last eight months Protiles has donated more than 150 sets of Protiles to school teachers in 15 states for use in their classrooms. Here's a typical request: "I am interested in using letter tiles in my class next year to help teach spelling. Unfortunately, we have no funding available. Do you ever make donations to a class or give a great discount to teachers? I teach first grade at Bethlehem Elementary in Taylorsville, NC."

So far Protiles has sent sets of tiles to teachers in Michigan, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, California, Illinois, New Jersey, Kansas, Tennessee, Florida, Nebraska, Texas, Indiana, Colorado, Arizona and North Carolina.

Protiles also would like to honor Rose Kreiswirth's memory. Rose was an expert Scrabble® player for over 30 years and cherished the game for its educational values. An accomplished player, Rose was as well known for her sense of fairness and her congeniality as she was for her competitiveness. The Rose Award will be awarded each year at the National Scrabble Championship to a female player who, in the opinion of the judges, best exemplifies the fierce competitiveness and compassion that we remember Rose for.

Finally, my local Starbucks store asks customers to donate the new instant coffee, VIA, to the troops in Iraq and Afghanistan. The coffee comes in a small packet and works with both hot and cold water, perfect for a cup of coffee away from the comforts of home. Would you buy a cup of joe for a soldier?

Beginning June 1, 2009 Protiles will donate 10% of the sales price of every set our customers order to these good causes. We'll send sets to school teachers, we'll honor Rose, we'll support breast cancer research, and we'll send some good-tasting instant coffee to the troops.

When you order Protiles tell us where you'd like the 10% to go. If you choose not to choose, we'll choose for you. Either way you'll know that we're doing something good together.

Android Annoyances, Yet ...

Roy Leban — Tue, 16 Jun 2009 00:00:00 +0000

I had the opportunity to use a Google I/O phone for about a week. I found a lot of things not to like about Android, but I'm getting an Android phone anyway.

The I/O phone is the same HTC phone that is supposedly shipping later this month as the T-Mobile myTouch and is also known as the HTC Ion. It's a great phone -- rock solid hardware, quality touchscreen and buttons, a great shape for my pocket.

Google's Android operating system is pretty good too. I had played with Android briefly before, but this is the first time that I'd spent any significant time with it. Overall, I'd rate Android as comparable to the iPhone. There are some things I like better, some things I don't like as much. Here are some of the big things that I think are wrong with Android:

To turn the speakerphone on during a call, you have to press the Menu button, then choose speakerphone from the menu which shows 9 items. Since a big reason you might want to turn on the speakerphone is that you're driving, this should be an operation you can perform without looking at the screen. My suggestion: Pressing and holding the Menu button during a call turns on/off the speakerphone.
To get the numeric touchpad during a call, you have to drag up the touchpad, an awkward action when you're in the midst of a call (or driving). My suggestion: The menu button shows the touchpad. At the bottom of the touchpad is a More button which shows the other, less frequently-used menu items. Or, the menu button could cycle between neither, touchpad, menu, then back to neither.
The voice dialing is worthless. What's the point of voice dialing, if you have to look at the phone to see whether it recognized the name?
Did I mention that voice dialing is worthless? To start it, you have to unlock the phone and run an application. Why doesn't the button on my Bluetooth headset work like it does on most phones?
The messages that appear when you get a second call when you're on a call already don't actually tell you what to do. This is particularly odd since they did such a nice job with the main call UI. I figured out that the green (answer) button switches between calls, but what about the other functions, like hanging up the first call to take the second? There's no need to be subtle.
You can't put a button on the home screen that makes a phone call -- you can only put a Contact, so making a phone call is a minimum of two steps (after unlocking the phone). Fortunately, the third-party app AnyCut fixes this.
The Gmail application can't be configured to work with more than one email account. I know I'm far from alone in having multiple email accounts.
Android does include a separate Email application for other accounts. But, the second application isn't nearly as good, even when using a Gmail account. Setup is far from ideal. Although it automatically configures Gmail and Hotmail accounts, other accounts require you to select either POP3 or IMAP and provide server settings. I was not able to configure a Google Apps account properly, but apparently it does work. Why don't they provide a third option for Google Apps or, better, recognize Google Apps domains automatically?
When you save bookmarks to the home page, they all look alike. If the site has a large favicon associated with it, why doesn't it use that, like Google Chrome does? Or enlarge the small favicon? Fortunately, the third-party app Bookmark 2 has this one taken care of. It's not very elegant, but, for the most part, setting up home page bookmarks is something one does infrequently.
Why are the backgrounds of all the home screens the same? It would be great to be able to make them different as a means of instant orientation. Also, why are there only three home screens?
Android has a very nice predictive text feature while you're typing. It makes the touchscreen keyboard bearable. But, it doesn't work everywhere -- like when you're typing an email message.
When you swipe, sometimes things stay selected afterwards. I think they're not really selected -- it just looks like it. This one's just a bug.

Despite these complaints (and there are additional, less important ones), I'm planning to get a myTouch. For my purposes, it's better than the iPhone. I don't care about the iPhone's big advantages, like handling music really well. I have an iPod Touch for iPhone games (including the ones I'm writing). And, I think the myTouch is a better phone, though I know in these days of text messaging, actual phone usage seems to get short shrift.

Google has a good track record of updating their products and they already shipped one major upgrade in the first six months. I have confidence they'll fix these problems and, unlike older phones, I'll get the fixes and new features automatically. And, the fact is that my list of annoyances for the iPhone is just as long.

The final trump card is that the T-Mobile rate plan is $30 a month cheaper than the equivalent plan on AT&T. And that's not counting the fact that calls to my family are free on T-Mobile, so the AT&T plan might well turn out to be $40 or $50 a month higher. Over two years, that's an extra $720+ for the iPhone.

But, all this brings up the biggest issue that irks me about this phone: I can't buy one yet.

Updated: I had said that the Email application didn't work with Google Apps accounts. Apparently, it does, but the setup could be improved.

The Day That Analog Died

Roy Leban — Fri, 12 Jun 2009 21:46:00 +0000

A long, long time ago...
I can still remember
How that TV used to make me smile.
And I knew if I had my chance
That I could see those people dance
And, maybe, we'd be happy for a while.

But digital made me shiver
With every DVD delivered.
Bad news in my email;
I couldn't stand another FAIL.

I can't remember if I cried
When I read about problems denied,
But something touched me deep inside
The day analog died.

So bye-bye, Miss American pie.
Took my telly to the levee,
But the levee was dry.
And them good old boys were watchin' CSI
Singin', "this'll be the day that I die.
"this'll be the day that I die."

Twitter Puzzles on Puzzazz

Roy Leban — Tue, 02 Jun 2009 22:16:00 +0000

I launched a new class of puzzles on Puzzazz today -- Twitter Puzzles. Unlike the Daily Puzzles, which will continue to run every day, Puzzazz Twitter puzzles run continuously. Just follow @Puzzazz on Twitter to get them. In addition to the delivery system, they're different in another way. Each puzzle is a "successive reveal" puzzle in which you get a series of clues. The more clues you have, the easier the puzzle is. But, once you know the answer, you'll want to tweet it, since the first person to tweet an answer is designated the winner and immortalized forever on the puzzle's page on Puzzazz.com. If you weren't first, you can visit the puzzle's page to verify your answer (or get additional clues). And don't worry -- the solution is hidden unless you choose to reveal it to preserve the fun.

The puzzles are a mix of different puzzles, ranging from Hangman Trivia to What Goes With? puzzles. You can always see the current puzzle on the site at http://www.puzzazz.com/s and get more information in the FAQ.

These puzzles are part of the broader strategy of extending the Puzzazz brand. I'm interested in what you think.

Why Won't Dick Cheney Shut Up?

Roy Leban — Thu, 21 May 2009 09:12:00 +0000

Never before has a disgraced former Vice President spent so much time criticizing the current President, predicting and hoping for failure. As our last President suggested, if he's not with us, he must be with the terrorists.

I think Dick Cheney wants the terrorists to win. His views match Osama bin Laden perfectly. He wants more destruction. He wants another attack against the US. He wants to keep things as polarized as possible. And he doesn't want peace. It's the only way his nutty "torture is ok" and "god is on our side" views have any chance of prevailing.

Dick Cheney, please shut up.

I Almost Hit A Bicyclist

Roy Leban — Sat, 16 May 2009 12:21:00 +0000

I was about to make a right turn onto a five-lane street. There wasn't much traffic, but I waited for it clear, then started my turn. Right in front of me, there was a bicyclist. Going the wrong way. In the dark. Without a helmet. Without a light. I didn't hit him, but I could have. As he bicycled off, I saw he had a red light on the back of the bike. Not much help that does when he's going the wrong way.

A long time ago, it was recommended that you should bike going against traffic. This stupid advice hasn't been given out for a long time. In fact, in Washington State, as in many states, it's illegal to ride against traffic. The King County web site has a good summary.

Here are the essentials:

You're harder to see when you're biking the wrong way, both to vehicles in the street and to others.
Motorists making a turn don't spend a lot of time looking the wrong way before making their turn. Pedestrians move slowly enough that they are usually spotted easily. Not so with bicyclists.
Your speed relative to other traffic is much greater when you ride against traffic, significantly increasing the risk of an accident and the likelihood of injury in an accident.
Assume that motorists are not looking out for you, both literally and figuratively. Do everything you can to be visible.
Always wear a helmet, but know that it will not save your life in a major accident. Do everything you can to avoid an accident.
Use two lights at night -- one in front and one in back. Lights that blink are a good idea. An extra light on your left leg that moves up and down for more visibility is a good idea.
Following the law is always a good idea, but it's not enough -- in the vast majority of bicycle accidents, the bicyclists were following the law. It will not do you any good to have been in the right when you're hit.

Ignore All Data

Roy Leban — Sun, 10 May 2009 01:23:00 +0000

"Data eventually becomes a crutch for every decision, paralyzing the company and preventing it from making any daring design decisions."
-- Douglas Bowman, Creative Director, Twitter (formerly Google)

"We let the math and the data govern how things look and feel."
-- Marissa Mayer, VP, Search Products & User Experience, Google

These quotes are from an interesting article in Sunday's New York Times. Marrisa Mayer is a very smart woman, so it's disappointing how dumb that quote makes her look. I don't want to jump into the middle of this argument (oops, I already did), but the fact is that, despite the title to this post, neither of them is right. Real data about usage can be really useful, but over-relying on data can be a disaster. Over and over again, I've seen companies (and UX consulting clients) so buried in data they they couldn't figure anything out.

The data might tell you where users clicked, but it won't tell you why. The data might tell you whether users accomplished a task, but it won't tell you if they were happy . The data might tell you whether users clicked more or less on ads, but it won't tell you how they felt about the advertisers.

