user insights

Jeremy Keith writes:

Convenience. Ease of use. Seamlessness.

Get real about the level of digital literacy.

It does amuse me when I hear a bunch of digital marketers talking about some way they are going to finesse their strategies and how they intend using the latest social media development.

The author of a New York Times article titled Facebook’s Existential Crisis reports:

Travel enough, and you encounter a lot of elevators. This simple device can offer some interesting user experience lessons. Some are bizarre ones, like the incomprehensible control system I described in Don’t Redesign Your Elevator! The other day, in a perfectly fine Southern California hotel, I found elevators whose control panels all showed a virtually identical wear pattern. In every one of the four different elevators, the white paint was rubbed off the “L” marking the Lobby floor.

It’s not hard to come up with something new. It’s hard to come up with something new that people want.

I think that is kind of the separation point between having lots of ideas or creating lots of stuff, and just having maybe one thing that really resonates with people that they have that Ah-Ha moment when they see it.

~ James Carnes, Global Creative Director, Senior Vice President of Design at Adidas.

The Consumer Electronics Show (CES) can be an intoxicating experience. Drinking in all the devices on the show floor, it’s easy to be dazzled by cool features, brilliant designs, and products you never even dreamed of. Speakers captivate your imagination as they describe bold visions and demo the newest products.

The reason large parts of the corporate Internet is boring, difficult and of little direct use / effect is because we are unnecessarily complicating it. The Internet should be one thing: simple.

This is the second part of my presentation The next 80%, find the first part here: Part 1: Introduction.

Fred Wilson writes an interesting post about what he calls the common 'web/mobile laws of physics', making the observation that many of the tech services and companies they see as VCs exhibit similar ratios between the number of registered user or downloads (if it's a mobile app) the service has, the number of monthly and daily active users, and the maximum number of concurrent users (for those with a real time component). The 30/10/10 ratio runs:

I finally found time to cash in on one of my Google+ invites after taking a much needed vacation. My initial assessment? Google has actually figured out how humans work, so mark Google+ as one to watch and ignore the pundits that are telling you it's no threat to Facebook.