The following is a brief summary of the session that Former Feedburner folks Matt Shobe and John Zeratsky (I need to spend some time with that guy sometime) put on at TECH cocktail Conference 08.
Without further delay, here’s their tips on designing with users in mind!
Be Yourself – informal, fun
Be Fast – the perceived time when people see speed, they perceive the experience and organization as reliable. Image sprites can help this. Steve Souders is a good source on this topic.
Be Willing to Give Up Control – Give yourself permission to outsource certain tasks.
Be Engaged – have a blog, more importantly, be engaged in other blogs. It’s important to get the early adopters and beta testers to help you. It allows you to iterate.
Be Polite – Try to be considerate…from the users perspective.
Be Surprising – Do things outside the norm. Hackathon. Had new feature coding retreat days. Engage random users.
David — moved by the simplicity and universality of these statements… you could be recapping TechCocktail, or just plain words to live by. Found you via the buzz blog for TechCocktail (I was unable to attend, but know Frank well out here in DC and via JESS3 do some business with him as well!)… I then realized we have an alma mater in common (UChicago). Very small world.
I will have to add you to my read list for certain 🙂
Best,
L.