More importantly, the data might tell you what's broken, but it won't give you any hints as to how to fix it. No matter what the data tells you, it can't give you inspiration to boldly go new places (yes, the new Star Trek movie just came out).

I'll admit that I probably should have titled this post "Ignore Most Data" but that's not as provocative.

Data can be amazingly misleading. It's garbage in--garbage out, but the garbage going in is the questions. Unless you really know what questions you should be asking for, what you should be looking for in the data, what options you should be considering, and what the differences are -- unless you really understand the feel of what you're trying to figure out -- all the data in the world is worthless.

And guess what? If you know all that stuff, if you understand the feel of what you have and the feel of what you want, you're 80% of the way toward figuring out what you should be doing. And 80% of the way is pretty good.

Does Mint Want Unhappy Customers?

Roy Leban — Thu, 07 May 2009 01:17:00 +0000

Imagine you go into a cheese shop trying to buy some cheese. You just want some Cheddar. You ask if they have it, but they won't tell you. Instead, they want you to sign up -- give them your name, contact information, bank and credit card accounts, and only then will they answer your question. OK. You do it, you give them all that information and then the answer is, no, they don't have any Cheddar, they've never carried it, and have no idea if they'll ever carry it. But they'll make a note of it as a suggestion.

Sounds preposterous, doesn't it? Well, it's Mint.com, a site which touts themselves as "the best free way to manage your money." But, if Mint doesn't support your bank, they can't very well help you manage your money, can they? They can't support you as a customer -- they shouldn't want you as a customer. But, they'd rather you go through the bother of signing up to discover you wasted your time because there's no way to find out if your bank is supported before you sign up.

But, wait, it gets worse. Mint seems to think this is a good idea. Their support staff argues that they can still help you with your other financial institutions and that tracking some of your financial institutions is better than tracking none. What?! The number one financial institution that most people have is their bank (or credit union). If they don't support your bank, Mint is probably useless to you. They should realize that. But, even if that wasn't the case, Microsoft Money or Quicken probably does support your bank, so tracking just some of your financial institutions is certainly not better than tracking all of them in Money or Quicken.

Does Mint really want unhappy customers? Apparently so, but it's a bad business practice.

If there are customers you can't make happy, you should send them away and you should send them away as early as you can. Don't spend your time and resources or waste their time if you know you can't make them happy. Send them to a competitor who can make them happy.

The fact is, customers who you cannot service are going to go away sooner or later -- your goal should be to make sure they don't go away mad.

Ignite Seattle Looks Promising (and I'm giving a talk)

Roy Leban — Mon, 27 Apr 2009 15:51:00 +0000

I'm talking at Ignite Seattle on Wednesday. It's about UX, but it's pretty different than any UX talk you've seen before -- and it's only 5 minutes long. Here's the blurb:

Worst Case User Experience: Alzheimer's
When the time came to move my father-in-law into an Alzheimer’s facility, I approached the problem as I approach any technical problem -- I needed to meet the needs of the user, even if he didn’t know them and couldn’t express them. I crafted an experience (a UX) for him in his new home which meets those needs and I worked to make sure that the actual move itself did the same.

Obviously, I think my talk will be interesting and entertaining, but, from the titles and descriptions, it promises to be a great evening.

Here's the full lineup:

8:30 - First Set of Talks
Hillel Cooperman (@hillel) - The Secret Underground World of Lego
Dawn Rutherford (@dawnoftheread) - Public Library Hacking
Roy Leban (@royleban) - Worst Case User Experience: Alzheimer’s
Shelly Farnham (@ShellyShelly) Community Genius: Leveraging Community to Increase your Creative Powers
Dominic Muren (@dmuren) - Humblefacturing a Sustainable Electronic Future
Jen Zug (@jenzug) - The Sanity Hacks of a Stay At Home Mom
Ken Beegle (@kbeegle) - Decoding Sticks and Waves
Maya Bisineer (@thinkmaya) - Geek Girl - A life Story
Scott Berkun (Scottberkun.com)- How and Why to Give an Ignite Talk

9:45 PM - Second Set of Talks
Scotto Moore (Scotto.org)- Intangible Method
Secret Guest Speaker from Ignite Portland
Mike Tykka - The Invention of the Wheel
Jason Preston (@Jasonp107) - Goodbye Tolstoy: How to say anything in 140 characters or less
Chris DiBona (@cdibona) - The Coolness of Telemedicine
Ron Burk - The Psychology of Incompetence
Katherine Hernandez (@ipodtouchgirl) - The Mac Spy
Jamie Gower JamieGower.com) - I Am %0.0002 Cyborg
Beth Goza (@bethgo) - Knitting in Code

Learn From My Mistakes

Roy Leban — Thu, 26 Mar 2009 18:17:00 +0000

I broke a lot of my own rules in my talk at the First Look Forum and, unfortunately, it wasn't the best thing to do. I've spent a lot of time listening to advisors over the last few months. And, most of the time, the advisors know more than me, so I've learned a lot. But, sometimes, you have to trust your gut. By not doing that, my presentation did not accurately reflect the potential of my company.

Before I go on, let me make a few things clear. First, it wasn't a total loss. I made some great connections with potential investors and I have some follow-up meetings scheduled. It just wasn't as good as it could have been and I didn't have the opportunity to do my full 10-minute pitch to the room full of investors. I would have liked to do that. And, second, I'm not faulting any of my advisors. The buck stops with me.

The First Look Forum process is unlike anything I've gone through before and, to some extent, that led me to some bad decisions. We started by creating 10-minute slide decks and, then, after they were created and reviewed, we created shorter 3-minute slide decks. Almost all of the 3-minute presentations at the forum were clearly shortened versions of the 10-minute presentations. As I noted in an earlier blog post, I started that way, but I ended up with a 3-minute pitch that was completely different.

If you've ever heard me speak, you'll know that I never use notes. I speak extemporaneously and I do a pretty good job of it. I will sometimes create an outline, but it is a very brief outline and I never refer to it during a talk. In thinking about it, the last time I gave any sort of a scripted talk was in 9th grade.

However, 3 minutes is really short -- it's easy to run over, as most of the presenters did. And, over and over, my advisors kept telling me of all the things I had to make sure to include. So, I ended up scripting the talk. That was mistake number one. Next, I rehearsed the talk in front of a lot of people. This was good and I kept tweaking it. By Saturday, I really had it down.

On to mistake number two. On Sunday, one of my advisors told me they thought that the pitch was only a B+, that to make it an A, it really needed work. I had too much fluff (compelling fluff, but nonetheless fluff) and I needed to cut that out and add some critical things that were missing, like a brief discussion of revenue. I think her advice was basically correct, but I should have ignored it, for two very important reasons:

By taking a pitch that I really knew and replacing it with a pitch that I didn't, I made it worse, not better. I could have elevated the B+ pitch to an A with good oratory. But a poorly delivered A pitch can easily fall to a C level. I didn't have the time to do the changes and I should have deferred them to the future.
Most of the other pitches, including the majority of the ones chosen for the 10-minute session, had more fluff than I had, and far less in the way of fact.. It turns out that the investors were looking for the grab, not the facts, in deciding who they wanted to vote for. My original pitch had more grab and fewer facts, especially given the delivery.

Whenever you're in unfamiliar territory, it's a good idea to assume the worst. I considered having an audio clip as part of my talk, but decided that there was no guarantee that we would have sound. I also could have had a little demo using the Internet and my cell phone, but I decided there was no guarantee of a net connection or that my cell phone would work (in fact, there was no internet connection available, which we didn't find out until Monday). I brought a backup of everything on a USB drive just in case something got messed up (and, in fact, the wrong version of my presentation was included in the deck, so that came in very handy).

That leads to mistake number three. We were told there would be a podium. If I'd been able to put my notes on a podium, I could have spoken more naturally and the notes wouldn't have mattered much. The fact that there would be a podium allowed me to make mistake number two above. But, the podium had the laptop and was basically in the way, worse than having no podium. If I had assumed the worst -- no audio, no podium, etc., I would have been in much better shape.

So, in short:

Listen to advice, but do follow your own rules as much as you can.
Time pressure trumps good advice. Defer it to later if you don't have time to do it right.
Assume the worst, most inhospitable environment. You won't be far off.
Learn from your mistakes. Or, even better, learn from mine.

Making A Fast Pitch

Roy Leban — Tue, 17 Mar 2009 08:09:00 +0000

It always takes longer to write less. I already had a pitch for a 10-minute talk, but the first pitch in the NWEN First Look Forum is a 3-minute pitch. And, I only get to do the 10-minute pitch if I'm in the top five, so the 3-minute pitch is actually more important.

The 3-minute pitch deck is limited to five slides which, unless you're the fast talker from those old FedEx commercials, is about the most you can do anyway. So, I took my five key slides, basically the five slides on the topics they recommended we cover, and then I crammed some extra points into them to make sure I covered everything. Then, I did a practice pitch to my NWEN coaches. Ignoring the fact that my 3-minute pitch took me more than 4 minutes to deliver, it was a totally flat pitch. Even I wasn't interested in hearing more. What went wrong?

Well, in trying to cram as much as possible into the time available, I took out the soul. I took out the excitement that I had worked hard to get into the longer pitch. And I crammed in way too much detail. The 3-minute pitch, like the 30-second elevator pitch and the one pager I discussed earlier, should be all about excitement. You don't need tons of detail in the 10-minute pitch and you need even less when you go shorter. Remember, the point of a short pitch is not to get investors -- the whole point, the only point is to get people to want to hear more. So, I scrapped everything and re-created the deck from the top down -- about customer pain, the excitement of addressing the need, and what the solution looks like. In one case, I had a slide with eight long bullet points. The new slide is just a diagram, which I've also added (in a smaller size) to the longer pitch deck.

I don't know if a picture is worth a thousand words in a pitch deck, but sometimes it can be worth eight bullet points.

The One Pager

Roy Leban — Mon, 16 Mar 2009 08:51:00 +0000

A business plan, an elevator pitch, a pitch deck -- the number of different things you have to have to successfully pitch your company is amazing. Now add in the one pager. Whether you call it that or an executive summary or a company overview, it's an essential part of the whole story. Like the one-page resume, you want a single, concise one-page document that you can hand to potential investors and business partners. There are lots of advantages to having it be a single page, but I'm only going to mention the most important one -- investors expect it.

