Do one thing right

I love this post about file storage service Dropbox:

Well, let's take a step back and think about the sync problem and what the ideal solution for it would do:

1. There would be a folder.
2. You'd put your stuff in it.
3. It would sync.

They built that.

Why didn't anyone else build that? I have no idea.

"But," you may ask, "so much more you could do! What about task management, calendaring, customized dashboards, virtual white boarding. More than just folders and files!"

No, shut up. People don't use that crap. They just want a folder. A folder that syncs.

"But," you may say, "this is valuable data...certainly users will feel more comfortable tying their data to Windows Live, Apple Mobile Me, or a name they already know."

No, shut up. Not a single person on Earth wakes up in the morning worried about deriving more value from their Windows Live login. People already trust folders. And Dropbox looks just like a folder. One that syncs.

"But," you may say, "folders are so 1995. why not leverage the full power of the web? With HTML 5 you can drag and drop files, you can build intergalactic dashboards of stats showing how much storage you are using, you can publish your files as RSS feeds and tweets, and you can add your company logo!"

No, shut up. Most of the world doesn't sit in front of their browser all day. If they do, it is IE 6 at work that they are not allowed to upgrade. Browsers suck for these kinds of things. Their stuff is already in folders. They just want a folder. That syncs.

That is what it does.

This is the same kind of thing the folks at Signal v. Noise have been talking about for years.

People who have never designed complex commercial websites may not realize the headache-inducing number of special considerations you need to take into account. For any given product there may be a million unusual scenarios you have to plan for -- and many projects get bogged down with the vast majority of time and energy being spent on fixing issues that may affect fewer than 5% of visitors. Think about that -- spending only a small portion of time on a project for the part that affects 95% of people! Few things frustrate me more than realizing I've fallen into that particular rabbit hole.

The Dropbox tale is a good reminder of how simplification at every level is ultimately much more successful than trying to accomplish every possible goal for every possible customer. Dropbox was willing to say, "we are not the product for the person who wants a corporate-skinned RSS feed of multi-folder data backups." And they beat the competition by a mile.

Year 30: Fitness

I've decided to try to get back into blogging. As limiting myself to just design-related posts ended up yielding a rather slow stream of posts, I'm going to expand to cover all sorts of stuff.

I recently turned 30, and like many people, I felt like this was a milestone that deserved a little introspection. I've decided to refocus on some things that have been important to me. The first thing is my health and fitness.

I've been on a new fitness plan/diet since January 2, and I waited until today to post about it because I was waiting for a major milestone: I've officially lost 10 pounds already.

First, a little background -- I've never been fat or scrawny, but instead have vacillated in roughly the same 30-lb. weight range for half my life. I was 185 lbs. when I was 15 (I was already at my full height of 5'11"), and started realizing that was maybe a little big for me. I changed my diet and began exercising and within a year was down to 155. Through high school and college it slowly climbed back up to 175, and then for some reason in the first couple years post-college I lost about a pound a month until I was down to 152. At this point, I genuinely was too thin, and I decided to finally join a gym. Having built some muscle I ended up reaching the peak of my fitness around age 25, weighing around 160-165 lbs. and even had some slight ab definition in the right light. But in the years since I've gained some back and have mostly been 175-185.

This past fall I sort of "fell off the wagon" in terms of exercise and not only was I back at my peak weight, I am fairly certain I had lost some muscle. Basically I looked the worst I'd ever looked and wasn't happy about it. I then learned about the Four Hour Body by Tim Ferriss, and was particularly enticed by three major points: you get a day off each week to eat whatever you want, on other days you do not have to limit portions as long as you stick to "approved" foods, and apparently the whole thing works fast. (He claims you can lose 20 lbs. of fat in one month.)

So I decided to do it, but waited until the day after New Year's so I could ride out the holidays without watching what I ate.

