Archive for August, 2010
Client News: Pogoplug features and products go live today!
Today Pogoplug announced that their web printing feature is now live, via an automatic firmware update to Pogoplug users. Pogoplug users can now print from iPhones, iPads, Android Devices, and more.
They also announced their latest products, Pogoplug Biz and the Wireless Extender, begin shipping today. The Pogoplug Biz edition, designed specifically for businesses, provides all the original features of the Pogoplug plus specific features that work for your business. The Wireless Extender allows for Pogoplug to be 100% wireless, giving users the freedom to place their Pogoplug wherever they like in their home or business!
Pogoplug announced the news via their blog, which you can read here. Some members of the press and blogger community have already picked it up, listed below and we’ll keep updating throughout the day.
SXSW PanelPickers
It’s that time again–SXSW PanelPickers is on! We have a few clients on different panels this year with topics so diverse there’s a little something for everyone.
“Video Analytics and the Future: Mastering the Data-Stream”
If you’re interested in video analytics, Dropcam’s panelis the panel for you. Greg Duffy of Dropcam will discuss the limits of video streaming, touching on crowd-sourcing, the affect on society, and meaningful content along the way. To vote for Dropcam, go here: http://panelpicker.sxsw.com/ideas/view/7992
“Your Date in the Cloud: Privacy, Ownership, Convenience”
For everyone curious about cloud storage – what it is, how secure is it, what the trends are – Pogoplug’s panel is the place to be. To check out their submission and vote, go here: http://panelpicker.sxsw.com/ideas/view/7059
“Content We Copy and Paste: Web Analytics Re-Invented”
If you love Twitter and tracking trends, Tynt’s panel is the panel for you. Tynt CEO Derek Ball will discuss web analytics, the act of copy and paste, and more. For more details go here: http://panelpicker.sxsw.com/ideas/view/7908
“You’re Dead, Your Data Isn’t: What Happens Now?”
What happens to your digital life after you die what what say do you have? To find out more about the panelists (including Jeremy Toeman!) go here: http://panelpicker.sxsw.com/ideas/view/6048
See you in Austin!
Client News: Pogoplug goes wireless!
Pogoplug is on a roll with releasing new products! They recently announced the Pogoplug Biz and today announced a wireless adapter that will enable Pogoplug to be placed anywhere in the home.
Not only is Pogoplug going wireless, existing users can get the wireless adapter for free! For new Pogoplug users, the wireless extender costs $29.
With the introduction of the new wireless extender, Cloud Engines has lowered the price on Pogoplug from $129 to $99.
They announced the price change and the wireless extender this morning via their blog, which you can read here. A few members of the press and blogger community have picked up the story; we’ll update the list below throughout the day!
Looking for the next rockstar intern
We are looking for an amazing “intern” to support our team. We need a project acrobat who is wise in the ways of the force, a college student with fresh ideas and crazy stamina who is ready to put their communications courses to work in a real environment. In short, we want someone who is willing to do almost anything and learn the ins and outs of influencer marketing and media relations.
This is a fun industry where no two days are the same, so you’ll have the chance to get your hands in different types of projects and master a LOT quickly. Our team is dynamic, young and fiercely competitive (you’ll see that in office Foosball or C.O.D. matches), but we know how to enjoy ourselves while getting a lot accomplished.
Each intern will support two account executives on anywhere from 2 to 6 accounts, but should be flexible enough to adapt to new projects as needed. This internship is unpaid, so we highly encourage students to apply and coordinate with their college for course credit.
Qualifications:
* Able to work within dynamic start-up environment
* Fast learner and self-starting with impeccable organizational skills
* Extremely strong communications skills, especially written
* Strong academic standing
* Good understanding of consumer technology (video, mobile, etc) with a genuine interest in new trends in tech, media, and culture
* Good understanding of new media, including bloggers and social networks (e.g. you ARE the Twittersphere)
* Confident and articulate, yet brilliantly creative
* Brownie points to gamers, bloggers, torrentfreaks, pop culture geeks (extra bonus points if you can source the quote: “her?”)
* Work hard, play ball, listen, and learn
* Be professional, all the time
* The rest will be determined and crafted around the individual
Our office is in North Beach, close to several MUNI stops, great restaurants/bars, and fine entertainment establishments.
If you’re interested, e-mail us:
A resume
A short bio
Why you think this is a good fit for you
A description of your passion for marketing and your experience in it — you don’t need a lot of experience, but show us something you have done with your passion so far.
Send the above info to jennifer@stagetwo.com, any emails without all 4 of the above will be ignored, and probably marked as spam. Feel free to let us know if you have any questions. Otherwise, we look forward to hearing from you.
New Feature: Meme of the Month
We know many of our readers are busy people who don’t have the time to spend 24 hours of their day on the internet. Thankfully, being online day and night is part of our job here at Stage Two (yes, we have even discovered a way to be on the internet in our sleep – public Beta to be announced soon). As a side effect of our addiction, we tend to run across all of those fun, quirky, and sometimes annoying memes that spring up on the Web and we end up sharing them like crazy. To spread the love and add a little extra fun to our blog and newsletter, we’re introducing our “Meme of the Month” feature with our first inductee: Double Rainbow guy.
