The UX Fund: Investing $50,000 in 10 companies, 10 years later

The UX Fund: Investing $50,000 in 10 companies, 10 years later – Medium

The 10 year anniversary of the inception of the UX Fund was this month. I took some time and began to look back in a little more detail. A lot has happened in the last decade in the design industry.

It was FASCINATING for me to look back at this. I told a friend as I was writing it: “Holy shit, this was a golden year for design. Apple’s iPhone, Google Maps, Docs, Gmail… streaming fucking Netflix… they all came out then!!!”

These are still some of the most influential and successful products and services of our generation.

The highlights of the holdings below show where these companies were that year, how we felt about them at the time, and how that investment would have played out had we really played the long game and kept the fund for a decade.

1) Netflix

In 2006, Netflix was still heavily focused on the DVD business. They found themselves in a price war with Blockbuster. It appeared as if they’d chosen to position themselves as a commodity and just lower their prices. It translated to a pretty poor year for them in the markets. In my look back I found something we glanced over that turned out to be a watershed moment for the company. In January of 2007, Netflix announced that they’d be offering a streaming service to subscribers. We barely mentioned this in our recap. At 1,000 films, the streaming launch library was small, and it meant you didn’t have the movie locally. in 2007, having a local, offline digital copy of movies was more of the norm. This just seemed like a half-assed response to Apple and Amazon — two companies that had made much bigger strides in downloadable movies and the markets felt the same.

Another interesting highlight was the Netflix Prize. They offered a $1,000,000 prize to the first developer of a recommendation algorithm that could beat its existing algorithm.

So in 2006/07, Netflix seemed paralyzed. It felt as if they didn’t have much of a response to downloadable movies—but that clearly wasn’t the case. They were taking it seriously, it was just really difficult to see. So much so for us that when we wrote the wrap-up post, we stated that Netflix was one of the stocks we said we would have sold if we allowed ourselves to rebalance the portfolio. While that may have made sense over a one year hold, this would have been the biggest regret of the bunch over a decade. That $5,000 investment in 2006 would now be worth over $150,000.

NFLX Profit (Loss)
Original Investment: $5,000
1 Year: -4.8% | ($239)
10 Year: 3064.7% | $152,365

2) RIM (Blackberry)

This is the inverse of the Netflix story. Blackberry, or RIM as it was referred to at the time, was our big winner in ’06-’07. It more than doubled in value over that year. A decade later, it’s lost nearly all of its value.

In the early-to-mid-2000s, RIM dominated the corporate world. That year, they had started to release a few consumer focused handsets like the Blackberry Pearl. The Pearl had a unique modified QWERTY keyboard layout on a 4-row, 5-column keypad, with a proprietary predictive input algorithm called SureType. I switched to it from my Palm Treo and tried convincing myself it was good for a few months (it wasn’t). Thankfully, the iPhone came out (more on that later).

Also that year, RIM announced they’d be bringing their product to China and were coming to the market with a solution aimed at small to medium sized businesses. Despite Apple’s news of the iPhone, RIM continued to be a market leader in their category. The next decade would prove just how important the consumer market would be — and RIM just chose never to focus there.

BBRY Profit (Loss)
Original Investment: $5,000
1 Year: 208% | $10,387
10 Year: -93.9% | -$4,697

3) Jet Blue

This was our biggest one year loss. This may seem like a strange stock for the portfolio, but if you were traveling back then, this company was ahead of the times.

We were doing some product design work for various airlines at the time. As a result, we became pretty familiar with the state of the industry. Jet Blue had rethought the so much of the experience of air travel, including their website, which was best in class. That said, their performance that year was atrocious thanks to things like Valentine’s Day 2007. Over a period of 2 days they canceled nearly 250 flights. Some of these flights were on the runway for nearly 8 hours. The weather was a factor, but it wasn’t the real problem. JetBlue got by in the past with sub-standard communication systems, limited staff and experience. When a crisis of this magnitude arose they just didn’t have the systems, people or experience to properly deal with it — and though they’re actually up 39% in the long run, they definitely paid the price over that year.

