Most people make the mistake of thinking design is what it looks like. That’s not what we think design is. It’s not just what it looks like and feels like. Design is how it works.

A lot of people repeat it, but do they really know what they are talking? Specially in today’s IT corporate filled with phony jargons like “innovtion”, “cutting edge”, “out of the box”, etc. coming specially from the most rigid (always thinking inside the box) guys from the top management.

Well, pet peeves apart.

Coming to the point, why am I writing this post today? Because, its been long since I wrote and I have been meaning to resume blogging lately. And today, when I completed a critical ‘invisible design’ as a part of a mobile app I am developing, I thought its worth sharing.

A part of the app that I am developing involves uploading large files from mobiles. Large files, low upload speed phones#, low bandwidth, spotty data connections on mobiles, failed uploads, restarted uploads, etc. sounds a ring? Well, the straightforward and naive way to do that would have been to ask the user to chose a file and try to upload it. If anything fails, just tell the user and let him take a call or just silently restart (from scratch) the upload when data connection is available. Well, what if it fails again? How many times the user driven or the automatic restart will happen? Will the large file ever get uploaded?

#Most mobile phones, including smartphones usually have low upload speeds as compared to download speeds. Even in most middle end phones with the so called 3G speeds, they only mean high download speeds (HSDPA) and not upload speeds (HSUPA)

If upload does not sound a ring, then think download. What if your torrent downloaders did not offer resuming of a download and only allows restart (from scratch) of the download ? Will your favorite movie ever download if your connection is spotty, or your router SNR is high, or the router had a power cut, etc.? Did you ever observe that ‘ordinary’ (taken for granted) thing? Ask older (1970’s and 80’s) folks from the computers world, they will tell you how dowloaders worked back then.

You can say that is a feature (developers will say architecture) of the torrent software, but I say its design too.

Now think of a solution to that upload from mobile problem, wherein the client (the mobile app) uploads the data in small chunks and both client as well as server (where files are uploaded) are stateful with regards to the amount (chunks) of data uploaded. If the data connection drops somewhere, the client can communicate and negotiate with the server on where to resume the interrupted upload. That saves the trouble of manual or automatic restart, saves resources, time and simply get’s the job done. But do you ever observe such ‘ordinary’ things (which just get the job done), besides the user interface bells and whistles, in apps that you use? I guess not.

No, I am not showcasing any innovation, the concept of chunked upload is very much existent and referred with the same name in the tech industry, ‘chunked uploads’, but its like talked a lot, implemented a little. The point that I am trying to make today is that there is much beyond what you see in an object (specifically app/site) that you use, which makes your life simple. Observe it!!

Hat tip for developers: Empathize, eat your own dog food, sink yourself in your end-users’ shoes and see what they see, feel what they feel, you will understand the deeper meaning of design, specially the invisible one, and you will start making better software (I am hopeful that you are making good software already, you just need to make it better).

P.S.: I am thinking to release the chunked uploads Android app code (Java) and server code (Python/Django) as an open source code on github soon, *if I get enough free time*.

1. Experts are clueless, especially people who declare themselves experts. They cannot help you as entrepreneurs They are going to tell you to do better sameness, to do what everybody else is right. They are going to tell you their point of view, often from a very arrogant point of view. Usually they are disconnected from customers. Steve Jobs did not listen to experts, on the contrary the experts listened to him. Instead of listening to the pronunciation and interpretation of experts, its much easier to listen to customers themselves using social media. You meet someone who calls himself a guru or an expert, that’s the person to avoid. As an entrepreneur, you have to figure things out for yourself.

2. Customers cannot tell you what they need. Focus groups just don’t work.

3. Biggest challenges beget the best work. Instead of byte sized chunks, give your employees and co-founders the biggest challenges. People rise up to challenges and it brings the best out of them.

4. Design counts. Lot’s of people care about design. Experts will tell you about price, demand, blah. It’s lot easier to enchant people with great stuff rather than crap. Even if the population is 10% only.

5. In presentations: big graphics, big font. Steve used to do one word slides with 60pt font.

6. Jump curves, not better sameness.

7. Something “works” or “doesn’t works” is all that matters. – change/pivot based on what works. Don’t be stuck with fads and religion. Initial offering of an iphone was – only the 3rd party apps that were safari plugins – then shift. six months later – great 3rd party apps – open system. – reversed

8. “Value” is different from “price” – Steve proved – there are class of people who perceive value more than price.

