Fry’ing the Trolls
Posted on | December 23, 2011 | 9 Comments
I’ve been a long time opponent of anonymous, unauthenticated comments fire-hosed into mainstream online media decidedly without editorial review. They are an unfair and easily manipulative tool for beating down anyone who dares to stick their neck out and state their views in a public forum under their own name – either by writing themselves, or getting written about. Healthy societies need intelligent public discussion, contradicting views and debate-driven consensus, or at least educated compromises. I just don’t get how this cowardly bashing gets flagged as free speech while the opinions it suffocates get dismissed as one.
Another absurd argument often brought is about the “thick skin” that those who speak in public should have anyway – why should the wussies then complain on a few comments? Just read a rant in Stephen Fry‘s autobiography that summarizes the answer so simply and beautifully:
…those who grow up these days to become trollers on internet sites and who specialize on posting barbarous, mean, abusive, look-at-me, listen-to-me anonymous comments on YouTube and BBC ‘Have Your Say’ pages and other websites and blogs foolish enough to allow space for their poison. Such swine specialize on second-guessing the motives of those who are brave enough to commit to the risk of making fools of themselves in public and they are a blight on the face of the earth. ‘Oh, but a thick skin is surely necessary for the acting profession. Actors and theatre people should get used to it.’ Well, if you want to be in a profession which accesses emotion and attempts to penetrate the mind and soul of a man, I should have thought what is more necessary is thin skin. Sensitivity.
- quote from The Fry Chronicles by Stephen Fry
I believe you can replace the exemplary profession of actors and theatre people here with anyone: a parliament member, policeman, business leader, cabinet minister, social scientist, investigative reporter, novelist, civil servant, software engineer, creative artist, entrepreneur or the mother of the year. We do not want any of those people disappear from the public space, shut up and encapsulate growing their shell concrete hard only to sit in a hole surrounded by a selected trustworthy few of their own kind to throw poisonous, life-defyingly sarcastic remarks back and forth to underline their hatred of the world outside.
We do want all our leaders, hierarchy- or opinion-wise, no we want _anyone_ who has something to contribute to the society out in the open, sharing, listening, sensing, learning, teaching, analyzing and understanding.
Here’s to 2012… with thinner skins around us.
A Year With Estelon
Posted on | December 5, 2011 | No Comments
Pretty much exactly 12 months ago I made my first angel investment ever in a company that makes physical things. My entire entrepreneurial career and the businesses I’ve supported on the side have always evolved around outcome you can not really touch: would it be software or consulting and services.
On this backdrop, the magic of turning ideas into physical objects has a special appeal for me. Estelon‘s flagship speakers weigh 85kg a piece yet are delicate enough to ship with a pair of white gloves for handlers. Their distinct shape is driven as much from physics as from visual aesthetics. And when they actually perform their primary function of music delivery it is as close as it gets to engineering creating pure emotion. The kind which both justifies and makes you forget the fair value on the price tag at the same time.
A few months before signing up for the seed round with fellow angel Jaakko Karo I was (only half-)joking to the founders that as I could not afford to buy their product I guess I have to invest the money in the company to ensure I eventually can become a client one day. Now, a year later, it amazing to look back at progress made already:
- Product development. The original XA model has been complemented with a smaller entry-range XCs, as well as a pimped up, diamond-tweeter equipped XA Diamond. Overall, an almost-full lineup of real speakers in real production.
- Reviews. A Google search for “Estelon speakers review” goes above 7000 mark already, featuring praising coverage from bloggers and forum goers to established magazines like ToneAudio, HomeTheater, Stereophile, RobbReport and others. And often the pro reviews of this class of equipment is preceeded by months of careful setup, burn-in and continuous listening – so expect more to be on the way.
- Awards. The XA and XA Diamond have brought home the CES Innovation Award, prestigious in consumer electronics, not once but twice now (2011, 2012) in High Performance Audio category. Bel Canto, MartinLogan, Lawrence Audio and other peers there don’t usually hang out that often with first-year startups, I think.