To create my one pager, I started with my five-page business plan. I went through and highlighted all the most important stuff, then consolidated that in a new document which ended up about two pages long. Then I started looking for things to trim. I was pretty close to finished when I decided that I should make sure what I was doing was consistent with what I needed to submit to another competition, the Willamette Angel Conference (although I'll be at a disadvantage because Groupthink isn't an Oregon company, I figure the extra connections will be worth it). It was at that point that I realized I'd made a mistake. The Willamette Angel Conference uses Angelsoft, and the whole way it works is different -- your one pager gets created by filling in a form on the site. Here are the items you're asked for:

One line pitch
Summarize your business
What specifically makes your management team most qualified to build this business?
Define customer problem
Describe the solution you sell
Define your market
List your current or potential customers
Sales and marketing strategy
Describe your business model
Describe the competitive landscape and list your competitors
Define your competitive advantage and list barriers to entry

Each of these items also has a longer explanation you see as you're filling out the form. For example, the explanation for "Define customer problem" reads: Investors fund pain killers, not vitamin pills. What critical customer need does your company address? If you are a web company, you may need to make a hard decision here on whether to talk about your audience or the people who will ultimately pay you (like your advertisers). You only get 210 characters to answer that one. When you're done, Angelsoft turns your information into a one page summary that looks like this sample:

At first, I was thrown for a loop, but then I realized that this was a much better way to do it. After all, investors looking at your one pager have a bunch of questions in their head that the'll use to decide if they want to read anymore. If you don't answer those questions, it's over. So the number one task really should be to make sure you answer those questions!

In the process of answering the questions, I managed to get in every one of my key points and pretty much nothing extraneous, but the document wasn't exactly what I wanted to best represent the company. For Angelsoft applications, I have to take what I get, but that's not true for NWEN or other investors. So, after I finished up the Angelsoft process, I took all the information and created a new document that I could edit. Then I made a few changes:

Combined the one line pitch, business summary, and customer problem into a new opening section which read better than the three individual sections.
Combined target market and customers sections.
Combined competitors and competitive advantage sections.
Added a little bit of additional detail in a few places where I'd been constrained by Angelsoft's character limits.
Added a (small) illustration to help explain the product.

In each of the cases, I made the change to improve readability or punch. But, overall, it's a lot like the one pager from Angelsoft. You don't have to do your one pager like I did and your executive summary might be longer. Garage.com recommends two to three pages in this excellent article. But, whatever you do, keep these things in mind:

The purpose is to sell your company to investors, not tell them everything about it
You want to convey the excitement and the energy behind your business
To the extent that you can, answer the questions potential investors will have before they ask them

It's Not A Zero-Sum Game

Roy Leban — Sat, 14 Mar 2009 19:44:00 +0000

Although Groupthink is one of the twelve finalists in the NWEN First Look Forum, I don't know much about the other companies. One of the companies was founded by a couple of guys that I see every week or two. I'll confess that I don't know a lot about their business, but I do know a few things. They're sharp guys who seem to know what they're doing. They're working hard,. And they're nice guys. So, even though we're technically in competition with each other, we're not really competing. We've exchanged information and tips. And we've wished each other luck, sincerely.

The fact is that we're not really competing. Sure, we're in the same space and there are only so many investors out there, but, for the most part, it's not a zero-sum game. We can both succeed and each of us most likely loses nothing if we help the other. Far too often, we see people thinking that in order for them to win, others have to lose. You certainly see this between companies, but you also see it between groups (and even employees) within larger companies. Between the time I started this blog post and now, the Seattle 2.0 Awards got announced and Marcelo Calbucci of Sampa wrote this about the process: "The flip side is to find the people you thought were your friends, or at least acquaintances, working against you. Even if in a subtle way." It's disappointing to hear that, especially when it's about something that the folks at Seattle 2.0 are doing that is positive for the community. From my point of view, you have three choices: be supportive, be neutral, or be negative. No, you don't have to support everybody, but what's the advantage to being negative?

I'm glad to say that most of the Seattle Startup community is in the supportive and neutral category. There's a lot of collaboration and camaraderie. We can all win and grow our industry and community.

Let's keep it up.

And, to the other finalists in the NWEN competition, a sincere good luck the rest of the way.

Matching User Experiences

Roy Leban — Sat, 14 Mar 2009 11:22:00 +0000

At Thursday's UX Office Hours , a funny thing happened -- somebody came in wanting to talk about user experience. The reason I say that's funny is that, most of the time, people come in wanting to talk about their user interfaces, not their user experience. They bring in mockups, screen snapshots, prototypes, and actual products and web sites. And they want to know what to do to make it better. Almost always, I have to pop the conversation up a level, to talk about what they want to accomplish for their users, rather than how they should move pixels around. Part of what I try to do is to educate people so that, when they walk out, they're better equipped to move forward. So, what's the difference between UI and UX?

In a nutshell, you want to give your users a good user experience. A good experience means they'll be able to accomplish what they want, they'll be happy with your product, etc. One of the ways to get a good user experience is to have a good user interface. You might think that makes no sense -- how can it be that UI is only one of the ways to provide a good UX? What other ways can there possibly be? Well, here are a few:

Provide functionality or content that your users can't find anywhere else, that they absolutely need
Do things automatically for your users, so they don't have to see any UI
Build a system that is fast, that, once learned, allows your users to do things faster than they can anywhere else
Same, but replace "fast" with "better" in some context specific to your business
Pay your users money (yes, this is real -- look at Google AdSense, Amazon Associates, or Ebay)

And what should you do? You should work to understand your users and then do those things that will give them the experience that you think will accomplish your business objectives.

Back to the guy who came in yesterday. It was a great discussion and I hope I was able to help him better understand what he needed to do. One slightly surprising thing was that his company has two very distinct classes of users and he was trying to figure out how to craft an experience that met both of their needs. Unlike a system like Ebay, where buyers and sellers are largely similar people, or Monster, where the point of the site is for job seekers and job posters to interact with each other, his two classes of users weren't similar and weren't going to be interacting with each other. I told him that he should build two completely separate UIs for these two groups, that to try to build one interface would end up serving nobody well. After he left, I thought of some great examples:

Google provides completely different experiences for people placing ads, for people putting ads on their sites, and, of course, for people seeing ads on the net.
Amazon Associates provides a completely different experience for associates than they do users who see associates' links.

While his business is different from these, the same rules apply. And the bar for the quality of the UI is different for these different classes of users -- the interface for people creating and placing ads,or creating associate links is so much less important than what the people seeing ads or an associate link get. The first group of people are making money, so they're incented and a bad UI won't stop them from using the service. But, if the ad or link UI is wrong, nobody will make any money.

To provide the best product for your users, you want to create an experience that matches them. Sometimes, that means figuring out the classes of users you have and building different experiences for them.

Don't Forget Your Strengths

Roy Leban — Fri, 13 Mar 2009 11:18:00 +0000

I've gotten a lot of advice on my slide deck for the NWEN First Look Forum competition. So much advice, in fact, that I followed it too well.

The first versions of my business plan and my pitch deck were so focused on the product, the technology, and all the cool things that we're doing for customers, that I neglected to talk enough about the business. I talked about how the technology scaled, but not how the business scaled. As one of my advisors said, investors will assume your technology will scale -- they want to know how the company can grow to be a billion dollar business. And I'd made the same mistake in other areas. The pitch deck (and the pitch that goes with it), initially had a lot less about the business side of the business than the business plan, so, off I went, removing technical stuff, and fleshing out the business side. It was looking pretty good.

Then, I went to my first coaching session with my NWEN advisors. We went through the whole deck and they gave me a lot of great feedback. When we were done, they asked a few questions, including a key one -- what's exciting about this? When I explained what I thought was exciting, they both responded, practically in unison, why isn't that in the pitch? It turns out that I had over-corrected, by a long shot. I had spent so much time working on my weaknesses that I had given my strengths short shrift. I wanted to make sure that everybody knew the business was solid, that I had basically left out what was exciting about the business in the first place.

In the final deck, I lead with the big vision and the long-term plan that is a key part of the excitement, then I segue to the first product and the customer pain that it's all about. The pain is a bit less exciting, but it's compelling. Elsewhere in the deck, I make sure to revisit the things about the business that I think make it really exciting. And, I try to talk about technology only where it directly relates to customer pain, solutions, or growth. The result is a significantly better pitch.

Can We Save A Local Voice?

Roy Leban — Thu, 12 Mar 2009 23:54:00 +0000

The Seattle Post-Intelligencer is going to fold any day now and may become an online only paper. That's may become, not will become -- nothing is certain here. As P-I subscribers since we moved to the area, we're going to have to decide which paper to subscribe to -- the Seattle Times or what? I honestly don't know, but one possibility is that we'll get the New York Times instead of the Seattle Times. Which gives me an idea that I just have to toss out.

Why doesn't the P-I wrap the New York Times? By this I mean that they produce a combined paper which contains a single P-I section with local articles, local ads, local ad inserts, plus the national edition of the New York Times. The local section would contain no national news, no wire-service news, nothing but things that are of local interest. In other words, the local paper does what it does best and it combines with one of the best papers in the country (if not the best paper in the country) for everything else. The New York Times is already printed locally somewhere. That same plant could print one extra section for P-I subscribers.

Such a hybrid wouldn't save the entire P-I and it wouldn't save everybody's job, but it seems like it could retain the voice and more. It seems like a win-win for everyone.

Is there something I'm missing?

Why I've Been Quiet

Roy Leban — Wed, 11 Mar 2009 22:32:00 +0000

You may have noticed that I haven't blogged much lately. There are a few reasons for this, all centered around the NWEN First Look Forum.

First, I've been very busy. From the time that I found out the details of applying for the Forum to the time that I had to submit my business plan, I had just ten days (plus three when they extended the deadline). In my case, I was creating a business plan from scratch. Fifty companies applied to present at the forum and NWEN narrowed it down to twenty companies. Next, each of us had to create a deck for a 10-minute presentation to take to our "screechers" (screener/coaches) who were going to evaluate us and coach us at the same time. Fortunately, I'd already started a deck after the excellent pitch clinic from the Alliance of Angels that I'd gone to. That helped a lot. Even so, I walked out of my screeching session with a throughly scribbled-on presentation, having no idea if I'd made it to the next round or even when I'd find out. A week and a half later, I got an email saying I'd made it in and I had a new list of things I had to produce -- a deck for a 3-minute presentation and a 1-page executive summary. Plus, I revised the 10-minute deck and went back and updated my plan based on feedback, since I'll be using it for other purposes. So, not even counting things like meetings and seminars, I've been amazingly busy.

Second, while I was writing code and mostly doing development, writing a blog post was a great break. It was something different. You know, the right brain/left brain thing. But, now, when I'm spending most of my time writing and wordsmithing, writing a blog post feels pretty much the same, so it doesn't come quite as naturally.