The diet is pretty simple to remember but is quite restrictive. You can eat anything from these three groups but nothing else:

1. Proteins (meat, poultry, fish, eggs, tofu, etc.)
2. Legumes (beans, lentils, etc.)
3. Non-starchy vegetables (mostly greens -- no potatoes, for example)

That's it. This is hardcore low-carb (the only carbs allowed are basically beans -- not even brown rice is okay) and doesn't even allow eating fruit (other than tomatoes) because of the fructose (sugar) in it. No alcohol, aside from a couple glasses of red wine. You're not even supposed to consume artificial sweeteners (aspartame, Splenda, etc.) as they trigger some of the same chemical responses in the body that real sugar does, basically telling your body that you should store calories as fat and increasing your hunger. One day a week you are required to eat whatever you want all day -- not just allowed, but required -- as this "reboots" your metabolism to prevent it from thinking you are on a starvation diet.

This diet was especially hard for me because I am the pickiest eater you'll ever meet. "Oh I'm worse," you say? No, you're not. Of those three things allowed above, the only thing I ate was the protein part, mostly in the form of insane amounts of chicken. I could go into more detail, but just trust me -- everyone I've met has been flabbergasted by my limitations with food (a lot of things actually start to make me retch).

This is part of why I picked this diet, though. It was forcing me to try new things that are healthier for me. The first week of the diet was painful. The vegetables I tried were mostly terrible, and I was only able to really stomach some spinach being tossed in with the few things I actually liked. I tried a variety of beans and found them barely edible but mostly unpleasant. I was eating chicken, eggs, and turkey bacon constantly, as some of the few "recognizable" foods I was allowed. I was aching badly for my first "binge day" when I could revisit the foods I loved. And yet, I was surprised to find my hunger greatly diminished very quickly. Something about the carbs in my diet (I used to eat a LOT of whole grains -- shredded wheat, oatmeal, whole wheat bread, etc.) had made me feel like I could eat non-stop. The new diet was painful, but it was changing my appetite, and in that first week, I lost 5 lbs. It was working, but I wasn't sure if I'd be able to survive week 2.

Realizing 5 lbs. was nothing to sneeze at, I relished my binge day and then decided to try the diet again for another week. I found myself doing the previously unthinkable -- searching across the grocery store for new legumes, soups, vegetables, and seasonings that would fit in the diet. If I was going to have to eat like this, I was going to find foods that I didn't just tolerate but actually liked. And somehow, things started turning around. I realized that since bacon was okay, I could add it to a salad. I tried mixing beans with my favorite marinara sauce. I learned that cooking lentils with soy sauce outweighed their natural flavor and made them tastier. Things began looking up. In week 2 I lost another 3 lbs.

Week 3 wasn't even a question -- after my second binge day I felt ready to hop back into things and was actually starting to (gasp!) enjoy some of these new foods. I've eaten 2 salads pretty much every day this week, and although at first the weight loss seemed to be plateauing, I am down two pounds and still have one more weigh-in tomorrow morning before the official week count is up.

I'm a little more than halfway to my total weight loss goal, and it's exciting. The plan includes some other elements -- supplements and vitamins, lots and lots of (cold) water, and three 30-45 minute weight training workouts a week (which is actually less than I used to do as recently as this summer) -- but it was the diet that I knew would be my biggest challenge.

Why am I sharing all this? Well, first, I'm proud that I have been able to actually lose some weight, but mostly I'm proud that I've finally been able to bust out of my old patterns and expand my diet to include healthier foods. Once I reach my goal (and I'm fairly certain I will), I may even share my before-and-after pictures. And at that point, I'll move into "phase 2," which will switch from weight-loss to muscular fitness and involve some other beneficial changes.

I will say, if you are looking to lose some weight yourself, most diets will work -- if you stick to them. And this is where almost everyone fails. What I think differentiates this one is that it is somehow both one of the most restrictive and one of the most freeing, by balancing the diet limitations with a weekly day off, and does not require you to ever feel hungry. I had tried low-carb diets before and always felt deeply sad at the prospect of potentially never eating some of my favorite foods again (pizza, chocolate, and oddly, shredded wheat). There is no feeling of that here. I'm never starving, I don't have to count calories, and I always know that whatever I want to eat is just a few days away.