JBLU Profit (Loss)
Original Investment: $5,000
1 Year: -29.4% | ($1,476)
10 Year: 39.1% | $1,964

4) Google

Perhaps an obvious choice in retrospect, but Google wasn’t top of mind when you thought about companies that valued design—they valued engineering. However, when you point great engineers at huge, real problems what comes out the other end are some great experiences—even if the design of the pixels wasn’t perfect.

That year, Google introduced new search features, a new homepage, and continued to develop out more applications launching them in their Labs section. Labs created some of the best Web applications of the time, including Gmail, which was fully available to the public in 2007. Google Maps which launch in 2006 and Google Docs. A decade later, these applications are still staples in many people’s lives.

Google also made their share of purchases that year, including DoubleClick, Feedburner and of course, YouTube.

GOOG Profit (Loss)
Original Investment: $5,000
1 Year: 47% | $2,248
10 Year: 228.3% | $10,912

5) Apple

The poster child of a company that values design. An easy pick. The only interesting story here, aside from how well this stock did (and has done since), is the fact that the iPhone came out during this time. I’m going to quote my wrap-up of owning Apple stock from Nov. ’06 — Nov ’07:

Perhaps this stock was an obvious choice. Apple has always been at the forefront of creating great experiences that bridge hardware and software. During our hold, Apple released new iPods, iMacs and the iPhone. They redesigned their Web site as well as their dotmac services. Recently, they launched a new OS (Leopard). Leopard launched late due to Apple pulling QA resources onto the iPhone. Early usage of Leopard has revealed quite a few bugs and oddities that need to be rectified, likely as a result of the on-again, off-again QA of it. Apple will need to be careful in the coming year not to neglect it’s core offering — the OS. — Me, in 2007.

Reading this made me remember that we didn’t really know just how transformational the iPhone would be. I only mention its release after iPods and iMacs, and I talk about Leopard bugs being a result of Apple putting all hands on deck for iPhone.

AAPL Profit (Loss)
Original Investment: $5,000
1 Year: 131.8% | $6,608
10 Year: 882.9% | $44,263

from Sidebar http://sidebar.io/out?url=https%3A%2F%2Fmedium.com%2Fhabit-of-introspection%2Fthe-ux-fund-investing-50-000-in-10-companies-10-years-later-6fc65bd35e7a%23.yskd8ctao

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Why a Chatbot was the hardest thing I’ve ever designed, Part 1

I’ve been reading about chatbots since the beginning of the year and have been building for the past several months. In that time I’ve built, or helped build, 5 bots and have connected with other teams building around the world to trade insights.

I’ve also been blessed to be surrounded by the world class talent that builds for R/GA, along with the incredible minds at Google. There’s no doubt the group of creators I’m surrounded with every day has helped immensely.

But no matter how many smart people I talk to or how much reading I do, there’s nothing that can supplement building, testing, failing, and iterating until the problem is solved.

I hope this series will help accelerate your process, but at the end of the day I really hope it helps you get to building. And if you have questions, please feel free to reach out!

The Power of Chatbots

The incredible potential of chatbots lies in the ability to individually and contextually communicate one-to-many.

That’s a loaded sentence. What does it mean? Let’s break it down.

One-to-Many Communication

There are plenty of tools out there that allow us to communicate one-to-many at this point in history. These tools, including everything from basic mailers to email marketing to social media platforms, make it easy to reach a large audience and target groups all at the same. But, for the most part, these tools do not allow us to communicate with people on an individual level.

Many of these tools have become ubiquitous to the point that they’ve become white noise in our life. They’re embedded with what most people will tell you are ‘spammy’ marketing messages. They don’t often bring meaningful value anymore and usually frustrate people more than anything. We don’t really interact with these messages, we generally trash them.

One-to-many communication tools are still an option, but they’re becoming obsolete more and more every day.

Individual Communication

Reaching mass amounts of people at the individual level is something that hasn’t been around for very long. The most popular way to do so right now is through cookies or programmatic advertising but, ultimately, reaching the individual in a meaningful way takes a lot of work and analytic knowhow if you want to do it right.

The benefit of individual communication tools is that the value of the message is much greater. The message people receive isn’t a blanket message put to blast out to millions of people, regardless of who they are. The message is more specific and, while it may still end up reaching millions, it feels much more like the message was made for the recipient.