- Sales. You can today walk into a high-end audio shop, audition and buy a pair of Estelons in a growing list of countries in America, Europe and Asia. And the best part: not only you can, but people do.
- Making history. This summer, the Estelons were showcased at an exhibition at Estonian Museum of Applied Arts and Design. Another thing more common after 12 years, rather than 12 months in the market.
What for me has been just a year of light monthly involvement to date is of course a rise towards the highest peaks for Alfred Vassilkov after his first 25 years as a speaker designer and over 5 years of work on this particular concept. I feel privileged to be along on this journey now and am thrilled to see where Alfred, Alissa and the rest of the team will take us by same time in 2012. And which speakers I can enjoy at home then.
Tags: angel > entrepreneurship > estonia > gadgets > hifi > innovation > investment > startups > vc
On Tackling Really Hard Problems
Posted on | October 27, 2011 | 2 Comments
It’s been almost two weeks since I attended a bunch of sessions and some social events around the annual Singularity Summit, held by Singularity Institute, this time in New York.
And for the ultrabrief context of what they are about:
The Singularity represents an “event horizon” in the predictability of human technological development past which present models of the future may cease to give reliable answers, following the creation of strong AI or the enhancement of human intelligence.
Since the flight back and on following business travel in Europe I’ve been taking 30 minutes here and an hour there with an intent to capture the thoughts the event sparked for me. Each time I’ve run into a writers block and failed to post.
Estonian Faire in London: Seedcamp Week 2011
Posted on | September 9, 2011 | No Comments
After I’ve missed a few events since I was last mentoring at Seedcamp in 2008 after its launch in 2007, managed to sync another London trip with being there again for Seedcamp this week – unfortunately just for the Product Day on Tuesday and a few evening meetups. You can look at full announcement, participants list and agenda here and daily summary clips on YouTube.
Besides a chance to sharpen your mind and spend time discussing their products with the cream of the crop of young European entrepreneurs, a good reason to show up was a recent invitation to join the newly formed Seedcamp Advisory Board, which got announced now. There is tons of action and tons of traction around the European startup scene and Seedcamp has earned quite a central role in this movement. I hope I can contribute to bridging that “center” with the Nordic corners of the continent, where there is tons of tech innovation action happening in my homely Baltic and Scandinavian countries – with the role model and community around Skype playing no small part.
And last, boy, did Estonia in particular rise to the spotlight this year. Out of the 20 finalists picked, 4 have strong Estonian roots: GrabCAD (a community for CAD engineers), Transferwise (Skype employee #1 Taavet reinventing currency exchange), Sportlyzer (Tõnis using the learnings from how much better than me he was in karate training in highschool towards online coaching for endurance sports) and Campalyst (a mixed Baltic social media ROI tracking team who got together at a Garage48 weekend just 6 months ago).
Have to say, the visibility of these teams already became a bit ridiculous at times: you had times where some other teams where apologizing for not being Estonian, you had some tongue-in-cheek slides plugged into pitches, and all of this followed with heavy twitter coverage tagged as #estonianmafia.
(As a sidenote, I am philosophically not fully bought into this hashtag. First, when building a company to change the world, your roots are something to be proud of, but not the main or only thing that should define you. Also, not only is it too easy to misspell (see #estionianmafia or #estonianmaffia), but it’s original connotations with ruthless, violent, non-ethical winning is an extreme opposite of what I actually see among these people… but hell, Dave McClure picked the tag! And maybe the startup movement can do flip version of what Coke did with Santa Claus and hijack the mafia-word completely from its previous bearers?).
By the time of announcing the winners today, the ratio of Estonian companies went up from 20% to 66%: GrabCAD and Transferwise were up there in respectable company of Vox.io (Slovenia).
