The enabling features aren’t obvious and evident, because the key was getting rid of stuff.
– Jonathan Ive, on designing the iPod [Wired]
Getting Rid of Stuff
Aug 12 2010
Real Relationships Drive Contribution →
The idea is that different types of online social relationships drive different levels of engagement. Whereas getting a lot of people to watch your youtube videos will encourage you to post more, you’re likely to get even a greater productivity boost if a lot of your actual friends favorite or comment on your videos.
Luke Wroblewski leaves it with a guess on why this is often the case:
So actual friends (real relationships) are more likely to encourage contribution. Perhaps we can blame this on the 0-1-2 effect which states that the probability of joining an activity when two friends have done it is significantly more than twice the probability of doing it when only one has done so.
Nov 10 2009
Memory is More Important Than Actuality →
Don Norman reminds us how humans evaluate and interpret experiences before, during and after they’ve occurred:
Rosy projection: “the tendency for people to anticipate events as more favorable and positive than they describe the experience at the time of its occurrence”;
Dampening: “the tendency for people to minimize the favorability or pleasure of events they are currently experiencing”;
Rosy Retrospection: the tendency for people to remember and recollect events they experience more fondly and positively than they evaluated them to be at the time of their occurrence.”
The insights are directly applicable to design:
Design for memory. Exploit it. What is the most important part of an experience? Psychologists emphasize what they call the primacy and recency effects, with recency being the most important. In other words, what is most important? The ending. What is next most important? The start. So make sure the beginning and the end are wonderful… Accent the positive and it will overwhelm the memory for the negative.
Aug 2 2009
Anatomy of a Feature →
If you’ve ever implemented or designed a feature, this account of the process will likely resonate with you. What on the surface looks like a simple tweak easily snowballs into an avalanche of repercussions. My favorite quip comes in the end:
Applying the 80/20 rule means you will get feature requests from the 20.
Aug 1 2009
Reid Hoffman on Launching
If you’re not embarrassed – in the consumer internet – by the first version of the product you launched, you’ve launched too late.
Jun 11 2009