Month: July 2020

Luigi is Real

Post author By Jeff Clark
Post date July 30, 2020

It’s been insanely hot here this week. My lawn makes me sad, but my little garden in the back is growing really well. Let me know if you would like more information, and how many hours you have to talk about it.

In the meantime, here are some things I really enjoyed this week.

I am currently obsessed with the Nintendo Gigaleak. Obsessed with the Gigaleak, especially the debug tools and early development artifacts. It’s especially cool seeing how the sausage of my youth was made. That’s a weird sentence to type.
Matthew Ball wrote up a long piece about how we shouldn’t compare Nintendo’s apparent strategy to Disney’s “Disney as a Service” strategy. It’s similar, but not the same because Nintendo is Nintendo (and is happy about it).
The NYTimes has a pretty good series about how people spend their Sundays. 50cent’s sunday routine is work, workout … and more work.
Free Seed With (No) Purchase: E-Comm is a rough-and-tumble business, and scammers will do anything (including mailing random people random seeds that they didn’t order) just to trick the algorithms into promoting their stores. It’s called “brushing”.
Most of the Deadspin writers quit last year, but have combined forces again to create Defector. It’s got a cool business model, and a writer-first culture – including the ability to change the editor-in-chief at any time with a 2/3 vote. I’m going to wait to see what their hockey coverage is like before throwing my money at them.
Speaking of: hockey’s back, baby! The NHL is kicking off their playoffs in two Canadian bubbles. And it sounds perfectly fine.

Tags brushing, deadspin, defector, disney, gigaleak, nhl, nintendo

Reading List

Release the Kraken

Post author By Jeff Clark
Post date July 24, 2020

The Seattle Kraken logo and jersey is great. No white anywhere on the home jersey (supposedly deliberate: “no white, no surrender”).
It’s surprising to me that we don’t hear more about the progress being made on a Coronavirus vaccine, but there are more than 100 in development, with four in the latest stage. Makes me sleep a little better at night.
A colleague shared a brief way of thinking about product development opportunity cost. Being able to justify $1m in additional revenue per new team member puts an objective lens on a strangely subjective process.
Same colleague, similar topic. The Four Laws of Software Economics. It’s so easy to be nice and mish-mash opinions together into a plan forward, so “strategy requires judgement” may be my professional mantra for a little while.
I can’t get “What’d I Miss” out of my head. In fact, I can’t get the entire Hamilton soundtrack out of my head. Since seeing it for the first time on July 5th and making it my running playlist, my average running pace has dropped 31 seconds per mile.
It looks like it’s going to be a fantastic weekend to be on (or near) the water around here, even if we have to dress a little differently this year. Summer is in full swing.

Tags beachplease, hamilton musical, hockey jersey design, nhl, product development, seattle kraken, software economics

Design Usability

Overlooking UX is Overlooking Your Customers

Post author By Jeff Clark
Post date July 23, 2020

UX design is hard, regardless of platform. This is a job that most people don’t truly understand.

A UX designer’s job isn’t to make the experience “pretty” or “nice”, it’s to make the experience usable. To guide the users to take the actions that the business needs them to take in order to solve the user’s problem.

You can spot a great UX designer a mile away.

A great UX designer understands what’s important in the interface. A great UX designer understands the typical workflows and maturity of their existing (and potentially next-up) users. A great UX designer deeply understands the problems that their users want their solution to help solve.

A great UX designer understands their user beyond the app. They know how and when and where to best reach them. They understand what phrases connect with their users and when to use them.

A great UX designer understands what’s possible “under the hood”. They know what the front-end and back-end are capable of. They know what devices their users use and tailor the experience to that.

And all of this while strengthening existing branding and interface consistency.

A great UX designer is an invaluable partner to their product and engineering counterparts.

UX design is not an easy job to understand, and it’s not an easy job to do. But it’s certainly more than most companies give it credit for.

And if you overlook the importance of a great UX designer, you’re overlooking your customers.