A major step which will be remembered in defining what #estonianmafia is really made of then came from Hardi Meybaum, the CEO and Co-founder of GrabCAD. Accepting the 25,000 EUR grand prize he said that GrabCAD is already financed and building great companies is not just about what you are able to take. And with that, handed away the fresh stash of euros won to Farmeron from Croatia.
Thanks for making us proud.
Summer of Startups 2011
Posted on | July 25, 2011 | 4 Comments
Spent almost a full day last week in Helsinki by invitation of Aalto Entrepreneurship Society (See also: #aaltoes & on FB) to speak to 10 teams of their Summer of Startups program. All-in-all it was a worthy time investment for me, and I hope for the teams too – after a lecture on the history and learnings from building Skype I could spend about 20 minutes in a mentoring session with each of them.
Characteristically to being just in the middle of a 10-week intense effort of forming their products in such an early seed stage it is far too early to tell which one of them will actually fly as a company. It could be well just 1-2 companies and I have my hunches to which one(s), if any – won’t reveal that before their final pitches on August 10th though. Nevertheless that same hunch tells me that out of the people present the ratio of future success will be much higher, and even if their current concept fails they will find a new idea and potentially a differently formed team that will help them succeed in the future.
So in a way, it is back to that big discussion in May about what is the real role and goals of all these startup incubation/acceleration program formats out there. Even if they often don’t produce sustainable companies, they still do train better entrepreneurs.
On other random thoughts from these meetings and surrounding hallway chats:
- When thinking of new incubation and accelerator programs, the Baltic and Nordic countries need to start taking a seriously regional view. Besides the Garage48 event constantly on the road, there still is too much disjointed action in each country to create their own unique support systems. These efforts should be more synchronized, combined, consolidated, co-financed and co-marketed. Otherwise, as a random illustration, while Finnish Startup Sauna and Lithuanian StartupHighway compete head-on for the same short roster of potential participants, the best local startup teams apply to the Seedcamps, TechStars, Betaworks and Y!Combinators directly and flee Europe on day 2 of their existence. Which, as it has been proven many times, will more than likely to benefit their particular careers (which makes me happy for them!), but is not the dream scenario for our Nordic, or generally Europan economies in the long run.
- Another side-effect is that no single Top50 VC group in the world can today sanely pick if and which of these programs to support or even attend in Nordic-Baltic region – there are just becoming too many programs and impossible to distinguish from each-other. The result is that serious money stays home where they already have a natural dealflow. And our new companies need to follow them there.
- Unfinished idea to throw out there: what if all the major acceleration program attempts in the region put their backs together and pitched their co-operation to be branded by some major globally established incubator under a franchise? Think of Seedcamp Nordics, or TechStars Europe based in this area. That would help manage the expectations of both the investors and startups considering affiliations, pending of course the needed measures to keep the bar as high as the mothership has it. Discuss?
- Estonia is extremely lucky with the amount of two-way public dialog happening around technology entrepreneurship in the context of the country’s overall economic environment in the future. From our President, several cabinet ministers and MP-s to ranking officials in ministries and public agencies there are people who get and are able to discuss matters ranging from e-governance to funding and taxation issues of fragile early-stage ventures. Given how small even booming gaming software sector in Finland is compared to some traditional Finnish export industries, as well as the long-standing position of Nokia, they truly early guys claim they need to fight much more for attention.
- As the Aalto Venture Garage co-working space was under renovation (check out the fancy designs being implemented) we spent time in the neighboring Aalto Design Factory instead – I was very impressed by the overall feel of the distinctly Nordic yet unpretentious environment and took some photos too.
- Among the many startups hosted at the Design Factory, I met three that are in a more mature stage of launching their products. A few whose creations I would likely buy without much hesitation today:
- PowerKiss wireless mobile charging ring that doesn’t look like that massive brick you have to attach to your phone, sold at airport electronics shops (I forget the brand).
- Jalo Helsinki‘s Fly-shaped smoke detector / fire alarm. The end of the era of those ugly plastic round pucks the law requires you to stick in your ceiling in many countries.
