Tidbits

My thoughts boiled down into posts that can be read in a minute.

[pratagarwal]

How to write effective emails with a lot of content

Emails are frustrating and the main reasons for this are convoluted language and unorganized thoughts. Organization is key to a good email!

Next time you write an email that can be put into the following format, do so and see how grateful and responsive your reader will be!

The reason for XXX is:

Reason #1 in a nutshell Short explanation for the reader

Reason #2 in a nutshell Short explanation for the reader (optional)

Reason #3 in a nutshell Short explanation for the reader (optional)

Write a sentence about what exactly this implies for the reader or a CTA - Call to Action. The email should not be complete without this part.

--------------

Follow this format every time and people will love you for it! Read further for an example and reasons.

Reasons why people love this format:

Empathetic design Gives user the ability to choose based on their time

Clear thoughts Your thoughts are more clearly expressed as bullets, in your head as well as the readers

Easy to capture Readers can quickly review it, take notes and share if needed

  I'll cover the awesome benefits of this and dig into types of emails in future posts. If you have an important email that you want help reviewing, send it to me at [email protected] with "help me review this email" as the subject line.

PS: (Bonus) PS at the bottom of emails has a high read-rate.

[pratagarwal]

The Importance of being dependable

It was in college when I recognized the importance of being dependable and I wrote about it here. Since then, I have grown up a little bit.

Being dependable is essential to being a good employee, CEO, or person. Essentially, being dependable is half the battle in being a person accepted by the society and is almost essential for success. It's in our favor to be dependable and these are the traits that are looked upon a person who is dependable:

Punctuality - if you are MIA, well, you are missing out

Making Promises - Nobody is depending on you without your making promises

Effective Delivery on Promises - Quality work that does not need another person's verification

Communication - You should be reachable, approachable, and have the ability to at the least articulate your intent

What triggered me to write about this is finding out that the quality of your work is immensely important to everything you do. This means that always take care of the basics: spelling, grammar, structure, etc. I recenlty spent the last weekend going through a 100 pages of grammar and the rewards for it are unmeasurable.

[pratagarwal]

While I generally write something myself or summarize it, I found this particular article to be short and worthy of being skimmed entireley. As usual, enjoy! :)

[pratagarwal]

Marketing = Scaled Sales

I've been helping somebody with their market research, high-level strategy etc. for a new company that they are considering starting. Today, I got a text saying: "Think it's time to pause selling and focus on marketing".

My reply to him was: "...Marketing is just a scalable way of selling. Unless you've figured out your selling factors, marketing is hard to do right".

Before you ever consider marketing your product, you need to sell it to people. Because unless you sell it to people yourself first, you have probably ended up with a product that nobody wants to buy or certainly, a product that you won't know how to present well enough.

Marketing is all about messaging and scalability. So, before building a marketing strategy, make sure you have the following:

1. Understand what pain point your product solves

2. Who feels the pain the most?

3. If relevant, how much are they willing to pay for it?

4. What do they really value about your product (ASK THEM - this is the single most valuable question you can ever ask anybody)

5. What don't they like about your product

6. Listen to the how they address your product - those are the words you want to use while marketing

7. Get review/ recommendation from them before going out and marketing

This is also the reason you can never start with marketing, unless you have a problem that solves a VERY pressing/ frustrating problem. Problems that are very painful and critical are quicker to get response from marketing, others (which is 90%+ of the products) have a much harder time with this.

So, design your marketing to be a result of the learning from your sales efforts. Make marketing a way to scale your sales process!

I always welcome tidbit feedback, comments, discussions etc.

[pratagarwal]

Snowden remains a hero and this is his latest post talking about the difficulties he's facing in trying to get the justice this world deserves.

[pratagarwal]

Look up terms like “marriage equality” and “homosexuality” on Google to find the hidden rainbow in the search bar!

And that’s a great reason to keep using Google. Companies being vocal about marriage equality and putting funds into it deserve some respect for it. Apple has done a great job being progressive by choosing a homosexual CEO. Honestly, my recognizing this shows a lack of my ability to be completely indifferent to this. The future seems to be moving towards indifference towards people's sexual preference. I anticipate this not being too much of a conversation at all in the next generation with sexual discrimination being a subject of ridicule mostly. Kudos California, it's about time and congratulations to all my equal friends :).

[pratagarwal]

Emails are frustrating and the main reasons for this are convoluted language and unorganized thoughts. Organization is key to a good email!

Next time you write an email that can be put into the following format, do so and see how grateful and responsive your reader will be!

The reason for ... is:

Reason in a nutsheel  Read if the point is not clear from the nutshell keyword

Add some additional info to make you look good. The email should be complete without this part.

Follow this format every time and people will love you for it! Read further for an example. 

  Reasons why people love this format:

Empathetic design Gives user the ability to choose based on their time

Clear thoughts Your thoughts are more clearly expressed as bullets, in your head as well as the readers

Easy to capture Readers can quickly review it, take notes and share if needed

  I'll cover the awesome benefits of this and dig into types of emails in future posts. If you have an important email that you want help reviewing, send it to me at [email protected] with "help me review this email" as the subject line.

[pratagarwal]

Suggestion for @uber, promote coupons at the door of hotels, especially ones without "the whistle guy." This idea is probably equally relevant for other car-sharing platforms and I'm surprised that hotel concierge has not been a source of promotion for them. That reminds me, if you get an invite to a party by Uber, go to it. They know how to party.

[instagram]

[pratagarwal]

Instagram just introduced the Instagram for video. More than 30 funded startups are pivoting right now.

Why do I think this is it?

Fantastic UX. Very easy to make+publish a video. Mobile is all about speed and ease. Significant technical innovation went into compressing videos for high upload speeds.

Established audience  People already have a community they talk to on Instagram. This is just going to make it richer.

Theme has remained consistent  Instagram has stayed true to their "make experiences beautiful with ease" philosophy.

PS: I'm not a fan of Instagram because the filters mask the real beauty and integrity of photography. Read previous posts to see what design should really do!

[pratagarwal]

I wanted a monogram that contained my initials and design philosophy/ personality.

Initials My name is Pratyush Agarwal

Prat The monogram actually contains the name Prat, when read with an overlap and with upper-case letters

Minimalism I value minimalism so much that everything I own can be fit in 2 suitcases

Simplicity

[pratagarwal]

http://blog.uxpin.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/02/Importance-of-Great-Copy-in-UX.012-001.png

Design should help make words shine! To a designer, this might be obvious but it was never this clear to me.

I care about design a lot but have come to realize the purpose of design is to highlight the beauty of content, not mask it.

Some experiences:

Blogs I love 37signals blog because the writing is the highlight of everything. I have tried to achieve the same here.

Restaurants The service, menu, ambience are a part of the design to enhance the person's experience, but if the food doesn't speak for itself, then it looses it's substance

Similarly, a salespersons job is not to mask the value of a product. It's to match the required needs with the product or service. The job entails digging in to find the person or companies' greatest needs and only then to see if you have a product or team that can address those.

[pratagarwal]

Reason for this "blog"

I often don't feel like I'm being able to completely express myself in Twitter's 140 character limit. In addition, very often, the inspiration of the tweet can be quite revealing for me and hopefully interesting to others. This is an experiment to see if using Tumblr for my tweets will make them more insightful, interesting, and get more views.

The decision to continue this depend on

Value I receive Does limiting a post to a minute make me a better writer and helps with introspection and self-development?

Engagement from readers I'll be running A/B tests for this