Tags designer, ux design

Tech

“Screen Time” Isn’t Always Bad

Post author By Jeff Clark
Post date July 21, 2020

The world is a tricky place for adults, even when there’s not a pandemic. I get exhausted (physically or mentally) and just need to zone out. While I know it’s not the most productive use of my time, I give myself a pass to stare at Netflix or my Nintendo Switch at night.

So why is it that I feel bad about letting my kid “zone out” in front of the iPad occasionally? Why does it feel weird to tell other parents that he can control an iPad, or use a trackpad? These are valuable skills in a human in 2020.

Or, despite being unbelievably proud of his ability to do so, why do I always feel a little awkward telling my friends that he’s beaten Super Mario Odyssey?

I’d rather my kid watch a show on PBS than a show on Amazon, Netflix or cable. At least I know I won’t need to screen it beforehand, and it’s educational in one way or another.

I’d rather my kid watch a space shuttle launch on Youtube than a cartoon on PBS. This may let us have a conversation about space and rockets and science using real life examples and the ability to go deeper if we want to.

I’d rather my kid play Super Mario Odyssey than watch most videos on Youtube. Nobody would argue that good hand-eye coordination and logic that are valuable tools to strengthen early.

I’d almost always rather my kid play outside with his friends than look at a screen, but in a world where screens are ubiquitous and information is infinite, we shouldn’t be so definite on the idea of screen time always being “bad”.

Everyone, regardless of age, sometimes just need to chill out. Why do we think it’s easier for a kid to be able to understand and interpret everything?

ps: if you like space stuff, listen to the 13 Minutes to the Moon podcast

Tags 13 minutes to the moon podcast, amazon video, nintendo switch, PBS, space shuttle launch, super mario odyssey, youtube

Product Management

Confirmation Bias Is a Profitable Business

Post author By Jeff Clark
Post date July 20, 2020

There’s always a market to confirm what people want to hear.

Confirmation bias is real. Especially now, when we’re all under this new (and seemingly never-ending) existential stress between the pandemic, social uprising and politics. Right now, few people want to read articles that frustrate or upset them. So, you look for things that make you happy – by confirming some belief you have.

Content creators know this works. Just look at the titles of this article as an example: With Safety Measures in Place, Students Need Sports and Arts for Mental and Emotional Wellness.

Now, regardless of whether or not you agree with this take, you can tell who this is written for. The target audience for this is the parent, teacher or coach who wants to get back to a normal fall.

The article is written by the executive director of an organization with a vested interest in sports returning.

(To be clear, I am not stating my opinion about this article, just using it as an example.)

Confirmation bias isn’t just for articles and blog posts. Here are a few others that use confirmation bias as a business model:

US News and World Report college reports. “best bargains” or “best business schools” or whatever. If your school isn’t on the list, who cares? If it is, it’s NEWS! They know this, and give every school the ability to appear on some list by creating multiple lists of different types of schools.
Who’s Who – I think we all got one of these letters in high school. Nobody, literally nobody, buys this book to see who else is in it. You buy it to see yourself listed and to confirm that you are indeed special. (Sometimes called vanity publishing, which I learned while typing this.)

Scam or not, there are huge businesses which prove that confirmation bias is a profitable business.

Look no further than Facebook.

$70 billion in ad-based revenue in one year. Ad impressions that are monetized by engagement. Engagement that is strengthened when you spend more time on the site. And what keeps people on the site? Seeing what they want to see, and seeing things that make them happy!

If that’s not confirmation (hah) that confirmation bias can make a huge business, even Twitter made $3.5 billion in ad-based revenue in one-year. Billion! With a B!

Look, the takeaway from this is that feeding into confirmation bias can be a good and profitable move for business.

The other, more-nuanced takeaway from this though, is that revenue-led confirmation bias is going to impact the way information is generated and consumed for a long time.

It’s up to you to decide if that market is big enough to take advantage of, and if that’s a market you want to address in the first place.

Tags bias, confirmation, facebook, marketing, twitter, whos-who