- TribeSudios‘ Stagecraft seems to become a really interesting format shift in social gaming, or, as they put it, “what happens when real game designers take on social”. Even though I can’t remember when I played a non-mobile game last time, I am looking forward to understanding trendchanges in this form of entertainment better.
Thanks again for the invitation, guys.
Tags: aaltoes > entrepreneurship > estonia > europe > event > finland > innovation > investing > politics > seedcamp > startups > vc
IT-hariduse intervjuu Arvutimaailmale
Posted on | June 3, 2011 | 4 Comments
Digi toimetaja Martin Mets on kirjutamas järgmisesse Arvutimaailma numbrisse lugu Eesti IT-haridusest ja esitas ka mulle mõned küsimused, ilmselt mu selleteemalise tegevuse tõttu ITL juhatuses. Martini ja Henriku lahkel loal avaldan oma vastused ehk kiire Skype-tekstivestluse-intervjuu toorel kujul juba ette, aga ostke siis kindlasti ajakiri ka, et lõpptulemust lugeda.
[6/2/11 10:36:52] Martin Mets: Räägitakse, et Eestis on puudu juba 2000 IT-spetsialisti. Viimastel aastatel on vastuvõtt IT-erialadele natukene paranenud, kuid see võiks olla endiselt palju parem. Käisin just eile ITLi koolituuril Kehra gümnaasiumis ja seal räägiti kaasakiskuvalt, et palk on üle keskmise ja töö firmades (seal oli näiteks Webmedia) tore, mitmekülgne ja rutiinivaba, kuid õpilastes see erilist vaimustust ikkagi esile ei kutsunud. Mis peaks olema see präänik, mis tooks aina rohkem inimesi IT-erialasid õppima? Kas endiselt oleks vaja murda mingeid iganenud müüte? Mul on tunne, et siinkohal ei ole tegemist valdkonnaga, mis ise lihtsalt paika loksub…
ITL korraldatud koolikülastuste ja muul viisil noortelt kogutava tagasiside põhjal tundub, et põhjuseid, mis noori IT juurde jõudmast takistavad on mitmeid, ei oska ühtki neist esile tuua kui suurt ja peamist. IT valdkonnas kõva käpp olemiseks peab endale juba koolis alla laduma tugeva reaalainete põhja – on kindlasti neid, kelle jaoks matemaatika ja füüsika ongi rasked, aga samas võib paljude andekate jaoks olla sageli lihtsalt tüütu või igav see, kuidas neid aineid õpetatakse: kas kuivalt ja teoreetiliselt tahvli ees või läbi põnevate projektide nagu robootika või lihtsam tarkvaraarendus. “Raske õppustel, kerge lahingus” tarkust meenutades on oluline ka kohustuslik matemaatikaeksam: kui mõni andekas noor selle gümnaasiumi lõpus tegemata jätab, sulgeb see ta ees mitmeid ülikooliuksi, mis teda tegelikult hiljem huvitada võiksid.
Eesti üleminekuühiskonnas on olnud väga oluline ka küsimus, kas üks või teine erialavalik võimaldab majanduslikult “head elu”. Usun, et selles osas oleme nüüd üle perioodist, kus arvati, et vaid majandus- või juuraharidus seda suuta tagavad – väga hea programmeerija töö on ka väga hästi tasustatud võrreldes ka pankuri või advokaadiga.
Ja veel üks väärarvamus on see, et tehnoloogia on kuidagi humanitaaria vastand hariduses ja tööturul. Me soovime, et meil oleks rohkem insenere, aga lõpuks on näiteks edukas IT-tööstus suur tööandja ka disaineritele, lingvistidele, antropoloogidele, turundajatele jne. Oluline, et need eri distsipliinid oskaksid koos töötada ja selleks omavahel üksteise toimist paremini tunneksid.