The downfall of these tools is that they typically come in the form of a banner ad or email that was sent based on a site the user had visited or an item the user had recently viewed/purchased. This sounds great to a business, but it sounds (and feels) creepy to the person receiving the message.

Contextual Communication

We do this every day when we talk to someone. It’s unconscious behavior for most people.

When someone asks you “Should I bring a jacket?” you don’t ask them what day they were thinking about bringing a jacket, you just know that they’re asking if they should bring a jacket right now. You unconsciously (or maybe consciously, by checking your weather app) recognize the weather and give your best response based on the conversation you’re having and your current environment.

I believe contextual communication (a form of dynamic intelligence) is what will make chatbots the revolutionary technology everyone is promising.

What contextual communication will allow us to do is create messaging and interactions similar to what people experience through individual communication channels like programmatic advertising. However, instead of a message blast sent based on analytics, the communication will occur in the context of a conversation. By doing this in the context of a conversation, it doesn’t feel so weird and creepy to get such a specific message.

Right now contextually communicating with bots isn’t something that’s reasonable to ask across the board but there are a few that are doing it well, and I believe this type of interaction will be the standard in the future.

Why Chatbots are Disrupting UX

Aside from the reasoning we just walked through, there’s also the fact that humans are innately wired to have conversations. It’s part of our daily lives, and we rely on our devices to help us communicate every day.

We’ve been selling goods, learning new skills, and building relationships through conversation for millenniums. Messaging apps just happen to be the newest and most popular way to do it right now.

Statistics from Buffer and Business Insider

It’s only natural that we begin to see businesses build where their users are active — messaging platforms — instead of trying to create and onboard users to new ecosystems they’ve created. Not only is it easier and more cost effective, it’s also a more natural form of communication.

What this means for you

It’s easier to continue a conversation than it is to start a new one. It’s time to stop wasting money trying to pull people into your ecosystem and instead push your content where your users are already active.

“Over 2.5 billion people have at least one messaging app installed. Within a couple of years that will reach 3.6 billion, about half of humanity.” — The Economist

Use messaging apps to build relationships with your audience in a way that feels organic and natural.

Next in this Series

While chatbots are still in their infancy in terms of creative potential, it’s still a very exciting time for creatives trying to understand the best way to use this new technology and how to build the best bot possible.

This first article was a quick read, written to prime you on the current state of chatbots. But moving forward we’ll be getting into the meat of building great chatbots.

Each article in this series will be able to stand on it’s own, but together the series will represent a comprehensive dive into the technology and set you up for success as we move forward in the space!

The upcoming articles in this series will cover:

Part 2: Signifiers and Affordances within Chatbots

Although the elements are fairly standardized, there are a variety of platforms and each has it’s own unique set of capabilities. But where should you start and what should you be aware of?

This article will help you understand the technology at it’s fundamental core so you can easily decide between the available tools based on what you need to get done.

Part 3: How, when and why to personify your bot

A conversation is highly emotional and if we don’t meet the needs of our users we’ll never keep them coming back, no matter how effective our product is.

This one will help you learn about the conversational issues involved with personifying your bot and help you decide how to visually personify your bot to match.

Part 4: Writing for a chatbot

Writing is something we’ve all been doing since kindergarten. But writing for a chatbot is so much different than what they’ve taught you in school.

This article will teach you best practices when it comes to writing for your chatbot.

Part 5: What tools you can use to start building today

There are a variety of tools out there that will allow you to start building a bot today with very little effort, but how do you choose which one is best for you and your needs?

We’ll talk about the best products on the market and what each of them is good for.

In the Book

If you like what you’re reading but want more bot knowledge that will put you far ahead of everyone else, I’m also writing an eBook that will cover everything from this series in greater depth, plus take a deep dive into:

1. Psycholinguistics (the Psychology of Language) and how to guide a conversation

Writing for your chatbot is difficult enough, but what do you need to know to prepare for this new age of anticipatory design? How do you put bumpers on an experience that is invisible until it’s not?

We’ll dive into how to design a conversation that allows freedom for your users while still guiding them where you want them to be

2. How to structure, set up, and analyze bot analytics

Analytics for bots is like nothing you’ve ever seen before. We’ll dive into best practices of structuring these analytic triggers and how to interpret the feedback that is received.

