"Keep your eye on the donut more so than the hole...People eat at a particular restaurant 'cause it tastes good never mind the ingredients"

-My dad

The following is last nights dialogue during Betsy's visit to Cali

(download)

Click here to download:

betsyweber-reminded-me-how-to-build-community-uxJErirvJEEpcoslFoEv.zip (703 KB)

Brett=over energized startup fella

Bets=master uguay community builder 

Brett: "Bets, we're about to re-launch...how do I market the product to lots of people?"

Bets: "Hm, I think you have it flipped" 

Brett: "Flipped?" 

Bets: "Well, I think you should just focus on the Mavens. Spend your time finding the 20 or so people who "get it" and figure out how you can help them and make their lives easier"

Brett: "That makes sense" 

I wanted to share this dialogue because my brain has strayed a bit, too much marketing talk. Back to community building and problem solving!

*This isn't verbatim

Cool. Amy's stuff

Two weeks ago I made a claim I couldnt deliver on to a user and was wrong. I believe in transparency and doing the right thing, here's what I wrote...still waiting to hear back:

Some good news and some bad news. I know this isn't exactly what we planned so it's a good thing you guy's aren't starting school for a few months. 

After talking to many high school teachers, we realized that the old remind101 wasn't really providing direct value to the teachers. We've made the decision to overhaul the old remind101 to enhance it's functionality to cater to teachers.

Since moving to Palo Alto we've learned a lot (obviously you can see that based on my previous two posts). 

So much so, that we think it's necessary to revamp the entire web application, both from a UX perspective and technical standpoint. We've been prepping the last few weeks to make the transition and we should go live again in late July. We're planning on using Launchrock to spread the word while we're closed...I did my best to design the landing page, needless to say I'm working on it. Any good designers that want to lend a few tips I'm all ears! 

Read about it here if you'd like

(download)

Click here to download:

it-took-me-a-year-to-figure-3-simple-things-out-CauntpDwvIgnCfDuFcCb.zip (4.68 MB)

I was scrolling through the press we've received for remind101 and came across the first piece of media that picked up on us from the State News. I was on a 2 week camping trip with Jon & Glenn, about to go on the most ridiculous Mountain Biking excursion in Moab Utah I've ever done (16 Miles, Kona full suspension...a thing of beauty). 

My eyes widened as I read the article...holy cow, is this real? #cool. 

As I sit here a year later and reminisce about what we've went through with remind101 I realized 3 very simple things that my lack of experience and quite honestly, pride stopped me from doing.

1.     Make your product simple

2.     Talk to users 

3.     Solve a problem 

From the look on our  home page design, you'd think it was simple. However, when you got in the system users were often confused. This is an easy fix if I would have talked to users.  But we didn’t. I didn't take enough time to actually sit down and watch users go through the site. I wrote about my first lessons in California last week on how I've been doing user testing. It's not rocket science and I've read all the blogs that say how to do it, but I didn’t. Of course the most important lessons is to solve a problem. We've really had to buckle down and ask ourselves who's problem are we really solving. Turns out, we were making MORE work that solving a problem and providing value to our users. 

The good news is, I learned and we're fixing the issues. We've done a hefty amount of user testing and are honing in on the real problem we're solving. If you are about to start a company, don't make the same mistake I did and follow 123! 

I read a lot of blogs about UI, usability testing & talking to customers. I admit that we haven't been good at it, but in the last two days we've learned a ton. Here's how we set it up:

1. Have users share their screen via Skype
2. They have 2 objectives: signup & add a course
3. There's no right or wrong answer
4. As you fill in the fields and navigate through the site, talk out loud (i.e, "I'm typing my name in, now I'm going to search for a course")

Things I thought were easy and intuitive actually make no sense. What's more interesting is that each user had similiar problems on certain pages. 

I just wrote a post on remind101's blog about a pilot we ran with a local high school. The pilot was by no means perfect. In the post, there are real screen shot's of user feedback. Some good. Some bad. Some great. You may ask, why would you actually tell the public of your imperfections, are you crazy? Well, I have a very strong belief in being honest & transparent. We know remind101 isn't perfect and we're constantly working to make it better.

I'd much rather admit our imperfections and talk about what we are doing/have done to enhance the system. I think this builds trust with users & customers. It allows for more flexibility when there is a bug or the system doesn't work correctly. My hope, is that they know I'm here to answer any questions and help fix the problem. 

This post is a draft from mid Februray 

Sometimes life doesn't explain why things happen. This morning was pretty frustrating. We just fixed a bug and I thought everything was going just dandy. Then, I got a email from a user asking why their text message looks so odd. Ding ding ding!  

I had a nice lunch to talk biz with a fellower MSUer and startup fanatic John. Then, I went to Starbucks to grab coffee and try to do some work. My usual 3 seats were taken, I almost left. But the seat by the door was open so I figured, what the hell. I sat down and started working on an email. Then, a women walked in, and politely asked if she could share the outlet I was using. Of course, I said. 

Theres some people that, when you meet them you just click. You vibe really well. I don't know why, but I could tell there was something really cool about this women. So we started chatting about this & that, the local restaurant down the street, her sons schooling experieince, what I'm doing with remind101 etc...etc... 

One thing led to another and we started talking about her life experiences. She had just finished her final round of chemo from breast cancer. The funny thing is, she had so much exciting, warm energy you would have never guessed it. After some conversation (I felt like we've been friends for years at this point btw) I asked her if she was scared. "No, not so much actually" What scares me is that I have a 12 year old and the Dr.s say I have 3-5 years to live. So, they aren't joking when they say "live every moment like it's your last". 

At this point she started tearing up a bit and it was tough for me not to as well. See, it's easy to watch the movies, see the videos and hear stories and I cant even say it was someone I'm close to cause we just met 30 min ago! 

And to think I was frustrated with a bug fix earlier in the day.