[6/2/11 10:37:21] Martin Mets: Kurdetakse, et IT-erialadel on lõpetajaid vähe. Samas aga haaravad nad ise juba enamiku paljulubavaid üliõpilasi teiselt kursuselt enda juurde tööle, mistõttu jäävad paljudel õpingud lõpetamata. Mis võiks siin olla kuldne kesktee?
See on üks suur müüt, mida tuleb ikka ja jälle ümber lükata. Suurtel ja edukatel IT-firmadel puudub motivatsioon palgata teiselt kursuselt inimesi endale tööle. Osad neist, kes müüvad arendusteenust, müüvad tegelikult oma töötajate CV-sid ja seal on rahvusvahelises konkurentsis oluline näidata vähemalt magistrikraadi. Teistel on lihtsalt edust tulenevalt tehniliste probleemide keerukus nii suur, et nende lahendamine eeldab rohkem haridust.
Soliidsed IT-firmad palkavad tudengeid ehk osalise ajaga ja julgustavad neid igati kooli lõpetama, et võimaldada neile ka tulevikukarjääri. “Poolikuid” tudengeid satub ka mitte-IT-firmadesse IT-tugiisikuteks jm lihtsamatele töödele, sest need firmad ei suuda päris IT-firmadega tööpakkumistes hairtud spetsialistidele konkureerida. Statistika näitas, et paari aasta taguse majandusbuumi ajal läks suurem osa IT-alade väljalangejaid hoopis… kinnisvarasektorisse! Ja üks suur koolist langemise põhjus on koolide sõnul ka raskused õpingutes (jällegi – reaalainete põhi oli nõrk).
[6/2/11 10:38:56] Martin Mets: Kas Eestis antav IT-alane haridus vastav IT-firmade ootustele? Paljud arendajad ja start-upid räägivad, et neid erialasid või programeerimiskeeli, mida neil vaja oleks, Eestis ei õpetataki. Kui suur peaks olema IT-alane spetsialiseerumine väikeses Eestis, kas olekski vaja üksnes baasharidust, millele hiljem lisandub juba tööalane praktika ja täpsem spetsialiseerumine? Kas firmad ootavad pigem valmis spetsialisti või teadmistega inimest, keda nad saavad enda käe järgi vormida?
Sõltub rollist, loomulikult. Oluline on, et ülikoolist tulev noor oleks õppinud probleeme lahendama ja loominguliselt mõtlema – on ohtlik, kui teda on silmaklappidega treenitud kasutama vaid üht platvormi ja programmeerimiskeelt ja puudu on oskus valida ja vajadusel õppida juurde parimaid tööriistu vastavalt konkreetsele ülesandele. Arvutiteaduses on palju vundamenti laduvat teooriat, mis ei sõltu programmeerimiskeeltest – vajaduste analüüs, algoritmid, võrkude toimimine, andmebaasiteooriad, statistika ja andmeanalüüs. Sellele alusele saab siis laduda juurde teadmisi, mis tulenevad konkreetse tööandja ja tema projektide/toodete vajadustest. Insener areneb ja õpib kogu elu.
Teisalt on firmades rolle, kuhu palgatud töötaja peab olema juba saabudes oma nishshis oluliselt targem kui tööandja ja sealsed kolleegid – selle tarkuse allikaks eelduseks on näiteks doktorikraadini viinud akadeemiline uurimistöö.
[6/2/11 10:41:30] Martin Mets: ITLi tegevuskavas (2009-2011) on tööjõu ja hariduse valdkonnas kirjas eesmärk, et “tõstame Eesti IKT kõrghariduse kvaliteeti rahvusvaheliselt konkureerivale tasemele”. Milline on Eesti IT-hariduse tase praegu?
Mulle tundub, et baasdistsipliinides – matemaatika, füüsika, keemia, arvutiteadused – ei ole meil midagi häbeneda. Neis on korralikku taset ja pigem kuuleb ülikoolidelt muret oma jätkusuutlikkuse üle. Head õppejõud vananevad, konkursid nende kohtadele üliväikesed, doktorante on suhteliselt vähe ja seega pole igas valdkonnas näha, kust võiks tulla need uued Eesti professorid, kellele teatepulk üle anda.