And still, I've lost more weight faster than I ever have before. I hope I can keep it going!

Websites are not applications (...usually)

One of the increasingly blurry lines in the online world is the concept of websites vs. applications. Since the rise of the iPhone and its app store (and the corresponding app markets for platforms such as Android and Blackberry), the word "app" has rapidly spread into the mainstream. This is largely a distinction of marketing -- an "app" is really no different from what we've previously called "programs," "software," or even "games." But it also has started to overlap with the definition of "website."

For example, think of something like Google or Facebook -- these are websites. But they can also function as applications -- tools that you use often. And indeed, both have released "apps" for platforms such as the iPhone. But whether you use them in "app" format or "website" format, they function pretty much the same. The primary difference, really, is that an app is catered to the particular device you are using (although, with browser detection capabilities, a website can cater itself to your device as well).

The problem with this increasing overlap is that a lot of companies are misunderstanding what it means to have an "app," and they don't think about why other companies even have (or need) apps in the first place. I suspect a lot of people see the "social media" revolution and the increasing dominance of smart phones, and think they need to get in on it -- Make an app! Integrate with social media! Create user profiles and personalize based on each individual person! It's a marketing mantra that seems sensible -- reach your customers where they are rather than forcing them to come to you. So if Google and Facebook are websites, and they have apps, if I have a website, I should have an app too, right?

Well, no, not necessarily.

The fact is, most websites are NOT social media hubs or tools. Most websites are standalone pieces that people may visit once in their whole lives, or perhaps once every few months or so at a maximum. You might visit a furniture website when shopping for a couch and never come back. Maybe you need an exterminator and find them online, and then you never need them again. Perhaps you're going on vacation and check out a spa online at your destination, which you might never visit again. These are websites that deliver value at the time you use them, but you're not going back again very often (if ever). You're not going to make that exterminator's website your home page. You're not going to download the spa's app. And you're probably not going to set up a personal profile at a furniture studio's website.

But what about your favorite pizza delivery place? Your bank? Your favorite local clothing store? You might visit all of those places often, and would benefit from apps, profiles, or other long-term connections. Here's a few questions to ask yourself before you start thinking you need to be investing in these alternate methods of customer connection.

1. Do you provide a service or sell things that people tend to purchase frequently -- and can they make those purchases online?
If yes, you might benefit from an online profile that lets customers save their payment info and other preferences. You might also consider a simple mobile phone app that does the same thing.

2. Is there a useful (free) tool that you could provide online or via an app that your customers would use often and find valuable?
If yes, then you might benefit from providing an app or online tool. For example, I worked on Tide's "Stain Brain" website and app -- it gives tips for removing small stains on the go, which keeps Tide in the customer's mindset without requiring them to pay anything to use the app.

3. Does your business interact with the community in a way that engages people in a non-customer role (e.g., you sponsor a charity event with participants who aren't necessarily customers)?
If yes, then you might benefit from branching out via a stronger social media presence -- people are happy to support a cause by posting about it on Facebook or sending messages on Twitter to ask their friends to donate or help, and your name gets out there in the process.

If you can't answer yes to any of the above questions, there's a good chance you may not be in need of apps, social media, and user profiles. Any of those avenues done wrong can actually harm your image -- a useless app ends up looking like little more than an ad taking up space on your phone, a Twitter feed that is never updated just looks like you don't care about your business, and adding a user profile for a site you may rarely visit just frustrates the visitor and may serve as more of a barrier than a convenience.

So while everyone is shouting about the next wave of "customer enablement," keep in mind that it's not just whether or not you have an "app" -- it's a matter of whether or not that app (or profile, or Facebook page, etc.) actually offers any value to your audience.

When solutions create more problems

This will be a brief post, but it's been awhile since I've posted and I wanted to put something up, even if it was mostly an "aside."

THE PROBLEM
I listen to a lot of music and have several thousands of songs in my iTunes library. The problem with having so much music is that it can be hard to organize it and listen to songs I know I like while maintaining variety. If I only pick the songs I know I love, I end up just listening to a smaller and smaller subsection of the total library as it grows, leaving tons of songs sitting idly, unlistened. Yes, this is pretty mundane, but it is a problem I wanted to solve.