Warning: by the time we bring you the Meme of the Month, it’s already SO last week to all the internet savvy hipsters out there. Don’t go and try to be a hipster yourself – leave that to professionals.
If you have not yet discovered Double Rainbow guy, watch this first:
And for an added bonus, please to enjoy the auto-tuned version:
UX Fundamentals: Don’t Turn Ten Steps Into Two
OOBE Fail
As product design consultants, we love simplicity. While many in tech think typical users are stupid, we disagree. The problem is complex procedures often lead to difficulties with information retention and an increased likelihood for user error. This is particularly true during a user’s first experience with a product (aka “out of box experience” or “OOBE”). User error during the OOBE is more likely to give the user a negative view of the product and potentially cause them to not want to come back for a second try (or worse, abandon ship immediately and forever). What happens to many products is the desire to simplify, which is good, but often to simplify merely by reducing the perceived quantity of steps, which is not so good. To the right is our mocked-up screen shot (thanks again Balsamiq – we heart you!) of a not-to-far-from-real lousy OOBE.
To demonstrate, we’ll cook ourselves some chicken. Yes, chicken (don’t worry, it’s pasture raised). Imagine you’re getting ready to cook your first chicken parmesan. You buy the ingredients, prep the kitchen, grab the cookbook and open it up to find this “easy” recipe with “only” 2 steps:
Step 1: Preheat oven to 375 degrees F and pour beaten eggs into a shallow dish or bowl while, in another shallow dish or bowl, mix together the grated Parmesan cheese and bread crumbs, then dip chicken breasts into beaten egg, then into bread crumb mixture to coat then, in a large skillet, heat oil over medium high heat then add coated chicken and saute for about 8 to 10 minutes each side and pour tomato sauce into a lightly greased 9×13 inch baking dish. Add chicken, then place a slice of Monterey Jack cheese over each breast, and bake in the preheated oven for 20 minutes or until cheese is completely melted.
Step 2: Serve
Anyone finish the chicken? Nope. Anyone think that was either (a) only two steps or (b) easy? Nope.
Now for industry-relevant context (we have no recipe book clients at this time, but hopefully are well on our way). Imagine that Step 1 was all contained on one pop-up window on your computer screen with a big “NEXT” button and, once you click that button there’s no way to go back. Such is the case with far too many OOBE’s in the consumer tech space.
In a way, cookbooks are actually a great template for building a good first time user experience. A good recipe informs the user up front what they will need to get through the process, and how long it will take. It then walks the would-be chef through each step from prep to service. While we won’t bother outlining the above recipe (we’re kinda over the chicken thing by now), I think anyone preparing dinner would’ve been a lot more comfortable with the “real” 7-10 steps it takes than the “faked simplicity” the 2-step version proposed.
Steps are steps – whether you have a web service or a physical product, you need to strive for simplicity, but make sure you are only combining logical steps. For a tech example, let’s say your product requires the following steps (yes, ours goes to 11):
1. Connect device to power and confirm
2. Connect device to your internet router and confirm
3. Confirm internet connection
4. Register device
5. Give your device a name
6. Sign up for an account
7. Confirm account information
8. Disconnect from router
9. Set up Wi-Fi connection
10. Confirm Wi-Fi connection
11. Execute first “core” action in product (share, create, store, etc)
There is no reasonable way to take these 11 steps down to 2, so don’t even try. Instead, assess the logical fits in the user’s setup process (read: not what our super-smart engineers think a user’s setup process is – remember the whole inmates and asylum thingie?). So the above 11 steps are shrinkable, but our version brings it to 5:
Step 1: Connect your device to power and your router – these are both physical connections, easily explained in a graphic
Step 2: Register your device and give it a name you’ll remember – we’d envision a screen with a single “name” field and a big button with the word “Register Now” on it
Step 3: Sign up for an account – choosing a user name and password are effectively commonplace
Step 4: Disconnect from your router, choose a Wi-Fi network and enter your password to connect. Once connected, you will see a confirmation window appear. – again, something that might sound wordy, but really simple to convey with simple imagery either in a quick start guide or on-screen
Step 5: Welcome to your home screen! Let’s get started…
The key here is to present a logical flow of actions and not overwhelm the user with 10 things to do on a single screen. By reducing the number of steps we have created a more immediately satisfying user experience. By not overloading the user with steps, we’ve reduced the opportunity for user error.
To sum up, here are our 7 high-level rules on steps:
1. Never combine steps just for the sake of reducing steps
2. Never combine 2 elements if one of them has an effect on the other (e.g. “Name Your Recording” should not be in the same step as “Create Your Recording”)
3. Find logical combinations and put them together, where logical combinations are from the user’s eyes, not from the developer/system side
4. Always inform the user of the total number of steps they will have to complete and what they will need to complete them (for all of you hardware developers out there)
5. Less is not by definition better, in fact more is often better
6. Eliminate any step that is not essential to the process at hand. You want to get the user through your steps and into your product quickly. If the user doesn’t need to do some deep setup element before they can use the product, pull it from your setup flow and ask them to do it later.
7. Listen to Wolfie - the “right” number of steps are “just as many steps as are required. No more, no less.”
Take a hard look at the steps you’ve created for your first time user, apply our rules, and you should have happy users in no time (or, if you’ve read the wrong steps, you will have cooked a chicken parm). Either way – enjoy!