Suur on arenguruum on aga eri distsipliinide koostöös. Taanis on üks uue põlvkonna ettevõtluskool, mis eeldab igalt oma lõpetajalt, et too on kooli jooksul edukalt läbi teinud mõne tudengiprojekti, mis a) kaasab tudengitest osalisi kolmnurga tehnoloogia-disain-äri igast nurgast ja b) see tiim viib projekti ellu üle vähemalt 6 ajavööndi, s.t ainult Euroopa-sisesest ei piisa.
Ma kardan, et Eestis pole ühtegi IT-tudengit, kes seda lõpetades öelda saaks. Aga kui ta näiteks Skype’i tööle satub, siis visatakse ta täpselt sellisesse vette, kus tuleb hakkama saada sadade eri valdkondade esindajatega üle 16 ajavööndi ja mitmekümne eri rahvuse – oleks ju loogiline, et kool teda selleks ette valmistab?
Just sellises interdistsiplinaarse ja üle riigipiiride mõtleva lähenemise juurutamises näen ma ka Eesti ülikoolide IKT programme koondava IT Akadeemia algatuse suurt potentsiaali ja võimalust.
Finding The Best Medium Class Stereo Amplifier
Posted on | May 28, 2011 | No Comments
Apologies for the utter audio-gadget-geekiness of this post, but figured I have to share my notes. A Google search for “naim primare densen heed comparison” returned very little useful & recent material when I embarked on a search for a stereo amp recently. I hope the below somehow helps the next person trying.
Setting
For reasons beyond my control I was stuck at home for a few weeks in a state that allowed for little talk or work, but the more for light reading and writing and most of all – listening to music. While at it, I came to a conclusion that I’ve outgrown my good old Arcam AVR200, one of the most “musical” AV receivers in its class and at its time about 10 years ago. It’s the usual story of being too busy to sit down and just listen, and the limits of sleeping kids in the house set to the volume you used to operate on in college. My current setup has been quite fine for the quiet loungy backdrops for when you have some guests over, but just a bit too… bland when you really focus on it.
To make things even more complicated, my upgrade needs are somewhat “temporary” (as in those things that usually end up becoming permanent). After my awe over the sound of the Estelon speakers late last year (disclosure: followed by an investment into the company) it is only a question of time when I’ll make that upgrade step too, just not sure to which model yet. So for now I needed something to match my “temporary” Audes Maestro 145 floorstanders – a good price-performance bet any time, with capacity to fill the room (especially at the lower end), but definitely not the easiest to drive.
As a source I’ve effectively moved away from CD-s (played via Arcam DV88+ or even plain Sony BDP-S383) to Sonos ZP90 streaming either MP3 or ALAC files locally or live from Spotify or Rdio (when available). Everything is increasingly digital, with all the benefits and problems coming with it.
In this context, I set myself on quest to buy a good, musical stereo amp between 1000-2000 EUR, available in Estonia immediately for home audition or purchase.
Read more …
When Annoying Software is Great
Posted on | May 24, 2011 | 5 Comments
A quite a commonly agreed measure of goodness of user experience design is that software should get out of the way from what the user wants to achieve. We praise the removal of clutter and friction, admire the software makers that are brave enough to remove features instead of adding them. There is even an ISO standard that tries to define usability via effectiveness (task completion), efficiency (tasks in time) and user satisfaction.
More than 30 years (an eternity!) have passed since the first word processor and email clients, but there are still new ones entering the market iterating further to remove “unnecessary obstacles” and to get out of the way from the user’s intent: to write stuff and send it away. (See: WriteRoom or Sparrow).
Almost every time I ask a stranger about what they like or dislike about Skype software, it goes something like this:
Well, I like how I simply click on my relative’s name and then just click the green button and then she appears on the entire screen and we can just talk for an hour. It is so cool, it feels like being in the same room! Last week I was talking to my grandma, who has been living in Australia for….
