Criticism and Two Way Streets A post by Jason Fried titled “Give it 5 minutes” reminded me of a great technique I learned about from Bill Buxton. Bill is a Principal Researcher in Microsoft where his main role focuses on designing a company that permits great design to happen. As many have learned to their peril, it’s not simply a case of just dumping talent in a room full of Ikea furniture. In large companies you have to design the process that creates design. One key idea Bill advocates is an emphasis on exploring the solution space before iterating on a solution. However having great designers each producing great solutions to a shared problem can cause conflict, if not managed correctly… Exploring the Solution Space Like Apple, Microsoft encourages their designers to create many different solutions to any given design problem. When Does Your Solution Suck? Every solution is great in some circumstances and terrible in others. Less Time Arguing, More Time Designing
Etherpad I Think I Kanban | Technitai (Agile Game Design) In this article we’ll create a basic Kanban board that can be used for game design or just about any other kind of project. But first… What is Kanban? Kanban is a bit of a complex term. It is both an approach to development, in our case, game development, and it is also literally means “visual card” in japanese. A Kanban board is a visual representation of your design workflow that uses cards or stickies to represent individual features (and sometimes tasks) to be completed. Our basic board looks a lot like a classic to-do list but there are two distinct features that set Kanban apart and make it tick; the “In Work” column and its accompanying Work In Progress (WIP) limit. Creating and Using a Kanban Board Step 1: Create Your Own Board Go ahead and create your own board. Step 2: Add Items To Your Board With board construction wrapped up, prime the system by adding items to the “To Do” column. But First We Gotta Talk (About Work In Progress Limits) Why are WIP limits important? Whoa, wait?
Screw the Power Users I designed HomeSite and TopStyle for power users. Only power users would want to edit HTML & CSS by hand, so I made sure to cater to them. Those products were filled with features and tool buttons, and their settings dialogs contained dozens of geeky options. Customers liked them that way. I liked them that way, too. But then I made FeedDemon. At first I built FeedDemon as though my customers were geeks like me, since that was what I was used to. So with each new version I tried to simplify the user interface, and dropped features & options that complicated the product. I’d come out with new versions that I thought dramatically improved the product, only to find my forums filled with complaints from power users who wanted the return of some obscure option, or were upset that I wasn't adding the geeky features they wanted. Sales went up, but positive feedback went down. Sure, if you're building a product for power users, make sure to cater to them.
Fuck Off As A Service (FOAAS) Reproducing Bugs | Kualitee There is no force on earth that can stop a bug coming into existence. Software applications and systems are built by humans and that makes them prone to flaws. We simply cannot guarantee a 100% bug free software in any case whatsoever. Testers within their roles need to understand this delicate situation. As bugs are a threat to the value of the product and finding them before going into customer’s hand is something very challenging, it is also a pressure factor. During these time crunch situations, often time testers come across bugs which they cannot reproduce, but later on the same bug is reported by the client. Here is how testers can manage their activities to reproduce those bugs and prevent dissatisfaction happening at the client side. Map the Application Without map a traveler cannot move to her destination. Start with the menus, then work the business flows. Mapping an application also help in gaining an overall domain awareness for any application. Make notes Don’t be random
What Drives Consumer Adoption Of New Technologies? I'm participating in a panel discussion this morning during the offsite of a major media company. They sent me a list of questions in preparation of the event. One of the questions was the title of this post; "What drives consumer adoption of new technologies?". It's an interesting question and one I've never tried to answer directly in writing. But it's also a question we attempt to answer every day in our firm as we evaluate thousands of new startups every year. Let's take ten of the most popular new consumer technology products in recent years (with a couple of our portfolio companies in the mix): iPhone, Facebook, Wii, Hulu, FlipCam, Rock Band, Mafia Wars, Blogger, Pandora, and Twitter and let's try to describe in one sentence or less why they broke out (feel free to debate the reasons they broke out in the comments): In most of these cases, the breakthrough product or service delivered a new experience to consumers that they had never had before.
Online content professional translation platform - Fliplingo 2012 Auditing the Incident and Problem Management Process The day-to-day running of IT operations generates many user queries and problems that could impact the efficient operation of IT systems and applications if they are not addressed. Incident and problem management often is overlooked from an IT audit perspective because it lacks the appeal of development or specificity of disaster recovery. But without a good understanding of the topic and an audit focus on the process, certain business operations can go off the rails quickly. It is important for internal auditors to understand the difference between an incident and problem: The overall objective of both the incident and problem management process is to ensure that IT systems are running smoothly and supporting business operations. Incident Management COBIT identifies process steps covering the service desk, registration of customer queries, incident escalation and closure, and reporting and trend analysis. Service Desk The service desk is the IT department's face to the business.
Rarely say yes to feature requests - Inside Intercom Here’s a simple set of Yes/No questions that you can quickly answer before you add another item to your product roadmap. Saying yes to a feature request – whether it’s a to an existing customer, a product enquiry, a teammate, or a manager – is immediately rewarding. It’s an unspoken transaction where you barter long term product focus in exchange for short term satisfaction. Buying short term joy for the cost of long term pain is the human condition. Previously we’ve written about how product strategy means saying no, but a list of reasons to reject a feature isn’t as immediately useful as a test that any new feature must pass. Lots of our readers made that exact point to us too: So here’s a list of questions your new feature must score straight yes’s on. More important than any metric, customer request, or sales target is your vision. Product decisions based on vision alone sometimes seem irrational, because they’re tough decisions. Beware the “fre-cently” bias.
Online Service Reviews and Comparisons | Serchen Technology at MSU - MSU IT Council | Michigan State University Michigan State’s Information Technology Council (ITC) serves as a primary IT advisory body to senior university leaders integrating IT leadership, planning, and resource allocation to align the decision‐making process across Michigan State University. Read regular updates from IT Council meetings. Updates are intended to keep the MSU community informed about topics being tackled, progress made, and recommendations to MSU administration. Purpose The IT Council provides recommendations regarding strategies, priorities, policies, and standards for technology and campus computing to the senior leadership of the university. The intent is to align its work with the university’s information technology goals, practices, policies, and investments effectively and efficiently to serve the mission of Michigan State University. The IT Council will provide leadership and oversight regarding: Structure Board A board consisting of seven people will govern the IT Council. Board Leadership Positions
Designing products for single and multiplayer modes The first million people who bought VCRs bought them before there were any movies available to watch on them. They just wanted to “time shift” TV shows – what we use DVRs for today. Once there were millions of VCR owners it became worthwhile for Hollywood to start selling and renting movies to watch on them. I was talking to my friend Zach Klein recently who referred to products as having single player and multiplayer modes. Many products that we think of as strictly multiplayer also have single player modes. * Products with so-called networks effects get more valuable when more people use them.