SoundQuest

SoundQuest helps musicians to discover their sounds and connect with each other.

[soundquestco]

First Customer

I rented my first pedal for SoundQuest, and sold the pedal at the end of the rental period.  The entire process was very exciting for me because I was able to see my idea come to life.

My first customer had expressed interest in a distortion pedal.  I chose the Timmy pedal, a versatile and extraordinary sounding distortion pedal handmade by Paul Cochrane.  Also, in order to give a sense of surprise and discovery, I chose not to reveal the pedal name and maker until handing it over to the customer in a SoundQuest-branded box.  The customer ended up using the pedal in a gig and subsequently asked to purchase it.

I learned a couple lessons from this.  The request to purchase made me realize that I'll need to create a business plan that supports both rentals and purchase.  I also learned that curation can become a compelling part of this business, as some customers may be willing to pay for the expertise in identifying great sounding pedals.

My next step is to begin using Google Ads and Facebook Ads to attract my next customers.  I'll also need to begin building a site that helps to explain this business and to provide seamless online payment.

[soundquestco]

Landing Page

It's been over a month since the last post, and a lot has happened since then.

A couple weeks after completing the crowd source design contests for my logo, I enrolled in a 3-day workshop called Lean Startup Machine.  I learned and applied the principles of Lean Startup and began to understand the importance of customer validation.

Creating a landing page was one of the several key activities during the workshop.  Landing pages enable a startup to clearly define its product or service offering and to gauge the level of interest of people viewing the page.  It's also launchpad from which startups can reach out to customers and begin to engage.

I created my first landing page for SoundQuest at beta.soundquest.co and it looks like this:

Up next is to spread this page to my guitar-playing friends in order to find early customers whom I can work closely with to better understand how my business will operate and grow.  From there, I'll publish Google and Facebook Ads so that I can begin serving customers beyond my circle of friends.  Looking forward to working with the first customers of SoundQuest.

On a completely separate note, since the last time I created a blog post Yahoo acquired Tumblr.  So, I'm also looking forward to seeing how Tumblr evolves.

[soundquestco]

In Summary

Three weeks ago, I started an A/B test to compare the experience and end product of two crowdsource design services, 99designs and DesignCrowd.  I blogged about the contest setups, design reviews, customer service, and the final designs.

Since my day job is being a product owner, I feel very strongly about good user experience and function.  So, I'll summarize my comparison of 99designs and DesignCrowd in two ways: 1) how a contest holder can get the most out of using crowdsource design, and 2) how the design services themselves could be improved.

How to effectively use crowdsource design services:

Know what you want before you start.  This goes for everything from the type of deliverable (logo, brochure, website, etc.) to the values that you want the deliverable to represent.

Unless you're absolutely sure about a particular aesthetic element that you want, avoid giving instructions about specific features.  In other words, leave the creativity to the designers.  Just give them enough information about your theme, values, or functions, and let them be creative in how to represent it.

Continuously update your brief as soon as you learn about what you like and don't like.

99designs has the better user experience, hands down.  They also have a larger pool of designers.  In my case, 99designs gathered 2.5x more designs submissions than DesignCrowd.  Also, if you prefer to have designers viewing each others' work so that they get a sense of where your idea is going, then use 99designs.

DesignCrowd may not have an ideal user flow, but they offer a 'blind contest' by default.  In other words, designs are not publicly shared throughout the life of the project.  99designs offers this, too, but only to returning contest holders.

How crowdsource design services could be improved:

Responsive design.  These days, mobile is key.  The biggest issue I had when using both DesignCrowd and 99designs is that the mobile experience on both sites were less than desirable.  Responsive design is an absolute must if a contest holder is being notified on-the-go, and he/she attempts to access the design contest from a smartphone or tablet.

Configurable notifications.  Whether notifications are through email or a possible app, contest holders need complete control over how and when to be notified.  After launching my contest, DesignCrowd inundated me with emails, and there were very limited options for controlling emails.  Ideally, contest holders should be able to dictate when, how, and what to be notified about (e.g., immediate, periodic, or once-a-day email summaries of submissions)

Continuous workflow.  Organizing content and providing an efficient way to review, eliminate, and/or provide feedback will go a long way for contest holders.  The filtering and rating options on 99designs are much better than DesignCrowd, but both sites could be improved by thinking through when and why a user clicks the 'back' button or previously clicked links.  Ideally, good workflow should never force the contest holder to go back.