THE SOLUTION
One of the great aspects of iTunes is its "Smart Playlist" ability, where you can automatically generate playlists based on a number of factors. To re-introduce songs I hadn't heard in awhile, I created a playlist called "Listen Again." At first, I just set one parameter:

-Songs that I have listened to at least 10 times (showing that I liked them at some point) but haven't listened to in more than 2 months (showing I have forgotten about them).

This started off great, I started hearing songs again that I really enjoyed! But then another issue came up...

THE PROBLEM, PART 2
Some of these songs hadn't been listened to in 2+ months for a reason -- I didn't really like them all that much, or was already sick of them. As I continued to listen to the playlist, when I skipped those songs, they remained in the list, while the songs I liked automatically got booted off the list since they had now been played in the past 2 months. The result is that as time went by, the list became increasingly populated by songs I didn't want to listen to.

THE SOLUTION, PART 2
Well, lo and behold, there is another parameter I can use in iTunes to fix this!

-Songs that have been skipped at least once in the past month (removes songs I don't like, but allows them to return to the list in a month's time in case my taste changes by then).

Fantastic! The songs I skipped immediately got booted off the list. There are still two remaining problems, however...

THE PROBLEM, PARTS 3 & 4
I hadn't considered this until the playlist started cooking, but -- a lot of these songs haven't been played in 2+ months because they are Christmas-related songs! Whoops! There is no easy fix for this -- unless I go back and tag all those songs as belonging to the "Christmas" genre, and exclude that genre from the mix (which I may go and do later).

And then there's the biggest problem, really -- what to do with those songs that this playlist has allowed me to rediscover and enjoy? By virtue of being played, they are now immediately off the playlist! Is there another smart playlist I can create to capture them? This one I don't know how to answer. There may be a way to create a hybrid of songs that appeared on this and also were recently played, but I haven't figured it out yet.

Interestingly, iTunes offers several default smart playlists (recently added, most played, etc.) -- it'd be interesting to see if they expanded their default lists to include some similar concepts. Perhaps sparing users the work I just went through. They have made efforts with their Genius tool to expand your listening (which can also lead to expanding your buying), but I bet there's more that can be done.

New work up: JohnCorvino.com

http://www.johncorvino.com/

I met John Corvino in person several months ago, and after learning his partner worked in the same company as I did (albeit in the Detroit branch), we stayed in touch, and he asked me to take a look at working on his website. John is a prominent speaker/writer/lecturer on moral issues surrounding gay rights (hence the moniker "The Gay Moralist"). In fact, he debated Maggie Gallagher, president of the National Organization for Marriage, just last week.

For his site, he wanted to not only give it a clean, vibrant visual makeover, but also make it easy to update and provide an automated way to sign up for an email newsletter. I've found that virtually all clients at this point want the ability to update their sites themselves, and it can be tricky to build a site with a content management system that does not require any coding knowledge on the part of the person doing the updates.

For this execution, I did a slight restructure of the information architecture, and then used WordPress (which I also used for my 2k50 site) for the implementation. I wrote a visual theme for it from scratch and used the "Pages" and "Categories" features to organize the content. I also figured out a few other cool things -- I managed to sync up an RSS feed of the columns John writes for 365gay.com so they appear on his site automatically (and in the proper category). I also used a combination of WordPress plugins and Feedburner to build a free, automated email newsletter for him -- all within the same admin interface as updating site content.

I am finding that WordPress has a lot of benefits (although there are some unfortunate issues that require workarounds), and will probably continue using the service for similar clients in the future.

Check out John's site at http://www.johncorvino.com/.