3. How I believe the technology will evolve in the future and how you can put yourself ahead of the curve

Conversational interfaces are the future. There’s no doubt about that. But how will they manifest themselves once we have billions of data points and our understanding of language advances to extraordinary levels?

We’ll take a dive into the future of conversational interfaces and how you can prepare for what’s going to come.

If you like what I’ve written so far, you should consider signing up for the email waitlist — The book will be even better, I promise. And if you liked this article, please❤️ it so other people stumble upon it as well!!

from uxdesign.cc – User Experience Design – Medium https://uxdesign.cc/why-a-chatbot-was-the-hardest-thing-ive-ever-designed-part-1-7b3af745a4e5?source=rss—-138adf9c44c—4

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Your product is already obsolete

Part One

The relentless march of technological improvement means that by their very nature technology businesses fail.

That’s why as founders, product people, marketer – or whatever our role is – we need to be acutely aware of all the different technological shifts happening in the industry and consistently ask ourselves if and how these things actually affect us? This is not just some dry strategic exercise. If you don’t do it your business could die an awful lot quicker than you expect.

I delivered a version of this post as a talk on the 2016 Inside Intercom world tour. Watch part one above, and check back soon for part two.

It is the nature of our industry, it is the nature of technology, that every product dies. That’s a very morbid thought, but if you don’t believe me on that, page me, or fax me, or write me up something on your typewriter. They were all epic businesses once upon a time, but they are no more.

Death is on my mind for a lot of reasons. It is the nature of every technology to die. It is the nature, therefore, of a lot of technology businesses to die, which leaves you with an eternal question – how can we stay alive?

I wasn’t always so morbid. When myself and my cofounders Eoghan, David and Ciaran signed Intercom’s incorporation papers in San Francisco in 2011, we were pretty optimistic back then. Intercom has been something of a roller coaster. But a very good roller coaster – real Six Flags stuff.

Above is a graph of one of our metrics – homepage traffic. There’s been a few different phases at Intercom, and the ones I can roughly identify are the phase when the product is being born, the phase where we had to then go and grow the product, and lastly the phase where we have to survive. The latter is where we’re thinking: “Okay, we’ve made something. How do we stay relevant in technological cycle after cycle after cycle?”

Put another way, we have to make it work, we have to make it grow, and then we have to keep it relevant. We have to give folks a reason why they should continue to use Intercom. Today we have more than 15,000 customers, tens of millions of dollars in revenue, and $116 million raised. All of these things should be cause for celebration, but the reality is we’ve never felt more vulnerable. We spent so long hoping something could come along and exist, that when it began to exist we were like, “Holy shit, what if it goes away?”

I get that sense in part because I’ve put a seventh of my life into Intercom (which makes me 35, I’ll save you the math). That’s a significant chunk of time to work on anything, and of course the idea that it might one day no longer be around is terrifying.

The weird things is, this isn’t what we were sold – when we read all the books about startups, and heard how it’s supposed to work. I was always thought the deal with startups was like The Shawshank Redemption. You crawl through 100 yards of shit, and you ’re free. But what it actually is more like is you crawl through 100 yards of shit, and then your options are, much like Andy Dufresne said, “Get busy living or get busy dying.” How do you stay relevant? How do you stay alive?

Why only the paranoid survive

When you look at all the literature, all the advice, all the blog posts, the articles, the podcasts, the conference talks, it’s all about creating and starting. Because everyone wants to do that, that’s what people write about. At Intercom we’ve added our own content and talks to that along the way. But in reality none of this matters if you’re ignoring existential threats. If there’s some reason, some ticking bomb or a train coming down the tracks, and you don’t care because you’re too busy navel-gazing, you’re going to be in trouble. On that note, I really like this quote from Andy Grove, when he says, “Any degree of success will breed complacency. Any degree of complacency will breed failure. Therefore only the paranoid survive.”

I recently shared these thoughts with a friend who is also a startup founder. The conversation went something like this:

Friend: “Well the thing you have to realize is that the present is the past.”
Me: “I don’t do drugs, so you know …”
Friend: “No no no, listen to me, listen to me. Your product’s already obsolete.”
Me: “What do you mean by that? People like it.”
Friend: “Well, the thing is, people like what’s out there today, but what’s out there today is actually already history. It’s been documented, there are “changes” pages updated, but it’s live, it’s now a part of history. The thing you should be worrying about is that there’s probably going to be a newer, faster, quicker way for your customers to achieve what they want to do in this world, and that it doesn’t involve you.”
Me: “Ooh, that kind of stung.”