And, third, although I've been very open since I started this company, I decided to be quiet about some details for a while. The reason for this is that there are some significant changes to the business based on lessons learned and I really want the Forum to be a real "first look." I want the potential investors in the room to be hearing the details for the first time from me, at the Forum, with my (hopefully) finely polished messaging. After the 24th, I'll be sharing more again.

Happy Valentines Day!

Roy Leban — Sat, 14 Feb 2009 09:00:00 +0000

Here's our valentine for this year:

Please Don't Eat The Piroshkis

Roy Leban — Wed, 11 Feb 2009 18:03:00 +0000

There's a new piroshki restaurant in downtown Seattle that I highly recommend you avoid. It's called Piroshki on 3rd and is apparently the second restaurant in a now growing enterprise. I haven't figured out if the owners and bakers are evil or truly evil, but I think it's clear that they're bent on world domination. For once you've had one of their piroshkis, you'll have no choice but to return again and again. One person I know has already been there three times in the first four days since he learned about it and he has other trips planned already. I fear he may be a lost cause.

But you don't have to fall into this trap. Avoid the delicious, perfect, just-a-little-bit-sweet dough. Don't even think about the corned beef, mushrooms, and cheese piroshki. Don't be tempted by the smoked salmon and cream cheese. Don't stop to admire the fact that each flavor of piroshki is cleverly shaped differently to reflect its contents. And, if you're forced to go, make sure it's not around noon when everything is fresh out of the oven. Fortunately, if you get there too late, there may be a long line of people in front of you.

In fact, stay as far away from the whole area as you can. If you get too close, the smells may draw you in. Piroshki on 3rd is at 710 3rd Avenue, between Columbia and Cherry, in Seattle.

The Business Plan Trick

Roy Leban — Tue, 10 Feb 2009 11:35:00 +0000

They tricked me! NWEN told me I only had to answer five questions, but I essentially wrote a business plan. Just five questions, one page each, but each question had questions inside it. For "Describe the market in terms of characteristics and size," I ended up doing market research to get very precise data, then I analyzed the data to narrow in on exactly my target market. And the innocent looking question "What will be the funding requirements to grow?" caused me to create a cash flow spreadsheet to be able to provide an answer.

In the process, I ended up doing two complete rewrites. On Tuesday, I sent out what was basically the best business plan I'd ever written to a bunch of my advisors. The feedback came back that it needed a ton of rework. I did a complete top-to-bottom rewrite and sent out a new version on Thursday which was a lot better -- the new best business plan I'd ever written. Back came feedback. Yes, it was better, but it was still way off from what it needed to be. So on Friday and over the weekend (thanks to NWEN extending the deadline), I rewrote it once again and on Monday I sent out what was now clearly the best business plan I've ever written. I hope it's good enough!

I used Word to do a comparison of the first and third versions of the plan. In case it's not clear, red indicates text which changed between the first and third versions of the plan.

Despite all the red, there's a lot of similarity between the versions -- after all, they're describing the same business. But the way in which they say it changed completely.

Here are some of the things that I've learned.

Start with a hook. I decided to start every page with a hook, a sentence or two that summarizes the page. In essence, put the summary at the top, not the bottom. Your readers might not get to the bottom.

This isn't a literature contest. I had some writing that I was really proud of. It was eloquent and had a great feeling to it. Save that for your novel. I tossed almost all of it and now I have a lot of short to-the-point paragraphs and bullet points.

Stories are OK, but keep them short. Real world stories that convey customer pain that you will be addressing is a good thing. On the first page, my hook is a story that illustrates the customer pain I aim to solve. This is the only place where I kept some of the great prose I'd written.

Answer all the questions. If they've asked a question, don't make them read between the lines. Provide the answer as directly as possible. What's the value proposition? How does your business scale? What are you actually doing?

Don't answer all the questions. I like to be complete, but if you're generating your own questions, there are lots that just don't need to be answered. I removed a ton of information that was answering unasked and, probably, unimportant questions. Working through and figuring out those answers wasn't a wasted exercise -- I still know the answers if I get asked them.

Forget technology. This one was particularly hard for me. My first version had half a page on technology and more in my bio. Investors want to know that the technology is doable and that the team has the technological expertise. They don't care about the actual technology. My final version has almost nothing about technology, even in my bio.

Scaling is about your business, not your technology. Following on to the last point, investors will assume that if your business is successful, then your technology will scale (they may want details on this during due diligence). But, at the beginning, they want to know if the business is going to grow through greater market penetration, opening up additional markets, selling more expensive versions, selling additional products, etc.

Get real numbers. I think every single talk that I've been to about business plans or pitches trots out the line that you can't just say that you'll get 1% of a billion dollar market. You'll hear investors talk about the addressable market over and over again. It took me way too long to internalize that, but, when I did, it took me a lot less time to get real numbers than I thought it would.

Use real numbers. Investors will know if you're hand waving when you say you need an $X million investment with no explanation. Cash flow projections aren't that hard. Figure out your assumptions and be ready to talk about them, but get some real numbers.

Be positive. Every business plan is, in some sense, a guess. You don't have to say "We plan to..." or "We hope to..." or "We don't know ...." Everytime you do this, your readers view you as less positive, less certain, less able to be successful. They know it's all a plan and that there are many things that you don't know yet, so don't hit them over the head with it. Personally, I tend to be a bit too honest about my deficiences (for example, many people have heard me say "I suck at marketing"). The business plan isn't the place for that.

Don't be afraid to ask for help. If you don't ask, nobody will help you. I've said it before and I'll say it again: I am very appreciative of my advisors.

An Impressive Startup Weekend

Roy Leban — Mon, 09 Feb 2009 22:33:00 +0000

When someone asks me which team I was most impressed with at Seattle Startup Weekend 2, I'll say ALL of them. Wow!

Thirteen teams demoed at the end of Sunday night, winnowed down from 47 ideas presented on Friday and 17 teams starting on Saturday. The most amazing spectacle to me was the Scrampede team, led by John Clifford, which was super organized, had giant project management charts on the wall (courtesy of Paul Osborn), and had a full pitch at the wrapup about how the business could make money and grow. The Scrampede idea came out of an idea John brought up at the brainstorming session I led at StartPad last Thursday -- after the brainstorming, when we split up, almost half the people joined his group to discuss the idea a little further. So, I'm a little extra proud of them, but, to be clear, I can't take any credit beyond providing a venue for initial discussions. But it does show the benefit of starting with brainstorming. Scrampede is one of a number of teams that has plans to continue beyond the weekend.

Another team with a hopeful future was 1nvite, which was the only team that was actually incorporated by the end of the weekend, courtesy of team member Adam Philipp of Axios Law. 1nvite's mission is to make it easy to invite your friends to multiple social networking services at the same time, particularly useful after an event like Seattle Startup Weekend 2.

There were two Twitter apps, TweetSum, which gives you information about your followers to help you determine if you want to follow them back (and a great interface for organizing followers), and TweetReporters, a souped-up Twitter widget (and infrastructure behind it) for newspapers and other news sites.

I think FavorWish was the best looking site at the end of the weekend. You can't tell the home page from a company that's been in business for years. And KnarlyVote, despite its rather, uh, knarly name, solves an interesting voting problem in a very nice way. As they said, it's not a new technique (I'm blanking on the name for the mathematical underpinnings of what they're doing), but I'm not aware of a site that does this. If they can clean it up and solve a few fundamental usability problems, I think they could have a winner. This is a good time to mention that the UX Office Hours that I have at StartPad are open to everyone -- startup entrepreneur, laid-off tech worker, or Startup Weekend warrior. If you want to take a step forward in your UX, feel free to drop by (the next one is this Thursday, February 12th).

As for me ... I didn't do much. I pitched an idea that didn't get enough votes, so I looked to join another team, but the couple I tried to join ended up disbanding. By then, other teams were in full swing and I realized that I still had a lot to do on the second rewrite of my plan for the First Look Forum (more on that later). When I wasn't writing, I walked around, encouraged people, and offered a few suggestions (and at least one got taken, that a team switch to Google App Engine as their platform).

But that does bring up one disappointment -- the selection process on Friday night produced some potential teams that were clearly not viable as weekend projects. For example, a team with zero developers or massive infrastructure needs can't get very far. That's not to say that they were bad ideas (in fact, most of the 47 original ideas were interesting ones), but they distracted. I hope this can be remedied next time out.

All in all, it was a great event. I'm looking forward to seeing which companies survive and, next time, I plan to not have a deadline on something else and dive in all the way.

Just Ten Days

Roy Leban — Fri, 06 Feb 2009 11:10:00 +0000

I've written some complimentary posts about NWEN's First Look Forum, but this one's a bit different. The Forum was only announced a couple of weeks ago, and no information was available about what a submission looked like until last Tuesday, with a deadline of today at Midnight. That's just ten days to put together a plan. If you already have a business plan or a standard pitch deck, that's not much time for a rewrite. But, if (like me) you don't even have that yet, ten days is an almost impossibly small amount of time. If I wasn't a good and fast writer, I'd have no chance. Even so, I'm in the midst of an almost complete rewrite today based on feedback from my advisors and I'm really feeling the time pressure.

NWEN appears to have recognized this because a little while ago, I got some email saying that the deadline has been extended until noon on Monday. Unfortunately, for those of us who are doing Seattle Startup Weekend 2 this weekend, that doesn't help. I still intend to submit my plan tonight. If I have time on Monday morning (and I'm not too exhausted), I can send an update, but I really need to be done tonight.

I still like the First Look Forum very much and problems like this aren't too surprising for the first time out with a new event. At least they've recognized it, even if their doing so doesn't happen to help me much.

And, now, I have to get back to my rewrite.

Blunt Feedback, Payback

Roy Leban — Thu, 05 Feb 2009 10:41:00 +0000

I received a lot of feedback on my 5-page plan for the First Look Forum yesterday and more has come in today. There's some irony -- a lot of the feedback says things that I've said to other people, reflected right back at me. It's so much easier to see flaws when you're reviewing someone else's work, rather than your own, and that's especially true when working under a deadline.

There were also plenty of comments that were completely new, reflecting greater knowledge on the part of my advisers about certain things, mainly business and marketing. The best part about the feedback was how blunt it was. I asked them to be direct and they were, and that lets me know the feedback is honest and useful.

Not all the feedback was negative. Even though I made it clear that I was looking for things that I needed to fix, there were still lots of kudos and positive comments mixed in. That was nice to see.

Overall, I feel pretty fortunate to have people who are willing to help me like this. I know that when I do things like the Startup Brainstorming Session today (which I scheduled before I knew about this deadline), I'm helping others with no direct benefit to myself. It's paying it forward, and I get paid back by other people at times like this. Thanks!

