We are trying to explain Stix.to as a graffiti-blog. That is because you get the power to write on top of pages anywhere without asking for permission. But on the other hand sticky-notes are not very graffiti-like. So what we are working on now is this thing, funky fonts over pages. I think the picture explains it better than words.
We are working down the list of interested people and inviting them to Stix.to, and we are very happy. Because we now have some happy users. After working hard to make this product that is really a relief. Because you never know before. But now we have some happy users, so we must be doing something right. And the new users give us a lot of feedback on what they want next and what problems they have. We are learning a lot.
No matter how much you work on interaction design actual users is another thing. For example, since a lot of us are Mac or Linux users we saw no problem with having the delete button to the left. But windows users, and they are the majority, want it on the right. We had discussed it before, but the windows user in our team was voted down. Now we will try to find a good solution. Either move it to the right or let it be configurable. And increase the salary of our windows user. (not really, since he has switched to Mac)
But before we fix that we will improve some other issues: Improve Facebook sharing so you can decide the link text, fix some annoyances, but also try to explain not only how to use the tool but why. Why? Now why didn’t we think of that? So lets add some user stories to the introduction page.
On saturday we were at the yearly award for Swedish blogs about subjects related to culture. Films, books, music and more. We have been sponsoring this event for some time, and it is great to see it grow and great to see all creativity. We took the opportunity to do a short presentation about Stix.to also, in a low tech way with pen and paper, and and it was well received. It is 26 mins into this bambuser stream (In Swedish).
Congratulations to all the winners! All are in Swedish, but you can can get a Swedish friend to read them out loud to you.
Books: Shazam
Music: New Romantic Possee
Film: Onyanserat
Other: Elin Grelsson
Culturals bloggers cultural blog: Onyanserat (again)
Kulturbloggens Special Price: Kulturekonomi
Studio totals extraprice: Elin Grelsson (again)
Confirmation bias is to see what you want to see. Consider the breakfast we had yesterday. Four of us were going to the great Good morning 2020 conference at Grand Hotel in Stockholm for some inspiration and trendspotting. Angelo arrived first and said at the reception that he was going to the conference and asked about the breakfast. They pointed him to the famous veranda were a grandiose breakfast buffet was served. This is probably the best breakfast you can get in Stockholm, and probably the most expensive. Two more of us joined, and we started to feast on bacon, herring and pastries. But Serdar was late. Because his phone was sort of broken he was texting instead. “I’m at the end of the breakfast table”. But he was not. We immediately started to think he was on another hotel. Text messages passed back and forth, we were still convinced he was on the wrong hotel until we got the message “Do you see any advertising for the conference?”. No we did not. And then it was obvious. There was no one tweeting, no one flashing their new iPad or other signs of a conference. Just some suites sitting quietly enjoying the breakfast. The conference was in a another part of the hotel, and the breakfast was probably good but not in the deluxe category. A little explanation and excuse to the waitor actually saved us from paying (thanks a lot, we promise to come back and pay someday in the future).
Lesson learned: Don’t try to see what you want, look for evidence against your hypothesis. Don’t presume that the majority is right.