The way he described it to me, it’ll feel like you’re on solid ground and everything’s going great. You’ll feel a couple of trembles here, and a competitor there, and a couple of different shifts. But you’ll be saying, “We got this, we got this, we’re good at product.” At some point you realize something’s actually changing, so you start trying to react. But by the time you actually realize it you’re too late. The ground has been torn out from under you, and the worst part is you don’t feel it. It’s purely asymptomatic. If you don’t believe that it can happen, even when times are good, let me put it to you this way: Wasn’t 2007 a great year to be a satnav manufacturer?

Things could not have been better. We were all buying them and putting them in our cars, and they were shit devices, but we didn’t care. Then, somewhere in the Moscone Center in San Francisco, someone waves a new thing around, and poof…business no more.

Both Garmin and Tom Tom have not restored their former value since the introduction of the iPhone – at best they’re a sixth of their peak. It’s a fun version of history to presume they were all literally asleep at the cash register, totally ignoring all these new threats. The reality is I’m sure they watched the keynote and panicked. I’m sure they ran straight to their whiteboards. They probably pulled the product team in on weekends. I’m sure they fired up JIRA, and when it loaded up they’ said, “All right, let’s go and start writing some tickets.” But customers don’t wait around while you’re writing up JIRA tickets. The world will move on, with or without you.

Another simple example: In the graph below, the light-green line represents a product called SMS. Aside from exorbitant roaming charges, SMS was a phenomenal technology. SMS is the only way telcos make money. It’s like liquid profit.

Then 30 engineers got together and built a different thing called WhatsApp. Within the space of two years they’d basically obliterated the majority of the growth in the most profitable part of telcos. Now, it’s important to say I am talking about growth here, because businesses can’t survive on stagnation. They need to grow, because ultimately, on a long enough time frame, all their customers will die, so you do need new customers. You can’t flatline as a business. Flatline actually means you’re going down.

The way this plays out typically is a new threat emerges and the incumbent typically says, “Oh yawn, someone started a product, who cares?” Eventually WhatsApp puts out a press release saying, “We’ve just got our 100,000th user,” and the telcos are like, “Hahaha, 100,000 users, what a joke.”

Then at some point WhatsApp puts out a press release saying, “We have our 100 millionth user,” and the telcos think, “Oh.” Then by the time they decide to fight it is literally already a done deal, and there’s no turning back. If that framing sounds familiar to you, it’s because it’s the words of Gandhi, who’s obviously got a lot of great quotes and isn’t necessarily a product manager. One of the points he made was this idea that, “At first you’ll ignore them. Then you’ll laugh at them. Then you’ll fight them, and then they will win.” That tends to be people’s attitudes towards new products.

Know your place in the technology constellation

If you want to see the best example of what it means to first laugh at something, a new threat, I really like Steve Ballmer’s reaction to the iPhone.

If all that the mobile revolution, the new Android and iOS things, did was kill Windows Phone, that’d be fine. Windows Phone wasn’t a huge thing for Microsoft, it was a part of their Windows Everywhere strategy. But mobile didn’t actually kill Windows Phone. It attacked the whole entire desktop concept, which scares the hell out of Microsoft because that was their core.

It wasn’t obvious that a phone could be really, really bad news for a desktop operating system, but it turned out to be. The realization here is best summed up for me by this quote from Steve Sinofsky, who is ex-Microsoft and is now at Andreessen Horowitz: “No technology is the center of a system, but rather a constellation of bodies under the influence of each other.”

“No technology is the center of a system, but rather a constellation of bodies under the influence of each other.”
STEVE SINOFSKY

He makes the point that all these technologies just intertwine with each other. It’s not clear that a phone was going to destroy a satellite navigation company. It’s not clear that messaging software would destroy a telecoms company. It’s not clear that a phone would disrupt desktop. But what happens in technology are these tectonic shifts, literally the plates slide from under you, and if you’re not aware of all of them and how they interact, you’re in big trouble.

