Ex-Foursquare Designers Focus On Sunrise, Want You To Do More With Your Calendar Two of the team of eight designers at Foursquare have recently left to focus on Sunrise, a calendar product to do more with your calendar, with data from Google Calendar, Facebook, LinkedIn and others. They currently offer a daily email and are actively working on the next version. According to them, the calendar can be a very powerful tool and nobody has figured it out yet. “Calendar apps today are mostly broken as they don’t show you useful information, even though you spend a lot of time adding items every day,” UX designer and developer Pierre Valade said in an interview. “That’s why we first created a daily email combining all the information available on Google Calendar, Facebook, LinkedIn and Eventbrite, and presenting it in a compelling way,” he continued. It first started out as a side project while working at Foursquare. They focused a lot on the user experience and design, with Jeremy Le Van handling design and Valade development.
Business Model Canvas Optimized for Lean Startup | Lean Canvas 12 Tips To Building A Successful Startup Community Where You Live Editor’s Note: This is a guest post by Mark Suster (@msuster), a 2x entrepreneur, now VC at GRP Partners. He publishes more frequently over on his blog BothSidesoftheTable Recently I wrote a post arguing to make the definition of a startup include more than what Silicon Valley, fueled by Venture Capital return profiles, like to attach the word to. Today I’d like to talk about what startup communities outside of Silicon Valley look like, how they emerge and what makes them take hold. Most of what I think about startup communities came from mentorship by Brad Feld through hours of private discussion and debate. You can now take advantage of this wisdom directly as Brad has now published it for everybody in a fantastic new book, “Startup Communities.” Put simply, if you care about building a successful tech community outside Silicon Valley you should read this book. Here are the components that I believe are important for success in any startup tech community: 1. 2. And not that I blame them.
12 Tips for Early Customer Development Interviews (Revision 3) Note: also see my 11 Customer Development Anti-Patterns post. Each time I give a talk introducing people to qualitative “customer development” conversations, I try to revisit my points. A few months ago, I gave this talk to an entrepreneurship class at Columbia Business School, and once again the list and messages evolved. Below you can find my latest thinking (here is version 1 and 2) 1. Focus groups are a group-think, distraction-filled mess. 2. Have your assumptions and thus learning goals prioritized ahead of time. 3. Decide up front if your focus is going to be on learning a user’s behavior and mindset, and/or getting direct feedback or usability insights on a product or mockup. Put “behavior and mindset” first in your discussion flow. If you want to get feedback on a product, whether on paper or digital, do this after digging into behavior and mindset. 4. If you don’t do this, you might find yourself selling or convincing, or even hearing what you want to hear. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10.
The fundamentals of storytelling in UX | UserTesting Blog When was the last time you visited a website and really felt drawn into their story and brand? I mean, you really connected with what the company was all about, and their story led you to take action. For me, it was experiencing Medium for the first time. If you haven’t heard, Medium is a platform built by Evan Williams (@Ev), co-founder of Twitter, that allows anyone to read and write content with almost zero learning curve. Medium’s storytelling drew me in and caused me to become a regular contributor and consumer of their content. I now promote Medium pretty frequently, sharing the things I read and write. Why does storytelling matter in UX? Storytelling matters for a lot of reasons. Stories provide clarity and memorability. Credit: Nielsen Norman Group Stories capture attention. In fact, let me tell you a story: I recently read the book by Tony Robbins called Money: Master the Game. The fundamentals of storytelling in UX I hope by now I’ve convinced you of the importance of storytelling.
On Sale At Last: Twine, Your Gateway To The Internet Of Things A year ago, two MIT Media Lab graduates raised half a million dollars on Kickstarter to create Twine, a cigarette-pack-sized chunk of Internet magic that promised to turn any object in your home into a web-connected, interactive "smart product." Want your basement pipes to send you a text message when they’re in danger of freezing up, or your garage door to ping you if you forget to close it? No problem: With Twine, building your own personal "Internet of things" is supposed to be easier than programming a VCR. And now that the product is available for purchase, it looks like creators John Kestner and David Carr have very nearly delivered on that ambitious promise. How do you get a non-hacker to even understand a device like Twine? With product design that would make Steve Jobs proud. But Twine is also intriguingly mysterious: Flip the rubbery, featureless box over on its back and two instructions reveal themselves: "Place this side up," and "go to Twinesetup.com."
1st Revenue – Business Model Generation tool1st Revenue - Business Model Generation tool - Business Model Generation tool for getting to your first revenue Start-Up Tool Kit - Term Sheet Creator - Start-Up Forms Library - TOTAL ACCESS Events Orrick's Emerging Companies Group is a leading advisor to start-ups, with more than 1,200 emerging company clients in the United States, Europe and Asia. The group features lawyers in nine offices around the globe, including more than 100 lawyers in our Silicon Valley office. Orrick's Start-Up Tool Kit is a comprehensive set of resources designed to aid start-ups and their founders on the journey from the garage to the global marketplace. Use our Start-Up Tool Kit to memorialize agreements with cofounders or potential investors, understand the terms and terminology of key legal documents, and network and learn business strategy and the latest industry news. Term Sheet Creator Create drafts of start-up and venture financing documents ranging from your company's founding to a preferred stock financing. Start-Up Forms Library Use this reference source for the key legal documents you will need to start and grow your company. TOTAL ACCESS Event Series
Sketching across the design process Brain Games & Brain Training - Lumosity