We've Waited Eight Years For This

Roy Leban — Wed, 04 Feb 2009 11:12:00 +0000

It took eight years, but the President finally admitted a mistake. "I’ve got to own up to my mistake... I think I messed up. I screwed up," he said. Only this wasn't President Bush admitting a big mistake, like starting an illegal war -- it was President Obama admitting that he messed up in nominating Tom Daschle to head up HHS, despite his problems with taxes.

In television interviews, Obama was candid. "The most important thing, from my perspective, is making sure that the American people understand we don't have two sets of rules here, that everybody has responsibilities. In this situation, I take responsibility for it ...I'm here on television saying I screwed up and that's part of the era of responsibility, is not never making mistakes; it's owning up to them and trying to make sure you never repeat them and that's what we intend to do."

So, less than two weeks into his term and Obama has already been able to do something Bush couldn't do in eight years.

Yes, I know the snarks will come out of the woodwork and say Bush apologized for this or that, but there's a whole difference in attitude and I like it. This President knows he works for us.

The 5-Page Business Plan

Roy Leban — Wed, 04 Feb 2009 04:31:00 +0000

It's 4AM and I just sent out copies of my 5-page business plan for the Northwest Entrepreneurs' Network's First Look Forum to a bunch of advisors, plus a few extra people who I haven't previously solicited advice from. It's so easy to wait to finish something until right before the deadline, so I deliberately set my own deadline three days early so I'd be able to get some feedback before I have to submit it.

If you're still working on your own plan, here are some thoughts from my process:

I've been pitching my business concept and long-term vision to people for months now, but where does that go? Strictly speaking, it's not an answer to any of the five questions they're asking. I ended up putting parts of it in each of the first three sections (Market/Opportunity, Novelty/Concept, and Scalability of the Business Model).
Similarly, in discussions with people, a decent amount of technology has been discussed -- what I'm using, why, what's good about it, what were the alternatives, etc. Almost none of that made it into the document. Investors want confidence that you'll make the right technical decisions. They don't need details on those decisions.
The addressable market, funding needs, sales projections -- if I was a business person, these probably would have been trivial. I think I did a reasonable job and, in this document, a lot of detail isn't required.
Competitors -- there's an often discussed trap of saying you have no competitors. It's like a catch-22, though. If you have exact competitors, you probably don't have a viable business. I pointed out competitors and how none of them are doing exactly what Groupthink is. I did not have room for one of those market charts, but, when I do one, I'm thinking of putting Groupthink in the middle -- Papa Bear's on one side, Mama Bear's on the other side, and Groupthink is in the middle, just right.
Scalability -- don't confuse scalable technology with a scalable business. I wrote about both.
The Team -- gee, it's just me right now. I wrote about both my own skills and experience as well as my search for a CEO.
Even if you're not applying to the First Look Forum, this is a great exercise. I put a lot of stuff down on paper that I've been saying over and over again. Now I have the opportunity to really refine it.

All in all, I'm pretty happy with the version I sent out, but I also fully expect that I'll be making major surgery on it once I get some feedback. And, of course, when I wake up, I'll have at least half a dozen things I've realized on my own while I slept. I predict I'll be busy until Friday.

What's in a Name?

Roy Leban — Sun, 01 Feb 2009 11:32:00 +0000

My son tells me that Kinko's is crazy to change their name to FedEx Office. When they bought Kinko's, FedEx changed the name to FedEx Kinko's, and now they've changed it again, to FedEx Office. They're not completely done with the brand changeover, so you can still see the Kinko's name in some places.

Why the change? Well, FedEx management apparently believes that "Kinko's" is a weak name, that doesn't adequately reflect the "broader role of providing superior information and services." This branding expertise comes from the same company that insisted on being Federal Express, not FedEx, long after everybody but company insiders used the short name. But even an 11-year-old can see that Kinko's is a unique, original, memorable name. And the name has a long history, starting from when the company was founded in 1970, through the expansion to 1400 stores, right up until FedEx bought them for $2.4 billion dollars. Couldn't part of that value have been in the name?

It seems that FedEx wants Kinko's to be something more than it is today. That's all fine and good. They bought the company for synergy, with the hopes that the sum would be greater than the parts. But, you make that synergy work through products and services, not just the name. When I go into a FedEx Office store, with the exception of the shipping counter, it's pretty much the same way it was before, so all the new name does is buy customer confusion.

As if all this wasn't bad enough, FedEx has compounded it by doing something truly stupid. If you look in the phone book for Kinko's, because you're familiar with them and you want to use their services, you'll be out of luck. You see, FedEx Office can't be found in the K's. This doesn't help customers learn the new name. Rather, it takes customers who know the old name and it sends them away. At least www.kinkos.com redirects to an appropriate place on the FedEx web site.

Companies can get this right and Macy's is a great example. Macy's parent company, Federated Stores, bought The Bon Marché (a Pacific Northwest clothing chain) a few years ago. Macy's similarly changed the name to Bon-Macy's, and then to just Macy's. But Macy's is already known nationwide as a clothing retailer, whereas the FedEx name is still not associated with office services. And, when you look for The Bon Marché in the B's in the phone book, you'll find them, three years after the final name change. They're not sending customers away.

Leveling the Field

Roy Leban — Sat, 31 Jan 2009 00:31:00 +0000

I've been a bit quiet lately, so apologies for that. I've been focusing on a few things ... like getting closer to launching. I'll post more on that soon, but I have a different topic that I want to cover today.

One thing that has always frustrated me as an entrepreneur is the advantage that business people seem to have. Although Groupthink is my eighth startup (and that's not counting Puzzazz), I've never been a business guy and it seems that there's an inherent bias in the startup world toward business types. I say inherent because I don't think it's intentional -- I think it's just that business people have their own language and their way of doing things and it permeates communication. So, despite the fact that I have a great network of contacts, including angel investors and even a few venture capitalists, I've always felt like I've been at a disadvantage.

A while back, when I was working on a business plan for a potential startup, I met up with someone who was also working on a business plan. He was a marketing guy, with limited technology knowledge, so it seemed that we could help each other. His business plan was gorgeous and read well, and it had all the right revenue projections and graphs. Now I'm no slouch as a writer, but mine was dreadful. My plan had accurate descriptions and diagrams of the architecture of the system that I planned to build, and I had a working prototype to go with it. And his plan? He also had some architecture diagrams, but they were basically fiction. I pointed that out to him, but he said it didn't matter -- they were just placeholders and investors wouldn't care. Guess which company got funding?

I'm not saying that technology people like myself are dismissed entirely, but it's certainly a much easier road for people with a business background.

So, I was really pleased to hear about the details of the Northwest Entrepreneurs' Network's First Look Forum (FLF) earlier this week. The FLF replaces the annual Early Stage Investment Forum (ESIF) that NWEN used to run, with some big differences, the biggest one being that it's not an investment forum. NWEN properly recognized that there are already plenty of investment forums in the area, but there was very little for the stage before that. And they recognized that early stage entrepreneurs need more than money -- they need help. The forum is designed to:

Recognize early stage companies that show promise and could benefit from the process.
Help the companies to take their idea and make it presentable, through intensive, personal coaching.
Provide presenting companies an audience of qualified angel investors that they can present to and network with.
Provide those angel investors with interesting opportunities that they probably haven't heard about before.

What I like most about the FLF is that you don't need a business plan. Instead, they want people to answer five straightforward questions (paraphrased):

What's the Market and Opportunity?
What differentiates the concept from others?
How can the business scale?
What traction do you have so far?
Who are you? What's your experience?

I look at this list and, unlike a formal business plan, I think: I can do this. To me, it levels the playing field, allowing me to leverage my strengths without having to suffer because of my weaknesses. It's almost like they designed it for people like me (and maybe they did). The FLF will have a winner that wins some unspecified "fabulous prizes." Sure, I hope to win (we all do!), but I think I'll be a winner no matter what stage of the process I get to. If you're one of my potential competitors, good luck. And, if you haven't signed up yet, do so quickly -- they have limited slots and they were more than half sold out as of Tuesday night.

Note: Earlier, I said I wasn't going to write about the fundraising process. This blog post doesn't change that. I'll probably write more about the FLF as I go through the process, but I still won't blog about fundraising itself.

The Challenges are Universal

Roy Leban — Thu, 15 Jan 2009 11:40:00 +0000

On Tuesday, I attended a Business Plan Writing Workshop sponsored by NWEN, the Northwest Entrepreneur Network. It wasn't nearly as valuable as the Alliance of Angels pitch clinic that I attended last week. That doesn't mean it was devoid of content, but it was half the length and less focused, which basically meant it was one-fourth the content. Had I done the two in the opposite order, I might have felt it was more valuable. And, since the NWEN workshop is free (if you're an NWEN member), that's a reasonable way to do things.

Although one talk was about a slide deck for funding pitches and the other was about writing business plans, the content of the talks was very familiar, which isn't too surprising. After all, the mission of both is to explain your business.

I was surprised with the variety of entrepreneurs in the room at the NWEN workshop. When we all introduced ourselves, the businesses included technical stamping, specialized video, traffic information, mobile content, travel, transportation, medical devices, iPhone applications, biotech, farming, retail stores, healthcare, cleaning technologies, e-commerce, and a non-profit, plus two software as a service companies, including Groupthink. Wow!

Interestingly, pretty much every question asked of the presenter, despite the variety of businesses and even business models, applied to Groupthink and probably everybody else in the room as well. The challenges in starting and building a business are universal.

Authentication and Planning

Roy Leban — Wed, 07 Jan 2009 23:35:00 +0000

I surprised myself by deciding to rewrite authentication again. I'm almost done with version 3, which is a complete rewrite instead of a modification to the existing code, like version 2 was, and it's taken me longer than the first two versions combined. But, I feel it's much stronger the way I'm doing it and some of the bugs I had in item-level authentication should just vanish. After finishing the 2nd version, I had this nagging feeling that it still wasn't right. Basically, my design was based on the need to work around a limitation in Google App Engine -- the lack of proper relationships between tables (combined with wanting to reduce the number of database queries). I spent some time thinking about it and realized a simpler, more elegant way to avoid the limitations which got me a much better data structure and thus, much better code. I wish I'd thought of it in the first place! But that's the way it is sometimes -- I had to learn from my mistakes.

On a different topic, yesterday I mentioned that I went to the AoA pitch clinic. I've decided that I'm going to spend at least an hour a day working on business planning, my pitch to potential investors, and related items. But, I'm not going to blog about it, except perhaps to indicate how much time I spend on it. The reason for this is that I want to make absolutely sure that nothing written on this blog could be construed as anything resembling a public offering to invest in Groupthink. I will, however, think about writing some blog posts about the process after it's all over.