To go back to Intercom for a second, we didn’t come this far to only come this far. How do we actually keep going? How do we make sure that we don’t get caught up in one wave and then finish up?

Technology will continue to spit out innovation after innovation after innovation. The question you have to consistently train everyone to ask: does this new technology that’s happening or that’s being released make it in any way cheaper, faster or easier for our customers to make progress in their lives? That’s the repetitive question you have to ask, whether you see Bluetooth or WiFi or cloud or mobile or touch or voice or audio or messaging or bots. You name it. Because if it does make it cheaper, faster or easier for customers to make progress, they’ll go there, and you’ll be busy writing up JIRA tickets.

Needs don’t change, even when technology does

Connected with this is that the things we need to do in our lives rarely actually change. But the ways we can do them will always change. There are very few new behaviors in life. To give you some random examples, for as long as there have been kids in schools there have been kids passing notes to each other. Protocol with notes is that you make sure no one else can see it, you rip it up or you eat if the teacher catches it, but you just get rid of the thing. The idea that this was a disposable message that can be passed between two people for their eyes only, has gone on today, and we know it best as SnapChat. One of its core purposes is that exact job.

Those of you who are closer to my age probably had a box that you put photos in under your bed. These photos, curiously, are not on a shelf for everyone to see. They’re specifically for you, and you only want them at certain times. Today we use technologies like iPhoto or Dropbox’s Carousel, when it was around, to do this exact same job. The need has not changed, but the tool has.

If you’re renovating a house, in the old days you’d have a scrapbook with all the stuff you can’t afford. Today you do it with Houzz, or Pinterest. The need doesn’t change. The ways you can do it always change.

The way to stay relevant is to pay attention to what is called the OODA loop. Can you Observe, can you Orient, can you Decide, and can you Act? If your OODA loop is fast enough that you can keep up with the industry, you will always be in a great position. However if you are slower than the industry then you’ll be in trouble.

If you’re faster, every time the industry spits out something new – cloud, for instance – you can release something that works with cloud. You can release many iterations, and you can consistently evolve and build new stuff. The very second mobile comes out, you can build mobile straight away, because you can move as fast as the industry, or faster. That’s really, really important.

But the very second this arrow changes direction, and you find yourself moving slower than the industry, it’s game over. They’re spitting out technology after technology after technology, and your team is still talking in years and Q4 2018 and stuff like that. As the technology changes, you then find yourself being the company who in 2016 says, “We’re now available online.”

What that looks like is what Marshall McLuhan described as walking backwards into the future. You are moving into the future whether you like it or not, but your vision hasn’t changed. You’re still trying to force old-world ideas into a new world. That’s why it constantly comes back to this question: every time something changes, can we be cheaper, faster, or easier?

Coming soon – Part Two

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The post Your product is already obsolete appeared first on Inside Intercom.

from The Intercom Blog https://blog.intercom.com/your-product-is-already-obsolete/

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Making Time for Side Projects: A Daily Habit

With so many other commitments to deal with, it can be hard to find time to work on side projects. In this article, I discuss the need for carving out a chunk of time to get work done – each and every day.

When I read Brian’s Be Kind story, I immediately subscribed to his Monday Mailer newsletter. A while later I asked him if he’d be interested in writing something for Pony Foo, which he kindly agreed to. In this article, he writes about side projects. How to do more — when you already do so much?

Enjoy!

Side projects are a great way to grow as a developer, both personally and professionally. They let get out of your comfort zone, learn new skills, and exercise your creative muscles. But it can be hard to get anything done while juggling a day job, kids, friends, family, and countless other commitments. In the past, I’ve tried to cram side project work into the cracks between other items in my calendar. It was frustrating at best; completely ineffective at worst. I constantly felt like I was shortchanging the projects I was most passionate about.

Over the last two months, I’ve taken a different approach. I’ve been cultivating a daily side project habit. Each and every morning, I do something to push my side projects forward – even if I only have 15 minutes to spare. I’ve seen great results, so far. And I’ve learned that a small, focused task, done daily, beats a sporadic effort every time.

