Posts filed under “Product”
Awesome User Feedback on LookStat
I got back from a lunch meeting and there was an email in my inbox from a LookStat beta user. Subject: I love this site Closing Line:¬†Fantastic! I’d be very willing to pay for this service! back to the future part ii movie full cheap godzilla vs. hedorah film i want to watch the full [...]
Communication isn't about you; it's about them
As part of the product planning process at Judy’s Book, the primary document is a high level functional spec. In addition to this, at Andy’s insistence (thanks for the nudge, Andy) I created a one page summary which matched features in the spec to our core priorities, listed out the proposed phasing of work and [...]
Don't Confuse Release Rate with Rate of Progress
Frequent small releases are worthless if you’re going back to fix problems that you’ve introduced because you’ve tried to cram too much into any one release. Your velocity is a function of your ability to release working functionality. I was forced to re-learn this lesson on our current release because I pushed to get a [...]
Build for the Long Term (via Good Experience)
Mark has a great post (read it – good info in the comments too) about building for the long term interest of the user. Couldn’t agree more: In other words: a strategic focus on creating a good customer experience – that is, acting in the long-term movie unstoppable online best interest of the customer – [...]
Feature Scope and Release Date
We’ve all been there – all the elements of the feature you had hoped for will be there in time for the release cut-off. There are really two choices – hold the feature until it’s done or carve back scope and release what is ready. In general, I tend to lean towards the latter strategy, [...]
Lowering Barriers to Product Entry
Jeff Atwood has a great post on his blog called ‘Reducing User Friction’ in which he talks about counting the number of steps needed to accomplish a goal in your application. He also mentions Reddit about having one of the smoothest signup processes around. I completely agree. I remember the first time I tried to [...]
The Tagged Signup Process (aka How to get a massive viral spike)
Tagged has been touted as one of the fastest growing social networks around and after I got an invite this weekend, my interest was piqued. I went through the sign up process and came away pretty impressed at their model. I’m not surprised they have massive viral growth. You can’t actually sign up without letting [...]
Is anybody out there? (Why replies matter)
Alex Krupp has a great post on his blog about the role that responses play in encouraging repeat participation from members in online communities. I recently saw Bob Kraut present a paper on the mediating variables for Usenet participation. The study looked at how getting a reply affected the chance that a poster would return [...]
Big Release Week
Last week was a big one at Judy’s Book from a release perspective. We launched a new home page (existing members will have to sign out and clear cookies to see it), put more local offers in the system, and pushed out a host of bug fixes. There were a couple of cool improvements that [...]
Impressions from Seattle Facebook Developer Garage
I just got back from the Facebook Developer Garage in Seattle. These are local events started by a local sponsor for people interested in Facebook apps. There were a handful of people from Facebook including the Senior Platform Manager who spoke. Overall, a really interesting event. Some of my impressions: Facebook is an incredible phenomenon [...]