Advisers and Angels

Roy Leban — Tue, 06 Jan 2009 23:19:00 +0000

As we all know, long meetings are frequently less effective than short ones. So, I'm pleased to say that in the last few days, I've had not one, but two, effective meetings that ran three hours.

The first was on Friday, with one of my advisers. We talked mostly about business and how to build the business, not the product, though we spent some time on that too. I learned a lot, but, not surprisingly, was reminded of how much I still have to learn about business.

Today, I went to the Alliance of Angels pitch clinic, a once-a-month seminar that covers what the "10-minute pitch" and the corresponding pitch deck should look like. It's somewhat ironic that it takes three hours to cover a 10-minute talk. But, it wasn't three wasted hours. Like the 10-minute pitch itself, it was all content. Sure, there were sample slides and even some silly bad example slides at the end, but there wasn't the fluff you so frequently get in presentations. The information was clear, useful, and on target, and it was obvious that the presentation had been well honed over many, many presentations. Net: if you're thinking of looking for funding, even if it's not from angels, I highly recommend AoA's pitch clinic.

The meeting and the seminar were different in a number of ways. One was a discussion while the other was a presentation. One had a very simple agenda while the other had a big long agenda and a slide deck. But, they were both successful, despite their length, for the same reason -- clear focus, with everything discussed revolving around that focus. And that's something useful even when you're not in a meeting.

In product news, I'm in the midst of rewriting the authentication system again. Almost done. I'll blog why and what tomorrow.

Avoid Fictitious Use Cases

Roy Leban — Thu, 01 Jan 2009 21:26:00 +0000

I have a stereo hidden in my kitchen cabinet, with wires that run to speakers in the wall. It's nice that the stereo's hidden away, but it's a pain to use. I wanted to connect it to the iPod on which we have all our music, and I recently discovered that Creative makes a wireless device that seemed perfect. I could put the iPod in a wireless dock on the counter and attach a wireless receiver to the stereo. Or so I thought. It turns out that Creative didn't really think things through.

The system consists of two parts, the Xdock and the X-Fi Receiver. There are only two ways you can possibly use this system, but the system doesn't really support either way.

The first way is to use the Xdock by itself and connect it to your stereo. But, there are no standard RCA audio connections to do so. The only outputs are S-Video, video, and audio optical. And, oh yeah, there's a headphone jack on the front. So, they've substituted an audio optical connection (and a mini one at that) for the universally standard RCA jacks. Just to make sure that I wasn't out of touch with the current state of the art in receivers, I checked on Amazon. Sure enough, the majority of stereo receivers that I looked at did not have audio optical connectors. RCA jacks are still the standard. So, even if you want to connect the Xdock to your stereo, the vast majority of people will be unable to do so. And, for me, there's nothing in my house that I can connect the Xdock to.

The second way is to use the Xdock as a transmitter and the X-Fi Receiver as a receiver. This is the usage that I bought them for. If you read Creative's web site, it sounds like you can control the whole thing from the Receiver. And that would be great. You tuck the X-Fi Receiver away in a cabinet or behind your stereo and just use the Xdock. Unfortunately, the very first thing that I wanted to control -- the volume, duh! -- can't be controlled by the Xdock. Only the volume control on the Receiver itself controls the volume of its audio output. It's as if the folks at Creative hadn't even thought of the obvious use of the transmitter/receiver pair.

Interestingly, the volume controls rotate continuously -- they're soft controls with the true volume level being set in firmware. So, of course, I expected both volume controls to work, and my initial assumption was that I had missed something in setup (the documentation is rather scanty). Sadly, there was nothing to miss.

So, how do the people at Creative think their devices are used? According to the support staff at Creative, "the sole purpose of the [X-Fi] Receiver is to be used by a user who would like to listen to the same music being played on the Xdock but not on the same volume level." What? The sole purpose for the X-Fi Receiver to exist is so that two separate people can listen to the same music, in different rooms, at different volume levels?! Yeah, there's a product need crying out for a solution!

I wouldn't have faulted Creative if they hadn't put volume controls on the product at all -- after all, the output has to go to an amplifier and most amplifiers have volume controls. If that had been the case, or if the sentence above had been on Creative's web site, I simply wouldn't have bought them and I wouldn't be a disgruntled customer. But, to provide controls that only work to support a fictitious use case, in a product that doesn't support multiple, obvious use cases -- that makes no sense.

Why I'm Switching From Chrome To Firefox

Roy Leban — Tue, 23 Dec 2008 09:15:00 +0000

When Google Chrome came out of Beta, I switched to it as my primary browser. I like Chrome very much, but now I'm switching back to Firefox. There are a couple of reasons. The biggest pain is that I see this message a lot:

There are a lot of sites that routinely use forms as you navigate through them. Amazon, one of the biggest sites on the internet, is one of them, but they are hardly alone. When you go Back in Chrome, you frequently see this page. I never want to see this message again. I don't want Chrome resubmitting the form for me. It's almost always the wrong thing to do and that politely worded message is almost always incorrect. I want it just to show me what was on my screen 3 seconds ago. For example: when I add something to my wish list on Amazon, Amazon adds the item to the wish list and shows me a bunch of suggestions. If I click on something that looks interesting, then go Back, Chrome wants to resubmit the form that I didn't even know existed. If I don't, I can't see the suggestions again. But, if I do, Amazon tells me that the item is already on my Wish List and still doesn't show me the suggestions. How about this instead: a message that says "This page may be out of date."

But, wait, there's more.

I was in the midst of giving a demo of Groupthink using Chrome and a page simply didn't work. It loaded, but nothing was live in the page. What's going on? It turned out that one of the JavaScript files I needed wasn't loading because I didn't have a network connection (everything else was loaded from the server I was running locally). Had I been using Firefox, I would have seen a note about errors in the lower right corner of the window. But Chrome showed me nothing -- it just made me look bad.

I use Faves for permanent bookmarking (if you haven't tried it, it's the best bookmarking service out there, bar none). This means that I don't have very many browser bookmarks. But, I do have about a dozen that I use all the time. One obvious one is the Fave It! bookmarklet, but I also have a bunch that I use every day (Puzzazz, draft.blogger.com, App Engine Local Admin and App Engine Server Admin are my top bookmarks). In Firefox, these are easily accessible from the Bookmarks menu. In Chrome, I have two choices -- permanently give up screen real estate for an ugly bookmarks bar, or use the bookmarks dialog. How about a Bookmarks menu?

Those are the biggest items, but there are other nits:

I run Chrome in full screen mode. When I drag out a tab, I'm doing it because I want to see it, not because I want most of it to be off-screen.
When I don't have very many tabs, how come they're not wider? It's not uncommon for me to have five tabs that are all named "Amazon.c..." and, of course, I can't tell the difference between them. Even better, provide a way to show little thumbnails underneath all the tabs, either as an option or as a temporary state.
Chrome conveniently will only auto-enter addresses that I've actually typed. I like that. But, it will also auto-enter incorrect addresses that I've typed and there doesn't seem to be a way to get it to stop doing that.
Why doesn't the History show me the URLs of the pages? There are lots of sites out there on which every page has the same name. And why can't I right-click on an item in the History to open it in a new tab?
If the cursor is positioned over a Flash control (which I have never clicked in), Backspace doesn't work to go back. If the cursor is positioned over an image which has been opened, Backspace doesn't work to go back.
When I open a link from another application (like Outlook), Chrome opens a new window instead of a new tab. That is, unless it's already done that once, in which case it uses that window. But, in either case, I still end up with two Chrome windows instead of one.
It seems to me that Chrome expires cookies early sometimes. As a result, I'm logged out of sites that I expect to still be logged into. I've had Chrome suddenly stop accepting cookies, for no apparent reason (fixed by quitting and relaunching).
Pages that look like they're complete sometimes continue to have a spinning disk indicating the page hasn't loaded.
What was the idea behind not having visible buttons for the prev/next menus? I will say this is better than the brain-dead single history menu that Firefox 3 introduced, but is it really necessary to be so minimalist that there isn't even an affordance for a common action?

There are also a few features that I'd love for Chrome to have:

Narrower window mode -- unfortunately, there are still lots of web sites that stretch all the text to full-width on my 24" monitor, making it harder to read. Amazon, one of the most popular sites on the Internet, is one of these sites. I'd like to be able to tell Chrome that certain web sites should be given a narrower window width. Yes, I can drag the tab out and shrink it, but it would be great if it could be done automatically whenever I visit the site.
A real debugger. I'll settle for having Firebug work, but I think the devs at Google can do a lot better.
Support for the Web Developer toolbar, or something like it. I'm not a big fan of the Web Developer toolbar (it's pretty clunky), but I use it in Firefox because there are a bunch of really useful features. The ones I use most often: Disable Cache, Disable JavaScript, control over cookies, form overrides, and View Generated Source.
I'd like a master password like Firefox has and I'd like the saved passwords actually encrypted with that master passwod. Instead, I tell Chrome to not remember passwords.

If it weren't for the problems, I actually prefer Chrome over Firefox. It's faster and it's less cluttered. It's elegant. I like how it automatically updates. But problems like this make Chrome look a lot like a Beta product, despite the fact that Google pulled off the Beta label.

I look forward to switching to Chrome again when it really launches.

Authentication System Changed

Roy Leban — Wed, 17 Dec 2008 23:59:00 +0000

I was surprised that my planned changed to authentication stirred up some controversy. The basic issue is that Google IDs, which I'm using for authentication, only allow you to use one Google ID at a time. That means that if I force you to switch to a different Google ID (because I need you to prove your email address), that might sign you out on other sites. Not all sites work that way. For example, the way I've done authentication on Puzzazz , you will not be automatically signed out the next time you visit. But that's not the way most sites do it.

In the end, after weighing the options, I decided to go ahead with my plan to switch to only keeping email addresses. Of the various other solutions, all of the good ones are a superset of what I was planning to do, or can easily be built from it. The other solutions are more complicated or more problematic, or keep the problems I was trying to avoid. So, I did it and it's working now, at least for projects. Now I can go back to dealing with the issues that inspired this change.

I forgot to post last night (too many things going on), but the chart still includes yesterday as a working day.

UX Office Hours Takeaways On thisDev

Roy Leban — Thu, 11 Dec 2008 23:59:00 +0000

I blogged about a bunch of takeaways from my once-a-month UX Office Hours today on my thisDev blog. Some tips on focus, pain, priorities, competitors, and stickiness.

Check it out here.

