Author Archives: colin
Support your customers like you love them
Remember a time you fell in love. The object of your affection could do no wrong. You had infinite patience for them, and your happiness depended on theirs. That’s how to do world class customer support. Hopefully you get the occasional email in the support inbox saying how great people think your product is, but [...]
UX of British Road Signs
James May from Top Gear interviewed Margaret Calvert, the woman who designed the motorway (freeway) signs in the UK in the 1950s with her former Art Professor, Jock Kinneir. The two of them were responsible for almost every sign in the British highway code. She shares some interesting insight about the choice to use lower [...]
Posted in Design, Usability, User Experience 3 Comments
A cork board, a sharpie, and some note cards
I’ve read and heard a lot about using a physical agile board to manage software projects. The talented John Allison joined the ChallengePost team last week as our Lead Developer *crowd goes wild*. With his recommendation, we’re switching it up and trying something new. The image above is our agile board for this week’s sprint. [...]
Where the tech ladies at?
My friend Elizabeth Stark has been on a rampage ( a good one ) about the lack of women in technology. Her recent article titled Mentors Matter highlights disappointing numbers like 6 females of 53 entrepreneurs were featured in a New York Mag article on the NYC startup scene. (BTW, that’s 11.3% compared to the [...]
Minimum Viable Product
Minimum Viable Product (MVP) is a concept popularized for web application development by Eric Ries. …the minimum viable product is that product which has just those features (and no more) that allows you to ship a product that resonates with early adopters; some of whom will pay you money or give you feedback. I apply [...]
Posted in Product Management, Startup Teams Leave a comment
Five reasons smart startups use Rails
It’s 2010. You want to build an web application. PHP is dead. Java is dead. Use Rails If you’ve got a blank slate, use Rails. If you’ve only built a prototype, switch to Rails as soon as possible. If you decide to ignore Rails you’re one of two things: Much smarter than me. You’ve won [...]
37 Signals new book: Rework
Jason Fried and David Heinemeier Hansson of 37 Signals have created the Anti-Business – a deliciously small, opinionated organization that scoffs at the structures and mantras of the traditional corporation. In Rework, JF and DHH refine many of the concepts from 37 Signals previous book: “Getting Real“. Frequent readers of the 37 Signals blog “SVN” [...]
Posted in Insights, Product Management, Startup Teams, User Experience Tagged 37Signals, Book Review Leave a comment
Seven things I learned at SXSW
1. Everything will become a game +10 – you flossed +10 – you brushed Congratulations, you unlocked the “Dentist’s pet award” 2. Avoid trending parties unless you’re on the VIP list If the party is trending, you’re too late… unless you can sneak in the back door 3. We need a unified checkin now more [...]
Spoons vs. Sticks – How signaling can enhance user experience
The best coffee shops in New York provide spoons to stir your coffee rather than wooden sticks or plastic stirrers. Spoons are more effective than plastic stirrers and wooden sticks at mixing sugar and milk in to coffee. However, I don’t think that’s why coffee shops offer spoons. I think they provide spoons because it [...]
What does a product manager do?