9. Hire A players. Hire people better than you. Engineers – don’t think management, finance, etc. is easy – don’t think like that. Take pride in saying that I hired someone who is better than me in finance/marketing/…

10. Real CEO’s can demo.

12. Real entrepreneurs ship and not slip. Don’t worry, be crappy. When you have jumped curves, the first version can be crappy. It can be a piece of crap but it has to be a revolutionary piece of crap. Don’t ship crap, ship something that has jumped curves which can have elements of crappiness to it.

13. Some things need to be believed to be seen. – voila – u always heard it the other way round, right? You will have to belive, ship and then let it be seen. If you want proof, it will never happen.

The quote I like the most is:

‎”You’re gonna screw up. If you’re gonna go fast enough to succeed you’re gonna make mistakes. If you are not making mistakes you’re going too slow, you will never win. And it’s all about how you deal with those mistakes, it’s the key.”
— Dan Levin, COO, BOX.

My answer to myself is : yes and no

Yes, on the personal side of things. It should not matter to me how the person handles his personal life and I should either accept it or keep no personal connection with him. The latter is hard when you are just two people on a boat. So I should just let his personal life be. e.g. if he eats with two hands and his mouth chomping the food like a cow, just let it be.

No, on the business side of things. I should not let any of his (or mine) nuances play foul with the business.

The way I have done it is, write the DNA/basic-principles/guidelines/values for the company. Each person who shall work for the company should either align with the values of the company or be left out (or fired like a liability if required be).

While writing the values document for my own venture, I thought that it might be useful for others too and decided to contribute it to pluggd.in – “India’s Largest Platform for entrepreneurs and Small Businesses” along with a workable template.

You can find the post here

The template can be found here.

There is no reason not to follow your heart.

We all knew, well more or less, that it was coming, from the last 7years. It was just lurking around the corner all the time. The wall street would have been more worried about how to use/cope-with this event and its slow commencement has definitely taught them how to live with it. However, I (a true disciple of Steve) and many other like me were more worried about the legacy that fall upon us when Steve is gone. The day has come. No, I am not talking about his material assets, I am talking about the legacy that he has instilled in the hearts & minds of each and every one of us. Its like a baton that we have to carry, glorify and instill in the hearts & minds of future generations, because after all we are just "mere mortals" our part of the track will end somewhere sooner or later and we shall have to pass it on.

We (me and many other like me) have been horned defenders, advocates, fan-boys of Steve and have taken his words to be line drawn in stone. Its time we take those words to the truest of their destination, live and execute them, without expectations, pride or fear.

In Steve’s own words (from his speech at Stanford’s commencement address, 2005):

“No one wants to die. Even people who want to go to heaven don’t want to die to get there. And yet death is the destination we all share. No one has ever escaped it. And that is as it should be, because Death is very likely the single best invention of Life. It is Life’s change agent. It clears out the old to make way for the new. Right now the new is you, but someday not too long from now, you will gradually become the old and be cleared away. Sorry to be so dramatic, but it is quite true.”

“Remembering that I’ll be dead soon is the most important tool I’ve ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Because almost everything — all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure – these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important. Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart.”

There is no end to the text that I can write in Steve’s praise and a lot of videos (some of them rare) that I can share but I will keep this tribute short on this sad day and share more on some later date.

May his soul rest in peace but the fire he kindled live forever in our hearts & minds.

Original post By: Indus
Link: http://www.khaitan.org/blog/2010/05/as-a-ceo-have-you-immersed-yourself-including-showing-that-you-are-in-idiot/

“””
No holds barred immersion into your business is one quality which IMO keeps people at sidelines. If you don’t engross, how can you tell the story, if you don’t act foolish, how can you break the ice and win nay-sayers? If you don’t keep showing your face, how would people feel your presence.
“””

Today I got my hands onto the freely available 19page excerpt of Json and DHHs’ latest – ‘Rework‘. I read it and ordered the full book right away, but that will take 2-3 days to come. However, I thought of putting up my immediate reaction to the book, from whatever I could get to know about it from the free excerpt, into a small post up here. So here goes.

Workoholism:
Rework talks about workoholism, why its an excuse to compensate for lower levels of competence and why its bad and should be discouraged for the good of all. I agree partially. The truth is, this is highly subjective.

However, taking a rational and somewhat objective look at it, workoholism is bad if its comes unnaturally to the person doing it and/or if it is done too often . There are different kinds of people, they have different working styles, some need a break after every hour to be productive, some need hours of solace, its just a matter of how they work and be productive.

Some, JUST DON’T GET SLEEP if the work they were doing is not complete or is not at a logical conclusion or there is a bug that has become an eternal challenge in the face of their brain. Forcing them to leave office/work in such a situation is far more dangerous than letting them work, coz even if they lie on bed for the whole night their brain will not sleep, the body might. As a result you will have a fresh body in the office next morning but with a zombie brain. In such cases, do the lesser evil, let them just do what they want to, however the frequency of this, should be kept under control.