Recommendation & Recap:

If I had to recommend one site, it would be 99designs.  Everything from site experience to customer service is simply more refined than that of DesignCrowd.  For what it's worth, however, the logo which I will use for SoundQuest came from DesignCrowd.

In closing, I think crowdsource services are an incredible way of creating an accessible and affordable marketplace for digital services, such as design.  I had fun evaluating these two services, and it not only gave me two great designs, but it also provided me with an opportunity to learn about engaging user experiences and the crowdsource business model.  I hope that one day my business, SoundQuest, will be able to create an equally successful marketplace.

[soundquestco]

Final Designs

I just completed using both 99designs and DesignCrowd to find the logo for my business, SoundQuest.  The process of narrowing designs down definitely took some time, but I'm glad to finally share it.  Here's my thoughts on the design selection process.

When comparing the two services in terms of the final selection process, 99designs has an interface and a user flow that's easier to use.  They made it very easy to focus my time and energy on refining designs, simply by creating the 2nd round for the top 6 designers of my choice.  With DesignCrowd, the process of elimination works the same on the first day as it does on the last day, only that on last day my contest became flooded with last minute designs.

As far as stats goes, 99designs gathered 79 designers that produced 387 designs.  DesignCrowd gathered 29 designers that produced 159 designs.  To generalize the numbers, 99designs gets a contest holder approximately 2.5x more people and content than DesignCrowd, using the same amount of prize money.

Enough about the process and numbers.  Below are the winning designs.

From 99designs, reflect2r created this:

From DesignCrowd, Lancer created this:

The logo which I plan to brand my business with is the second one by Lancer from DesignCrowd.  When I look at the simplicity and boldness of Lancer's SQ logo, it feels like a strong brand.  The simple SQ itself could become a recognizable logo whether it's on the side of a box, at the top of a site, or an icon on a smartphone.

As for the logo from 99designs, there's no question that it's creative.  I like the hypnotic nature of the S and Q to form a speaker.  It's something that could be stared at and be appreciated.  But it also feels light-hearted.  In the end, the integrity and simplicity of the logo from DesignCrowd is how I want to represent my brand.

I'll wrap up my final thoughts in one last blog post.

[soundquestco]

Customer Service

In my day-to-day job, I'm never too far from my customer service team.  As a product manager, I'm constantly aware of how our team's product is perceived by customers, and I'm also aware of how much our customer service team becomes the face of our product.  With that said, I'd like to take some time to review the customer service of the two crowdsource design services I've been using recently, Design Crowd and 99designs.

DesignCrowd:

Shortly after I created my design project, I received an courtesy email from a customer service rep asking if I had any questions.  As luck would have it, I ran into an issue with my credit card getting rejected.  It turned out that DesignCrowd's payment provider was based in Australia, and my credit card company automatically rejected it.  The customer service rep assumed me that I wouldn't face issue if I retried payment through PayPal.  Sure enough, I was able to process payment.  However, it was somewhat disconcerting that an internet service couldn't accept my initial payment method.

DesignCrowd's customer service team also appears to be located in Australia, as it would typically take between 1/2 a day and a full day to receive a response back from their support team.  In addition, I did not have a dedicated rep handling all of my questions.  Instead, I had email conversations with three different individuals throughout my project.

99 designs:

The customer service experience from 99designs was much more responsive and personalized.  99designs has an office in San Francisco, so I was able to exchange messages quickly with a dedicated customer service rep on a weekday.  In addition, I was able to jump on a phone call with the same customer service rep, who provided insight into the crowdsource design process and answered a few of my questions on how my contest would work.

When I had one day left before my first round of 99designs was set to close, I received an email from the same customer service rep I had spoken to a few days before.  I asked for a 2-day extension, that she kindly granted, which enabled me to receive over a hundred additional designs, and allowed me to hone my design brief and continue providing feedback to designers.

In summary:

I believe 99designs' customer service is better than DesignCrowd's.  For starters, I had a smooth credit card transaction when signing up for 99designs.  I also found that the US-based presence of 99designs' customer support team made me feel more assured with the quality and brand of their company.  It's worth noting, however, that none of my questions for DesignCrowd were left unanswered.  When using either service, I always received an answer to my questions.

