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GoTV Networks terminated me and about 20% of its employees today. I was a front end developer on a product called LiveFromYou. GoTV gave me many opportunities to refine and strengthen my programming skills. It was my first experience out of college working on a long term consumer product.
During my 15 months, I observed fundamental problems in approach and process that I had never encountered doing freelance interactive design agency projects. Here are some of them:
Playing it safe means you’re probably not risking enough to become innovative. Apple takes risks by regularly challenging user interaction conventions and expectations. Sometimes it works, like the iPod. Sometimes it doesn’t, like the G4 Cube.
When something is new and different, a focus group isn’t going to be able to give you quantifiable opinions. And really, their opinions don’t matter. The early adopters who discover and embrace your product matter and they’ll sell your product better than you can if you listen to them.
There’s still lots of money being #2
is a pretty shitty motivator.
Start with a basic offering and grow it organically, not a colossal end goal that’s undefinable. “Release early. Release often.” You’ll be better in touch with your users’ desires. People like getting in early. You can be the first to market and build loyalty even if you don’t have much to offer just yet.
Know your monetization model and let everyone in on it. As a lowly developer, for some reason, this really bothered me.
Play to your strengths. You can’t be all things to all people. Someone is already doing something you’re doing better. Know when to cooperate instead of compete.
Unless the CEO can make a cartoon effect noise (e.g. boing, swoosh, pow) when playing with the UI, it’s not good enough. Just kidding!
Did you start an awesome blog back in the day? Remember the fun of planning posts, reading comments, and earning pennies from Google Ads? It’s time to rekindle the love of self expression.
There is more to life than 160 characters of lifecasting on Twitter. You’re better than that. Blow the dust off your blog and make an effort to write something worth sharing again.
Join us on May 1, 2009, to relaunch your blog.
I started blogging in January 2002. I still get great comments even though I haven’t written frequently the last few years. I miss it.
One of the first gay blogs I ever read was by Bart. We recently connected over Twitter and reminisced about the way people shared thoughts before social networks. Facebook and Twitter have their place, but something about the blog is still something special.
We’ll be posting more in the coming days. I’m committing to posting once a week and releasing a long overdue new design. Consider joining us in relaunching our blogs on May 1, 2009.
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