1. It’s easier to get started

It’s hard to gather the energy to start a new project – and even harder to re-start one after an extended absence. Working just a little bit, every day, means you never lose momentum. It’s easy to pick up where you left off because everything is still fresh in your mind.

2. The pressure is off

If you work on just one task a week, it’s easy to feel like it has to be perfect no matter what. I’ve fallen into that trap with my weekly newsletter, the Monday Mailer. If I wait until the weekend to start writing, I spend the first hour freaking out. But when I work at a steady pace, writing something every day, it’s a lot easier.

Once you have a daily side project habit, the pressure’s off. If you have a bad day – and you will – it’s okay. There’s always tomorrow. I’ve become more relaxed which, unsurprisingly, has improved the quality of my work overall.

3. You stop relying on motivation & inspiration

You don’t need to get ramped up; everything is still fresh in your mind from the day before. You don’t need to remind yourself where you left off, or what you need to do next. It biases you toward taking action, making it possible to be productive even when you’re short on time.

You see yourself making progress each day, making it easier to have the confidence to do the work the next day. It cuts down on procrastination and self-doubt. You get over the idea that doing a good job requires waiting for a magical moment of inspiration to strike.

It’s up to you

Of course, a daily side project habit won’t change anything if you spend that time scrolling through your Twitter feed. Don’t sabotage yourself. It’s up to you to carve out the time your side project deserves. Find a quiet room, silence your phone, close Facebook, and get down to work.

After a few days, you’ll be surprised how much you can accomplish.

from Pony Foo https://ponyfoo.com/articles/making-time-for-side-projects

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I Spent $30,000 Testing Different Blog Designs — Here’s What I Found

https://medium.com/marketing-and-entrepreneurship/i-spent-30-000-testing-different-blog-designs-heres-what-i-found-8952bf057b8f

from WebdesignerNews https://medium.com/marketing-and-entrepreneurship/i-spent-30-000-testing-different-blog-designs-heres-what-i-found-8952bf057b8f

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IKEA/Economist Group (EIU) study focuses on the new ‘American Dream’ today

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Press release – September 21, 2016

Discovering the New American Dream, an Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU) report sponsored by IKEA US shows that the American Dream, which was once outlined by owning a home with a ‘white picket fence,’ having a comfortable amount of money, and ‘keeping up with the Joneses,’ is now transitioning into ‘living life on one’s own terms.’ The new dream is defined by quality of life experiences; 57% of Americans say the dream is more about quality of life, as opposed to 20% citing material possessions. More than half (57%) cited spending time with family and friends as the way they are currently living the American Dream.

The EIU report also shows that Americans continue to believe in the value of hard work to achieve success, but the measurement of this success is now based on one’s personal goals, not necessarily those set by society.

65% believe ‘the American Dream’ is more personal today, less about society’s goals
76% believe the expression of the American Dream is as diverse as the people in America
72% of Americans believe they are in some way living the American dream today, while 76% think the dream is a journey and not an end goal

Alex, a 28-year-old woman who lives on a farm co-op in Madison, Wisconsin, embodies this new view of living on one’s own. “Having the freedom to do what I want, take on projects that I want, and to make a difference is really important to me. I can’t be happy in a job that doesn’t allow me to do these things—regardless of the pay check. I live in a co-op because I need that human connection and sense of collaboration,” Alex said. “My favorite parts of any day are spontaneous adventures with the people I love.”

It’s not just what defines the American Dream that is marking this transformation, but rather what people are striving for overall. With regard to the pervasive challenges to success, the EIU study cites:

The recession of 2008 changed people’s expectations of the ‘American Dream’ according to seven in ten Americans. This is felt more strongly in the middle income bracket ($50,000–$75,000), where 74% believe this, compared with 63% of those in the lowest income bracket and 70% of those in the highest.
The majority of Americans also agree that “the cost of living today makes it harder to see how one can achieve the American Dream” (78%) and that “college is no longer a guarantee to living the American Dream” (72%).
Some Americans have fears about “being able to retire comfortably” with fewer than half (42%) believing it’s possible. Those in the lowest income bracket see it as even less achievable (32%).

