AMAZING DESIGN WON’T GET YOU ANYWHERE
What is considered web design today is not really design. It is styling, pixel coloring or whatever you’d like to call it. Real design is about solving problems. It is way more holistic and deep than the actual work we do in Photoshop. Real design is about creating a thoughtful, engaging user experience. Aesthetic styling can be then applied to enhance the experience as long as it doesn’t get in its way.
(Source: TechCrunch)
Instead of wasting time with ideas, which every snot nosed 4 year old with a crayon has, start coming up with value propositions people actually believe in.
That’s the secret of entrepreneurship - value.
(Source: thecoinloft.com)
(Source: forentrepreneurs.com)
Why is it important to “get out of the building”? How do you develop a compelling customer (& user) experience?
Here’s a quote I just fell in love with.
“Every behaviour is a kind of communication. Because behaviour does not have a counterpart (there is no anti-behaviour), it is not possible not to communicate.”—Paul Watzlawick’s First Axiom of Communication
I’ve been wrestling with the notion of failing fast lately. It just doesn’t sit well. I don’t know about you, but the only thing I learn from failure is that I need to start over, and quick! Nowadays, I read the Kurbi strategic planning document everyday assuming that we’re dead wrong - BEFORE we build and ship. I ask myself why anyone with half a brain would ever want to use Kurbi - it makes me ask myself tough questions, which in turn means I gotta go look for good answers. It forces me “out of the building”.
I’ve asked our early-supporters the same questions over and over - in different ways, from different points of view. They’ve been gracious enough to put up with me, and give me better and better feedback every time I pester them. I think it works because I’m asking them hard questions. It’s not like I’ve asked why the sky is blue a million times. I’m challenging them to learn with me. I’m bringing new ideas to the table, and ideas are dangerous in the hands of the capable.
I’ve heard it said that you can’t trust customers to tell you the truth, but I think people just give the information you’re looking for - nothing more, sometimes less - but you gotta set the bar high. With that said, I’ve come to believe that if someone ever leaves a customer interview without the truth, they simply didn’t do their job properly. It’s not the customers fault that the questions were shallow and didn’t agitate their emotions.
Real problems take a while to describe - they’re not sitting on the surface - they’re the feelings (emotions) we have way down deep in us saying there’s something wrong with the world, and feelings like that aren’t something anyone has an easy time describing.
…. without conviction, a lot of little things never quite add up to a big thing.
In my own experience of ADD businesses filled with uncertainties and competing priorities, projects get sidetracked from one sprint to the next by a shiny new idea, or derailed entirely by user feedback on a product you already knew was half-finished.
(Source: TechCrunch)
(Source: bobulate.com)
I’ve never seen this movie, but this scene just made a major impact. Thank you, Mr. Blanks for yet another scorch mark along my entrepreneurial journey.
Become a nitpicker. Identify all the little things that are inconvenient or broken in the world around you. Then, instead of just accepting them, pick one and commit to doing something about it.
Life’s little problems are an entrepreneur’s opportunities.