My next and last post around crowdsource design will be about the two winning logos which I selected just earlier tonight.  I'll then compare the overall process and the final results from each service.  Stick around...

[soundquestco]

Design Reviewing Process

Continuing on the topic of comparing two crowdsource design services, the design review process was the most intriguing and exciting part of this project.  99designs and DesignCrowd each have their strengths and weaknesses when it comes to the helping the contest holder manage a design project and interact with users.  (note: the functionalities that I discuss below are in place at the time of this writing)

Key differences:

1) Public/private viewing

DesignCrowd, by default, does not make design submissions public for other designers to see.  If you're the type of person who wants to work one-on-one with designers and avoid having designers influence one another, then DesignCrowd may suit your needs better.  By default, 99designs has an 'open' workspace where all designers' work is viewable.  The drawback to 99design's openness is that one designer work can have an impact on other designer.  As a result, sometimes the iterations and submissions within 99designs begin to use the similar concepts.  99designs does offer a "blind test" (similar to how DesignCrowd works), but it is only available to folks who have previously held a contest on 99designs.  If you know exactly the style you want, 99designs may help you explore those concepts very quickly.  If you are open to a variety of ideas, however, DesignCrowd manages to bring unique and diversified ideas to the table.

2) Ratings

99designs has the better rating system by enabling 1-5 stars rating, comments, the option to eliminate.  DesignCrowd only lets users send feedback, add comments, or eliminate.  In addition, DesignCrowd's feedback options are limited to "under consideration" "best design so far" or "will be selected if revised".  Even though the selection of these values is not required, it still feels limiting to use just those 3 options.  In fact, at one point I selected "will be selected if revised" because that's how I felt at that time.  My sentiment changed over the next few days, but the designer began to ask me when I was going to award the contest to him, a situation that's uncomfortable for both parties.

3) Workflow

99designs has the better workflow, but both services can be improved around helping contest holders to be more efficient in navigating, rating, and eliminating designs.  What 99designs does well is enable a user to filter results by status (active, rated, unrated, eliminated, withdrawn) or by designer.  Furthermore, when I viewed designer-specific submissions, 99designs displayed a history of my conversation with that specific designer.  DesignCrowd does not have the ability to see all designs submitted by a single designer, which in my mind, fails to help me realize the improvements and revision history of a designer.

4) Contest parameters

99designs uses a multi-stage contest, in which the contest holder must narrow down the qualified designs to 6 or less people after 3-4 days.  From there, the second phase begins and the selected designers continue to submit new work.  DesignCrowd doesn't do a multi-stage project, which lends itself to receiving work from procrastinators that submit designs at the last minute, and leave little room for feedback.

Tips for contest holder:

-Set aside a specified amount a time each day to go through your design submissions.  Otherwise, you'll find yourself with a pile of work that you may not be able to dedicate your full attention to.

-If using 99designs, save your 4 & 5 stars for part 2.  Only use 0-3 in the first round.  Eliminate designs on the 2 or 3rd day, not the very first day.

-Be nice.  Designers' time is just as valuable as yours, and while some designer may not resonate with your style, I think they'll appreciate gratefulness by the contest holder.

-Update your brief as you learn more and more about what you like and don't like.  I wouldn't be surprised if there are designers who only begin looking at your contest on the 2nd or 3rd day.  Updating your brief frequently makes sure that new designers can get quickly up to speed.

All in all, the user experience of 99designs is much better than DesignCrowd.  However, in both tools, I found myself clicking the 'back' button a lot so that I can get back to previous views of all contest submissions.  What both services need to improve upon is continued workflow, where the contest holder can take an action (rating or eliminating) and then move forward to take more actions.  

Stay tuned for more reviews of both crowdsource design services.

[soundquestco]

Contest Setup

Over the past few weeks, I've been using two crowdsource design services, DesignCrowd and 99designs, to create the logo for my startup business, SoundQuest.  In this post, I'll compare these services in terms of their contest setup processes.

Overall, both services are relatively easy to set up and request similar information from the contest holder.  The requested information includes: name of project/logo, description of organization, intended audience, logo text, logo style examples, values to communicate, must-haves, nice-to-haves, and should-not-haves.  That said, there are a few differences and tips which I'll point out below.