See what just happened there? From the second sentence in giving feedback on software, the software dissapeared. What remained was just the human experience, the long distance relationships and stories about people. The holy grail of great software: becoming invisible, transparent for the user.
Software that Wants to Get in Your Way
Now, on this backdrop, it seems that there still is a counter-current of software that does get in the way of the user intentionally. Note that I do not mean just badly designed software here or some godawful legacy enterprise application built in COBOL and green-on-balck terminals, eating the productivity of whiteish-blue collar insurance clerks for breakfast, lunch and early dinner.
And generally, even technologically modern and well-designed corporate applications get some slack for getting in the way of their users. After all, every organization has the ways of working it wants it’s employees or partners to standardize on and behaviours it wants to bluntly enforce. It you need a certain doublechecking to happen for SOX compliance or your software development process requires every task to be estimated before entering a sprint backlog – it is probably one of the simplest and most effective ways to knowingly build a few obstacles, nags and annoyances into your enterprise software to enforce people to do the right thing. You know, a little extra checkbox here or mandatory form field there.
Where it gets interesting if you look at consumer internet software and mobile apps that contain those obstacles in their user experience. There is no enterprise lock-in after an expensive purchase, there is no hierarchy with top-down pressure to use those apps, there are tons of cheap of free competitors to turn to instead. And still, for some weird reason, users love some apps that distract them on their purest way of doing something. In most cases – probably despite of the nags. But in a few elite winners – for the obstacles.
Let me give you a few examples:
- (UPDATE) Twitter‘s notorious 140-character limit. From one side it is a limit derived from SMS (160char minus room for @username), but on the other hand there are no such external limits on messages transported over internet. SMS compatibility could have been addressed by other means, such as truncation and thus this global limit on messages was a design choice by Twitter that has influenced their DNA massively.
- Path, a mobile photo sharing app which artificially limits max number of your contacts to 50. In the rat race between social networks for who gets to grow their users’ connection graphs the fastest, it was an eyebrow-raising move, but their users love them for the purity of sharing pictures with just their closest ones. And the pressure to think twice before accepting someone in.
- GMail has a few tongue-in-cheek dialogues built in that, if you look from the UX purists’ point of way, get right smack in the way of doing the core thing people come to a mail client for, sending a message:
- GMail can actually stop you from sending a message at a weird hour unless you can solve a few math puzzles. So you can prove you’re sober enough before doing something you might regret later.
- They also stop you with a warning dialogue when attempting to send a message without an attachment… when your message text refers to having one.
Call for Discussion
Firstly, I would love if you can think of additional examples and submit them in the comments!
For example, one immense area to think about is advertising inside web apps (not just content sites) and in mobile apps. Slapping a banner with animated penguins in front of the “OK” button user intended to press is bad for the experience. On the other hand, Google’s search users are known to confess that text ads often enhance their experience to find what they’re looking for. What makes advertising part of the experience?
Trying to generalize it seems that while a piece of software that in its entirety gets in a way of the user attempting to achieve their goals can not be considered a good user experience, carefully picking the moments to get in the way of the user on the feature level can actually be a good thing.
How to recognize the those moments? From the few examples above one might say that the motivation is to avoid something negative, to protect the user from acting silly (aka being human) – like confirming every incoming contact request as their “friend” to avoid insulting anyone. And it would be likely that there can be cases of positive motivation too – helping a user to achieve more than they expected.
What do you think?
UPDATE: Realized this could be a Quora question too and added it. So wherever you’d like to chip in.
Product Manage Your Blog
Posted on | May 23, 2011 | No Comments
Andrew Chen is an entrepreneur and a blogger. He is one of the top minds in the industry for understanding and analyzing viral loops. After we met in that context in early 2010, I’ve been keeping an eye on his blog and reading some of his insightful essays from the archives.