Ban Inter-Anything Marriage

Roy Leban — Sat, 15 Nov 2008 11:22:00 +0000

It's sad to see that the Mormons, a religious group that has been discriminated against, that has had their own marriage practices shunned and criminalized, in violation of the First Amendment, is a driving force in not only legalizing discrimination in California, but mandating it. California's Proposition 8 is, simply put, shameful. What is wrong with this people? How insecure in themselves are they that they can possibly be threatened by people they don't even know getting married?

But, hey, if we want to enshrine discrimination, let's go for it! Here's my draft of a California proposition to accomplish this:

This initiative measure is submitted to the people in accordance with the provisions of Article II, Section 8, of the California Constitution.

This initiative measure expressly amends the California Constitution by replacing a section thereof; therefore, revised provisions are printed in italic type to indicate that they are replacements.

SECTION 1. Title This measure shall be known and may be cited as the "California Real Marriage Protection Act."

SECTION 2. Section 7.5 of Article I of the California Constitution, is amended to read:

SEC. 7.5. Only marriage between two people, wherein one person is a man and one person is a woman, and wherein both people share the same age, color, creed, disabilities, education, ethnicity, eye color, hair color, race, national origin, religion, sexual orientation, and military/veteran status, is valid or recognized in California.

I know that it might be difficult to abide by these restrictions, and many existing marriages might suddenly be invalid, but it's the price we have to pay if we want to protect bigotry.

Look At Your Own Product

Roy Leban — Thu, 13 Nov 2008 23:57:00 +0000

I had UX Office Hours at StartPad again today. Two of the people that I talked with today were building very different products, and we had very different discussions about them, but the takeaways were very similar. I promised not to publish details, so what I write today will be a bit vague.

The first person is building a web service for Windows users that is supposed to be an integral part of their workday. He'd built a lot of behind-the-scenes infrastructure plus a Windows application for his users. The good news was that it all worked pretty well. But the bad news was that he had built an interface that is similar to some of the parts of Windows and Office that users find the most confusing.

The other person is building a Facebook application. The good news was that he has a unique value proposition which I think will go over really well with users. But, before new users get to the value proposition itself, he's asking them to refer their friends, then he was giving them lots of messaging about the value before delivering any actual value.

Both developers had made the assumption that what was good for somebody else was good for them. Yes, Windows and Office are very successful, but that doesn't mean that any particular pieces of their interfaces are good, nor does it mean that emulating those pieces is good for another product. Similarly, there are tons of Facebook apps in which the very first thing you do is invite your friends -- send them imaginary chocolates, virtual flowers, or make them a knight in your kingdom. But, that doesn't mean that's the right thing to do for all applications. In both cases, the result of these assumptions was a number of unnecessary obstacles placed in front of potential users. And, as I've said before, every obstacle is a reason for users to go away. Instead of looking at how other products do things, they need to look at their own product -- put themselves in their users' shoes and think about what will drive adoption.

On the positive side, both products had resisted the temptation to broaden their reach. They were both focused on doing one thing really well and I have to say that it's great to see it (one of them had even implemented and then removed a de-focusing feature). As a result, I think both of them will have a relatively easy time modifying their products to better reflect their users.

My next office hours are December 11th, 2:00-6:00PM.

The Time of the Campaign

Roy Leban — Thu, 06 Nov 2008 18:56:00 +0000

Estimates on the cost of the just-concluded presidential campaign are running around $1 Billion. That's certainly a lot of money, but, to put it in perspective -- it's only 3 days in Iraq.

A friend of mine recently lamented what she called a bigger travesty -- the consumption of time. I have to say that I disagree. Sure, there was plenty of time wasted, particularly the moments when the Republicans tried to call Obama a terrorist or a socialist, or when Sarah Palin went around telling people that only Republicans love our country.

But, as Barack said so eloquently on Tuesday:

This victory alone is not the change we seek. It is only the chance for us to make that change.

So, too, is it the case that the few moments that we each spent voting were not the election. They say the Presidency is a bully pulpit, but Barack Obama has been using the bully pulpit of the campaign trail for a year. His victory -- our victory -- would not have happened without his leadership over that time. By educating people, by advancing his agenda, by helping people understand that we could talk about hope rather than fear, and by helping people learn why our country deserved a leader like him, he has already changed the country for the better -- and it is that changed country which elected him.

That change couldn't have happened without a lot of time -- time that wasn't wasted.

Vote Against All Initiatives

Roy Leban — Fri, 31 Oct 2008 19:34:00 +0000

Just a short little political message. I generally vote against all initiatives and propositions. The spirit of our government is rooted in compromise. We don't all agree, but by discussing our disagreements and reaching a compromise that we can all live with, we move forward in the best way for everyone. Voter initiatives fly in the face of that compromise. It's winner take all -- and almost every initiative takes advantage of that, pushing the limits of what's acceptable and distorting the truth to imply that the solution proposed is the only possible solution to the problem.

I'd love to see a split system, in which every initiative gets two votes: "I agree with the problem" and "I agree with the solution." I think we'd find that far more people would vote for the first statement than the second -- and maybe then we voters would have the opportunity to direct our legislatures without tying their hands with poorly designed laws. After all, we elect them to solve complex problems for us.

This year, I might actually vote for an initiative or two. For example, I'll probably vote for I-1000 ("Death with Dignity"), which is an example of a law that could never pass the legislature -- they're all too scared that the "moral minority" will campaign against them if they support it, so it's up to us voters. I certainly hope that I never have to avail myself of I-1000's provisions, but I know that just the fact that it's available could be of great comfort to some people. I'll look at the rest of the initiatives, but my default vote is always No.

I'm Roy Leban and I approved this message.

Twittering Puzzles

Roy Leban — Fri, 31 Oct 2008 17:30:00 +0000

This is really cool to see in my Twitter stream:

I like this because it's a very nice, simple way to spread the word about Puzzazz and increase viral signups. Simply set up twitter in your Puzzazz preferences, and you'll automatically get a tweet each time you solve a puzzle. I don't tweet misses, only solves, so you never get embarrassed.

There are two other recent changes to make Puzzazz even friendlier. You can subscribe to the Puzzazz feed in your blog reader, or you can sign up to get puzzles emailed to you every morning.

Listening to ... the Homeless

Roy Leban — Fri, 10 Oct 2008 12:32:00 +0000

One of the albums I've been listening to in the car lately is Give Us Your Poor from Appleseed Recordings, a fundraising CD of music featuring Bruce Springsteen, Pete Seeger, Bon Von Jovi, Natalie Merchant, Bonnie Raitt, plus actors Tim Robbins and Danny Glover and many others. I would enjoy this album even if it were just a regular album, but here the proceeds benefit the homeless.

It's great music, including some from artists I would not normally choose to listen to. There are a couple of spoken pieces in addition to the music, but they fit in very well and are informative. I'm glad I've heard them and I don't skip over them while playing the whole CD (if I had created the CD, though, I would not have made one of the spoken pieces the very first track).

It's Not McCain's Turn

Roy Leban — Fri, 03 Oct 2008 08:32:00 +0000

I don't get what it is about politicians where they think that it's "their turn" to be President. McCain's been around long enough, he's been a senior member of the US Senate, he's chaired committees, he's brought home pork barrel spending to Arizona, and now he thinks it's his turn to be President.

Let's compare McCain with Elizabeth Dole. Now, I happen to completely disagree with Senator Dole's politics, but she is far more qualified than McCain to be President. In addition to being a senator, she served in the Executive Branch, including as Secretary of Transportation under Ronald Reagan and Secretary of Labor under George Bush. She was president of the American Red Cross for 8 years. And, she's a former Presidential candidate herself. I'd take Elizabeth Dole on temperament any day over John McCain. But McCain didn't even consider Dole for the VP slot. Instead, he picked Sarah Palin, who is even more unqualified than he is.

Dole isn't the only potential candidate either. The Republicans had many candidates they could have picked from who are far more qualified than McCain, but I guess it's not their turn. It's McCain's.

The problem isn't unique to this year or the Republican party. Look at John Kerry in 2004, Bob Dole in 1996, George Bush in 1988 (oops, he actually won), and Walter Mondale in 1984. I'll admit that I actually liked Walter Mondale and I certainly voted for Kerry over Bush. But, in each case, the parties had better candidates they could have put forth, but it was as if the party leadership had anointed somebody instead.

I just hope the American people do the right thing this time around, and tell John McCain that it's not his turn.

Puzzazz is Live

Roy Leban — Mon, 29 Sep 2008 02:22:00 +0000

At 12:01 Pacific Time, Puzzazz, a new puzzle web site went live on the internet. But there aren't many users yet. I guess I have to tell the world first. So, here goes.

I've wanted to create Puzzazz, which is a portmanteau word meaning Puzzles with Pizzazz, for a long time. For those who don't know, I'm a professional puzzle constructor and game designer (in my spare time). I've had puzzles published all over the place, including a recent book, and I'm one of the co-founders of the Microsoft Puzzle Hunt. As a game designer, I have a few games that have been well received, but I'm still waiting for one to get picked up by a publisher.

My vision for Puzzazz is a quick diversion. I don't want you to spend hours on my site. I want you to spend a few minutes every day. I want to make you smile. I want Puzzazz to become a part of your life. To that end, Puzzazz tracks your solve rate and your accuracy rate (which takes guesses into account). You can invite your friends and you'll get to compare how well they're doing to how well you're doing. If you use Twitter, you can set your preferences to auto-tweet for you whenever you solve a puzzle. Hopefully, all your Twitter followers will want to join Puzzazz too.

Puzzazz is mostly word puzzles and they'll get harder from Monday through Saturday. The Sunday puzzle will be a larger puzzle, with about the difficulty of a mid-week puzzle in a larger size, and they'll be a variety -- from word puzzles to sudoku to logic puzzles. If this progression sounds familiar, it's not accidental.

I'm interested in feedback on all aspects of Puzzazz, but mostly on the difficulty level of puzzles. As any puzzle constructor knows, gauging difficulty is one of the hardest things in creating puzzles. I've got it down for lots of puzzle types, but the puzzles on Puzzazz are different, so feedback from you will help me calibrate.

So, check out Puzzazz. And invite your friends.

P.S. If you want to read about the creation of Puzzazz, read this post on my thisDev blog.

You Are How You Manage

Roy Leban — Thu, 25 Sep 2008 00:22:00 +0000

You know the slogan "You are what you eat"? Well, I think a lot of who you are is how you manage other people. There are lots of different styles, but my own encourages dissent. I don't want to foster competition, but I think that without dissent, without disagreement, you don't get the best solutions. I want the people who work for me to be better than me, at least at something. A few cases in point:

One time, I had an awesome tester working for me, one of the best testers I've ever worked with. A lot of people disliked him because he was a thorn in their side. But I loved him and encouraged him. When I really wanted to know the state of the world, I could ask him and he would give it to me straight. He made my job of managing the team easier. Years later, I happened to be called in as the "fix it guy" on a large project. He happened to be one of the testers on the project. He wasn't the test manager or even the lead, but he was the first guy I talked to and, in 10 minutes, I got a better lay of the land than I could have gotten in an entire day worth of interviewing other people. He made my job easier.