On the other hand, a perspective on people who need a break every hour, to say keep themselves productive:
The objective theory says, ‘interruption’ is the single biggest killer of productivity. Guess what, if you tell this to a person who practices hourly break and munching and is very satisfied with his performance this way and he has got even a few admirers of his work and style and performance, he will just confront you on this and blow the lid off your objective opinionated mind.

The bad effects of too frequent show of workoholism on health are well known, thats where I am in complete agreement with the authors. One should not push his body beyond limits, he ain’t got a spare one.

Meetings:

I agree, meetings, in their current form, achieve far less than what they are aimed for and most of time they end up in a negative sum, in terms of achievements-(time invested in hours*sum(productivity of attendees per hour)).

I compare meetings with a vinyl record [the old gramaphone stuff], there is a record made of plastic/vax with tracks on it and there is mechanical hand that goes over it in spirals, and there is a traction mechanism which keeps the head in the right track. But since the whole system is mechanical, and if its a bit old many a times the head goes avary and jumps tracks, goes diagonal, etc. But there is an external agent, the person who is listening to it. Wonder why people use to sit very near to old gramaphones, even when they had huge speakers? To reset the head to the track. Coming out of the analogy, meetings need to have two controls, a traction to prevent them from going off topic/carried away and secondly a hard resetter who has a “point black focus” on the agenda, and obviously he should be given rights to interrupt anyone and everyone in the meeting, irrespective of his post/rank.

Meetings, are a necessary evil and could turn out to be lesser and lesser evil if the traction/prevention and the resetting mechanisms are in place.

Pick a fight.
This is a good one, I like it, as is.

Be bold, have high integrity, be confrontal if need be to defend what you speak and believe. Pick a fight even if its not a necessarily required element to move ahead. It will give you a better direction, improved speed, a killer instinct.

Planning is guessing:

No or very-little planning is as bad a long or very long term planning. No planning means you will never be proactive, only reactive. You will never be creating opportunities out of probabilities, coz probabilities are required to be sighted from a distance and than some preparation is required to convert them, by the time they arrive in your face. If you are the guy who just takes things as they come, you might never achieve what you could have, but just achieve what you did.

Whereas long/very-long term plans are pure guesses, assuming a lot. There are too many variables around us that we can only predict with certain reasonable accuracy only when we reach within a certain reasonable distance (in time) from them. Predicting what you will be doing tomorrow afternoon is very easy as compared to predicting what you are going to do on one specific afternoon in 20 weeks from now.

So, do plan, but,
* do not plan for more than 90 – 120 days at any point. [inspired by Eric Ries from the startuplessonslearned ]
* put a concrete plan for the next 1 – 3 weeks.
* put an amorphous and flexible plan for 4th week – 90th day.
* the planning for the period of 3 weeks – 90 days should be a linear gradient, moving from concreteness(4th week) to amorphous (85th-90th day)

Under-do your competition:

I agree and disagree with this one, in two different contexts.

Its good to under-do your competition, in the sense that, if they are doing a lot of things, spreading themselves too thin and are not able to manage it nicely, than you should find the most critical pivots of your business, find how your competitor is delivering on these critical pivots and concentrate more where he is weak. This is will enable you to take the earth from under his feet.

On the other hand, if you keep under-doing all the time, you risk innovativeness. Not all your marketing research is bullet proof. There might be things, other than the ones’ that your research has established, as the most critical pivots, that might turn the game around. Sometimes its one silly feature from a foolish competitor, who is spreading too thin, over too many things, that ‘just works’ for him. He just turns lucky ‘coz he allowed one lousy coder/manager to put his ego driven feature into the product, even when all the odds were right out against it. Its a risk with a low probability, but its there.

So, the propensity to keep a check on doing only the things that are necessarily needed sometimes hurts innovation and a probable crazy hit.

Woh, I wrote quite a lot for an excerpt. I am eagerly awaiting the book, hoping it has atleast 30% more then the Signal vs Noise blog. Will update this post with new insights from the book soon.

Dropbox founder, Drew Houston, takes us over the long 14months+ "learning the lean way" ride of segmenting two existing markets,
the portable and the cloud storage drives, and creating a product that "just works".

Evan Williams the co-founder of Pyra Labs, Blogger, Odeo, Twitter talks about how twitter listens to its users and how he follows hunches.

Its interesting to know that Blogger and Twitter were hunches and that very fact itself reveals how far hunches can go.

An echo’ed note-to-self and an iterated note to others who are interested:
“Follow the hunch but don’t assume where it will go”.