“It’s confirming to know that the new American Dream is about ‘living life on your own terms,’ because we have always embraced this mindset. We believe all homes are created equal, and we are committed to the many people by producing well-designed, quality, functional and affordable home furnishings that accommodate their diverse lifestyles and wallets. Everyone deserves a home that they love, that is sustainable, looks good and works well – and where they can live happily with family and friends. We understand cost of living hikes and that college tuition is sky high, but no matter what the dream, we want to help our customers achieve it,” stated Lars Petersson, IKEA US president.

“The American Dream can seem very diverse, and today the dream and definitions of success takes many forms, but at the core there is a similarity: to be happy. The means of acquiring the American Dream is the biggest change. For example, more than 70% no longer see college as a guarantee to the American Dream, so we see people are developing new workarounds and goals,” commented Rebecca Lipman, editor of the Discovering the New American Dream EIU report.

On the upside, 77% believe technology has opened new doors for people to achieve their American Dream. A little over half (53%) believe the sharing economy will open up more opportunities for Americans to reach financial prosperity.

These foundational elements of the America Dream today are shared to varying degrees across income levels, generations, political affiliations, and genders. Looking ahead, a majority (62%) of Americans believe being treated equally regardless of one’s background and the freedom to live as they choose will define the American dream for future generations. As time has passed, generations have shaped the American Dream based on the current state of the country, but at its core, it has remained steadfast in the right to ‘life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.’ What defines happiness is what has truly changed.

This report captures the perspectives of Americans of all different backgrounds to explain what the age-old term, American Dream, means to today’s society and how it will continue to evolve. It is based on a survey of 2,050 individuals from all regions of the country of varying ages, ethnicities and incomes, providing a balanced representation of the U.S. as a whole.

> A New York Times article published on October 30 describes how IKEA US implemented these insights in offerings, positioning and advertising.

The post IKEA/Economist Group (EIU) study focuses on the new ‘American Dream’ today appeared first on Putting people first.

from Putting people first http://blog.experientia.com/ikeaeconomist-group-eiu-study-focuses-on-the-new-american-dream-today/

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The ultimate guide to chatbots

The incredible potential of chatbots lies in the ability to individually and contextually communicate one-to-many.

Let’s break that down.

One-to-many communication: There are plenty of tools out there that allow us to communicate one-to-many at this point in history. These tools, including everything from basic mailers to email marketing to social media, make it easy to reach a large audience and target groups within that audience all at the same. But, for the most part, these tools do not allow us to communicate with people on an individual level.

Individual communication: Reaching mass amounts of people at the individual level is something that hasn’t been around for very long. The most popular way to do so right now is programmatic advertising but, ultimately, reaching the individual in a meaningful way takes a lot of work and analytic knowhow if you want to do it right.

Contextual communication: We do this every day when we talk to someone. It’s unconscious behavior for most people.

“In the future, chatbots will be the standard type of interaction.”

When someone asks you “Should I bring a jacket?” you don’t ask them what day they were thinking about bringing a jacket—you just know that they’re asking if they should bring a jacket right now. You unconsciously (or maybe consciously, by checking your weather app) recognize the weather and give your best response based on the conversation you’re having and your current environment.

I believe contextual communication (a form of dynamic intelligence) is what will make chatbots the revolutionary technology everyone is promising.

Right now contextually communicating with bots isn’t something that’s reasonable to ask across the board, but there are a few that are doing it well, and I believe this type of interaction will be the standard in the future.

While chatbots are still in their infancy in terms of creative potential, it’s still a very exciting time for creatives trying to understand the best way to use this new technology and how to build the best bot possible.

Why chatbots are disrupting UX

It’s only natural that we begin to see businesses build where their users are active—messaging platforms—instead of trying to create and onboard users to new ecosystems they’ve created. Not only is it easier and more cost effective, it’s also a more natural form of communication.

“Your users would rather have you integrate your services into an app they already use.”

The average person only uses 4–6 apps every day

Although the average smartphone owner has 27 apps on their phone, they typically only use 4–6 of those apps every day. And at the end of 30 days, only 3% of all apps retain their new users.

“Over 2.5 billion people have at least one messaging app installed. Within a couple of years that will reach 3.6 billion, about half of humanity.”

–The Economist

The effort required to download a new app and test it out to see if it could be the next to join our top 6 just isn’t worth the download anymore. Your users would rather have you integrate your services into an app they already use