Marketing-speak is killing me

A lot of my work involves looking at other websites to see what's going on in terms of structure, interactivity, etc. And one thing that I keep noticing is just how often websites are plagued by utterly-meaningless, corporate marketing-speak. Here's one example from a financial institution's home page:

What does that mean? I will give the copy writer a little benefit-of-the-doubt -- they at least understand that a major issue people have with financial institutions is trust, and being valued. The problem is that this says absolutely nothing about how they plan to establish that trust or "commitment." There is no action to take here. There is no proof of their claim. It would be like having a slogan that says "We are good" and leaving it at that without an explanation of why. Note that they don't even tell you what they do here -- the only thing that establishes any sense of financials is that the two guys in the generic stock photo are in suits. But they could be lawyers, politicians, who knows. And yet this is the largest piece of real estate on their website's home page. Who would be convinced of anything here?

I'll contrast this with a better example from a similar company:

This is a little better. I could still do without yet another generic stock photo, but I know that research shows people do respond to photos of other people, and at least the photo does roughly connote either retirement or saving for your child. But where this site gets it right is that it is establishing a bunch of things with its headline and copy very quickly. It tells you what the company does, how that can help you, how they accomplish that (including a product name), what it will mean for you, and then invites you to action. It's not just saying "we care about you." It's saying "we understand what your problem is and we are offering you this solution." Much more effective.

It's the old "show, don't tell" adage. It's a lesson too frequently forgotten.

Prioritizing Content

The field of "information architecture" is essentially about organizing. Where do things go? What's the hierarchy? You can't answer questions like this without first figuring out your content and prioritizing it.

This is extremely challenging for a lot of clients. It's like asking them to pick a favorite child. How can you say that product A is more important than product B? Or that one type of information is more important than another?

The reality, however, is that prioritizing is not optional. Even if you somehow designed a website where literally every single piece of information was given equal weight, you'd still have the bias of the order in which that is presented. Something neutral like "alphabetical" now gives weight to A-named things. Abandoning any particular order and randomizing every time you load a page now completely leaves the user helpless as they have no way to find anything as there is no structure anymore. You have to make a choice in terms of priority.

The good thing is that you don't have to make these decisions in a vaccuum. There are two key methods to determining priority: user goals and business goals. Fairly basic site statistics can tell you what your users are doing (more advanced analysis could of course give you additional insights). If 20% buy products, but 60% go to the help forums, you could probably surmise that the majority of your site visitors are existing owners of your product who come back to look for assistance (it also may suggest that your product has some problems!).

But hold on one second. If you followed that priority path, you would be greatly diminishing the prominence of shopping for your products. This may match user behavior but is probably not a great match for your business goals -- no doubt your top priority is selling your product. And this is where that delicate balance of both comes into play.

The key to managing both sides of the equation is understanding that users looking for particular things tend to exhibit different behaviors. Most people will probably expect that the main area of your home page will be promotional in nature. If they are coming in with the intent to get help with your product, they will probably start by looking in your menus, footer, or other contextual link areas searching for key words like "support," "help," or "FAQ." You can cater to them by making such a link highly visible and easy to spot, without sacrificing your promotional space for products.

Conversely, someone who is in a "shopping" mindset may skip your menus altogether and interact directly with your main content area. Further prioritizing here (showing the most popular products, for example, or the best new discount) gets that user to the content they're looking for right away.

This is all rather high level, I'll admit, and prioritization decisions are often much more difficult than this. Take, for example, a website with a homepage that has three clearly defined areas for promotions. If these three areas are different in size and location, you can probably give a clear order to their visibility. Let's say you have a large banner, a medium-sized tile area, and a small text link, going from "most visibility" to "least." Now let's say you have three new promotions coming up simultaneously. Your first instinct for each may be to give them all top priority. They are all important, right? Can't we just make three large banners? You could... but then your website would start becoming a monster with no organizational structure. It's never a good idea to re-structure a website based around a single one-time occurrence, unless it's something truly huge (like, you're going out of business, for example). You confuse return visitors and disrupt the visual "brand" your site establishes.

It becomes so much easier to solve design problems when you get comfortable with the idea that not everything is going to be equally important, and that the way to give visibility to content may differ based on the type of content you are presenting. Smart prioritization not only makes your website easier to navigate, it can increase user satisfaction and supports your business goals by steering people to the content they want while also giving them an easy path to turn from visitor into customer.