I've also managed a number of tech writers over the years, but I'm thinking of one particular guy who was a former writer. Now, I'm not a bad writer (one of my original majors in college was English, and I'm married to a former English teacher). But, I would regularly run important things I've written by this guy and he would almost always make it better. I made it clear that I didn't want him to pull punches and he didn't. I remember one occasion when I took him a two-page memo I'd written and the post-edit version turned out to be one paragraph. He made me a better communicator.

I once asked a guy who worked for me for an idea to present at an upcoming brainstorming session to make a particular decision. He had one suggestion that I thought was stupid, and I told him so. He argued with me, told me why it was a good idea. I stood my ground. At the brainstorming session, I presented his idea anway. After all, he was very confident that he was right. I also presented some of my own ideas. His idea won and, in the end, deservedly so. He did get the credit, but he made me look good.

In all these cases, and many others, if I hadn't encouraged dissent, I wouldn't have gotten the benefits. For me, this really works, though I'll admit that when I get new employees, they don't always believe me at first. It take some time. It doesn't work for everybody, but it works for me.

But I sure like it when I read a quote like this from Barack Obama on why he picked Joe Biden as his running mate:

"... if I'm in the room making the kinds of tough decisions that the next president's gonna have to make, both on domestic policy and on international policy, then I want the counsel and advice of somebody who's not gonna agree with me a 100 percent of [the] time. In fact, somebody who's independent enough that can push back and give me different perspectives and make sure that I'm catching any blind spots that I have. And Joe Biden doesn't bite his tongue."

What is a Republican?

Roy Leban — Sun, 14 Sep 2008 12:12:00 +0000

I just saw this comment on a web site:

"I am a fiscally conservative, socially liberal Republican...."

I'm sorry, but you don't exist. There's no such thing as a fiscally conservative, socially liberal Republican.

Republicans Aren't Fiscally Conservative

The leaders of the Republican party aren't fiscally conservative. The greatest increases in government spending, the greatest increases in the national debt, and the greatest increases in the size of our government have occurred under the Republican administrations of Reagan, Bush, and Bush. The misguided war in Iraq has already cost us over half a trillion dollars and some estimates are that the total cost will be as much as $3 trillion dollars, especially if we live up to our moral obligation to give our troops what we've promised them in benefits.

The Republican party wants to borrow more money to give tax cuts to the people who need it the least. Maybe a few of them aren't rich (remember, John McCain's defined rich as making more than $5 million a year). Under McCain's proposal, he and his wife, with their seven homes, will get a tax cut of more than $350,000. How much will you get?

The administration of Bill Clinton was the most fiscally responsible administration we've had in 30 years.

Republicans Aren't Socially Liberal

The party of Lincoln has been co-opted by the religious right -- the Christian religious right, who feel that only their religion is correct and we should all be Christian. God is on their side. The Iraq war is god's war. Only the Republican party understands god's will.

At the Republican convention, Rudy Giuliani insulted every Muslim in the world by equating Islam with a small number of terrorists who happen to be Muslim. How do you think they'd like it if we started using the phrase "Christian terrorists" all the time to refer to the terrorists who happen to be Christian?

You may think you can be socially liberal if you're a Republican, but go read the platform or listen to what standard bearers like Sarah Palin has to say, and you'll find your viewpoint isn't welcome.

You're a Democrat

Here's what Barack Obama said about the promise of America:

What is that promise?

It's a promise that says each of us has the freedom to make of our own lives what we will, but that we also have the obligation to treat each other with dignity and respect.

It's a promise that says the market should reward drive and innovation and generate growth, but that businesses should live up to their responsibilities to create American jobs, look out for American workers, and play by the rules of the road.

Ours is a promise that says government cannot solve all our problems, but what it should do is that which we cannot do for ourselves - protect us from harm and provide every child a decent education; keep our water clean and our toys safe; invest in new schools and new roads and new science and technology.

Our government should work for us, not against us. It should help us, not hurt us. It should ensure opportunity not just for those with the most money and influence, but for every American who's willing to work.

That's the promise of America - the idea that we are responsible for ourselves, but that we also rise or fall as one nation; the fundamental belief that I am my brother's keeper; I am my sister's keeper.

That's the promise we need to keep.

Our government should work for us, not against us. If you believe that, you're a Democrat.

The A_O_TION puzzle

Roy Leban — Wed, 03 Sep 2008 07:52:00 +0000

Here's a puzzle. Name an English word that fits the following pattern:

A _ O _ T I O N

What's your answer? There are only two English words that fit that pattern: ABORTION and ADOPTION. In a recent post, I wrote about the silliness of not allowing adults to drink and the importance of remembering what your candidate stands for, even when your candidate isn't the nominee.

I'm not going to discuss any of the "pro-choice" or "pro-life" arguments here. The fact is that reasonable people disagree. Nothing that I say is going to convince anybody of anything.

The argument here is pretty much the same as in my last post -- just like the folks at MADD, it seems that most of the people who are opposed to abortion (and certainly the leaders of the anti-abortion movement) seem to have forgotten what they want to accomplish. Here it is: they want abortions not to happen. They're not going to get that to happen by convincing other people that their beliefs are superior. They're not going to get that to happen by convincing people that "god" is only on their side. And they're certainly not going to get that to happen by getting abortion made illegal. They've been trying to do all those things without success. The fact is that reasonable people disagree.

If just a fraction of the effort spent on the anti-abortion movement were spent on better sex education, promoting birth control, and promoting adoption, think of the differences that could be made. Think of how many unwanted pregnancies could be prevented from happening in the first place. Think of how many abortions might be eliminated. Instead, the anti-abortion people are frequently against sex education and birth control, and they are silent on adoption. Case in point: Alaska Governor and current Republican Vice Presidential candidate Sarah Palin is publicly anti-choice and thinks that abstinence-only sex education is the only way to go, and we all know how well that works.

It shouldn't be such a difficult puzzle now, should it?

Sarah Palin's Choices

Roy Leban — Tue, 02 Sep 2008 21:33:00 +0000

I want to clarify my last post a little bit. Barack Obama has said that Sarah Palin's family (and, in fact, the families, of all politicians) should be off limits. I agree with that. As I said above, the post was not about Bristol Palin and I am sorry if mentioning her situation causes her any pain. Really.

Now, on to her mother. To be crystal clear, I do not think that Sarah Palin is unqualified to be Vice President because her daughter is pregnant.

I think that Sarah Palin is unqualified to be Vice President (or Governor, for that matter) because she wants to force her religious beliefs on the rest of us. I think that she is unqualified to be Vice President because she has a double standard for her own family and for everyone else. I think that she is unqualified to be Vice President because she thinks "abstinence only" sex education makes sense. I think that she is unqualified to be Vice President because she wants public schools to teach creationism. I think that she is unqualified to be Vice President because she thinks the Iraq war is a task from god. I think that she is unqualified to be Vice President because she thinks that her beliefs are more important than mine.

On the other hand, as a candidate, I like her. She makes it very clear what sort of judgment (or, rather, lack of judgment) on important issues we can expect from John McCain. She makes it very clear the differences between the policies of "Yes We Can" and the policies of "No you can't unless the evangelical Christians say you can." Sarah Palin sure scares me. I hope she scares a lot of voters.

Hope that makes it clear.

Bristol Palin's Choice

Roy Leban — Mon, 01 Sep 2008 12:38:00 +0000

This post is not about Bristol Palin or her pregnancy.

Republican Vice Presidential candidate Sarah Palin describes herself as "pro-life as any candidate can be." John McCain's campaign web sites links to articles about how evangelical Christians are excited about this new opportunity to force their religious beliefs onto others.

Meanwhile, Palin's 17-year-old daughter is pregnant, and has chosen to keep the baby. To quote Palin again, "we're proud of Bristol's decision to have her baby and even prouder to become grandparents." In other words, Palin is OK with her 17-year-old daughter making her own choice about her pregnancy (and, presumably, she was also OK with her daughter's choice to ignore her abstinence-only sex education, and without proper birth control). Notice Palin's careful choice of words -- her daughter made a decision, not a choice.

But, any way you look at it, it means that Palin is pro-choice for her daughter, but anti-choice for the rest of the world. It's the sort of double-standard that we've come to expect from the Republican leadership, so she's in good company.

Personally, I respect Bristol Palin's choice and sincerely hope it's her choice and not her mother's. I sincerely wish her the best of luck on a rough road ahead.

Update: As it says at the top, this post is not about Bristol Palin. See this clarification.

What Are We Fighting For?

Roy Leban — Mon, 25 Aug 2008 14:00:00 +0000

It's an election year, so I figure I'll write some more about politics. In my last post, Raise the Drinking Age, I pointed out that the folks over at MADD have forgotten what they're fighting for. Today, as the 2008 Democratic National Convention starts (and it's starting right now, if I've scheduled this post properly), there are lots of supporters of Hillary Clinton who, I'm afraid, may have forgotten what they're fighting for.

I like Hillary Clinton very much. I liked Bill Clinton too. My wife and I both campaigned for Bill Clinton in 1992 and 1996, going door-to-door, helping to arrange rallies, the whole nine yards (in 1992, my wife was paid campaign staff for Clinton in San Jose, California). I think Hillary would have made a great president and, for a long time, I figured I'd be supporting her. But, when I heard what Barack Obama had to say, I decided that he was the best candidate -- the right person at the right time.

But I completely understand why Hillary's supporters supported her. And I respect it. But what are they fighting for? I could list all of the issues that Clinton and Obama agree on and they would bore you to death. These two candidates have always been in violent agreement. A vote for Barack Obama today is a vote for Hillary Clinton's vision and ideals -- only the details are different. A vote for Barack Obama it is a vote against, the failed, tired, sad, war-mongering policies of Bush-Cheney-McCain.

Whether Hillary Clinton remains in the Senate or moves on, I believe that she has an important role in America's future. She has already made a tremendous impact in the Senate and in the Presidential Campaign. She is a winner, not a loser. If you were fighting for Hillary Clinton for President, you should be fighting for Barack Obama for President and Joe Biden for Vice President.

A song of the day, from 39 years ago and, sadly, still appropriate today. The Republicans are fighting for another 100 years of misguided war in Iraq.

What are you fighting for?