Over the last few years since the raise of Twitter, blogging circles have been struggling. Significantly reduced friction of quick updates and link sharing have been taking many writers’ attention, time and dedication away from their previously regular blogs.
What I’ve found is that the perceived value of and expectations to a blog post have gone up. You can think of it as a hierarchy of “weight” when broadly & publicly communicating out, something in the lines of:
Re-tweet -> Tweet -> Facebook post (with comment action) -> Blog post -> A-list media
(Two side remarks here: 1) There branded list of particular communication services changes over time of course. For example Quora is currently entering this hierarchy aggressively, and far more right than Twitter/Facebook. 2) A-list media is on the end here not for its reach for broader audiences — you can actually do much better with blogging by reaching the right ones — but for their remaining editorial authority and the share of control you as an author have to hand over to them when submitting your work, i.e ou can’t change and improve later what’s “on paper”.)
Many people broadcasting online spend majority of their allocated time on the left of this scale now. You can (re)tweet 10 messages a minute and there is a lot of slack for the quality and integrity of what gets through. It is a cloud of ideas for the receivers to pick (and re-share) what they find valuable. The little time still remaining for the right side of the scale makes you pick meatier and meatier topics and weigh much more carefully what is worth the proper writing time. Have you noticed how the blog posts that matter move away from pure subjective opinion, improve in structure, display much more carefully gathered evidence, first hand experiences analyzed, research committed?
The heavy traffic on the left slowly fades to oblivion (hey, Memolane! 
) while the content you publish on the right remains more and more with you, to represent and define you. The conscious or subconscious pressure to take proper time and be great if you take time at all could be one of the reasons we see less blogging that we used to.
Texts define people. And the ones that remain on the first page of the Google results on your name search — ever more so.
Coming back to Andrew, he recently did two things that christallized my line of thought above and triggered me to write this post here:
- He surveyed his dedicated readers and found that a 2/3 landslide asked him to focus on high-quality long essays on a monthly interval given options for shorter and more frequent posts.
- He now published a full content roadmap for his 2011 blogging plans, focusing on the life challenges of early stage startups and clearly defining his goals and milestones for covering this area.
Especially I think the latter is a great idea – treat your personal content production as a product and manage it as such: define your audiences, pick the channels to market, consider the resources available, build a backlog of topics you will cover and keep that stack-ranked as life changes, iterate and see what works and what not.
Even doing it for yourself will help you structure your thoughts and manage time, which will lead to better content for your readers. By taking the next step and publishing these detailed plans, Andrew has of course achieved additional benefits: it is much easier for users to decide if they want to subscribe, and there is a high likelihood of early feedback to help him finetune his roadmap to match actual “market needs” and interest.
So all he has to do now is write, write, write for his alert audience. No pressure, Andrew.
PS: I’ve written two slightly related attempts to touch this topic in 2009:
- A Day in Twitter User’s Life
- Blogimispõhimõtted (in Estonian)
Intervjuu Kolmeraudsele
Posted on | May 1, 2011 | No Comments
Neljapäeva hilisõhtul, pärast kuidagi eriti pikaks veninud tööpäeva veetsin mõned tunnid telemajas. Seekordne TV3 Kolmeraudne oli üks veidramaid laiv-teleesinemisi nende 6-7 seas, mis mul elus ette on tulnud. Nimelt tabas Lasnamäed elektrikatkestus ja grimmitoa musta ekraaniga teleka eest tehti ohtraid telefonikõnesid, kus teemadeks genekad, UPSid, signaaliruutingud läbi Läti jne. Käigupealt muutus esinejate järjekord ja loobuti vaatajaküsimustest.
Aga Priit (@priitkoff) oli toimetanud päris head küsimused ja Mihkel (@mihkelraud) esitas neid endale omase intensiivsusega. Rääkisime e-riigist, IT-haridusest ja -ettevõtlusest ja õige pisut Skype’ist. Tulemus, kokku ca 19 minutit on näha siin:
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