Design Crowd:

DesignCrowd charges a service fee of $40 to post your project.  But, a quick Google search returned a coupon that brought it down to $1.  I prefer 99designs' choice of not charging the contest holder, which makes the contest holder feel like his/her money is either going to specific designer or towards additional design contest services (e.g., featured listing, design blog promotion, etc.).

DesignCrowd enables the project creator to post a "participation payment", which is intended to entice top designer to receive a bone payment (typically $20) immediately upon submitting a design. The trick with this, however, is that within project search results pages, the prize money is displayed as the award for 1st place PLUS all participation money.  In my case, my first prize was $370, but designers are enticed with $410.  It feels like false advertising since it's completely possible for both participation payments to be awarded, leaving only the original $370 up for grabs.  But, the ability to entice a top designer is cool, and it's a feature that is only available to Gold members of 99designs.

99designs:

During contest setup, the contest holder is encouraged to choose the type of logo (e.g., work mark, pictorial mark, letter mark).  In the case of using 99designs, the contest holder also has a section where he/she can select from a variety of pre-defined set of logos for which the designers will draw inspiration.  DesignCrowd falls short on this feature, as they only allow contest holders to upload their own images.

99designs puts a premium on fast designs projects, charging roughly $40, $60, and $80 for 3-day, 2-day, or 1-day contests.  DesignCrowd's 2-day contest is the same price as the 5-, 10-, and 15-day.

Notes and Suggestions for contest holder:

Guarantee your payment if you're serious and committed to receiving a design.  The guarantee will significantly increase the number submitted designs.

If possible, time the start of your project so that your contest ends on a weekend.  This will give you enough time to crank through the tons of designs that come though in the final hours.

Establish your basic business mission and values before you post your contest.  Your designers will appreciate the clarity and will find creative ways to represent your values.

Resist the urge to write out your own design ideas.  I did this for the first few days, and received a very limited selection of designs.  Once I took out my written request for a specific design, I found it much more exciting to see the creativity that people have.

When it comes to the contest setup process, there's not a clear winner of one service over another.  Both services get the job done: write up a brief, put up a prize, let the designs roll in.  But if I had to choose one, I'd pick 99designs because it doesn't charge a service fee for posting my contest.

Up next: Design Reviewing Process

[soundquestco]

Crowdsource Design

10 days ago, I began using crowdsource design to create my logo, and I decided to use two competing services, DesignCrowd and 99designs.  I created identical contests, put up equivalent prize money on each site, and dedicated equal time and effort to both sites.  My goal was to see which one gave me the better result, and to evaluate the user experience and services of each site.

My full-time job is being a product owner at a technology company.  That said, I work with designers and developers every day, and I felt very compelled to see how these two design sites operate.  My design contests will end tonight on both sites, and in the upcoming week I will pick a final design from each site and blog about my experiences using each service.

The main areas in which I will compare the two sites are:

Contest setup

Design reviewing process

Customer service

Final design

Using these two sites over the last week and half has been really fun, and I look forward to sharing my experiences for those out there that are interested in crowdsource design.

[soundquestco]

Definition

This is how I've defined SoundQuest to date.

Mission Statement: SoundQuest helps musicians to discover their sounds and connect with each other.

Slogan: Discover your sound.

Principles: Connection, Innovation, Simplicity, Quality, and Service

[soundquestco]

Next...

Earlier this week, Google announced that they completed their selection of the Glass Explorers and that they would be contacting winners over the following few days.  In the same post, they also mentioned that they received a lof of applications from businesses, and that they decided not to grant any of them into the Explorer program.  I think that effectively rules out my application since I claimed that I would use it to live-blog and document the creation of my startup.

But, the overall process was fun.  Even though my Glass application wasn't very clear and my video was amateurish, I learned a ton and enjoyed myself along the way.

Up next: the selection of my logo for SoundQuest.  It took a little longer than expected to define my business principles, but I've got them now and I've begun using crowd source design.  I'll blog the details in the next post.

Stay tuned. ;)

[soundquestco]

These guitars look awesome.  I like that it's a small shop operation to build quality instruments.  One day, I want people to discover this kind of instrument using SoundQuest.  But right now, I'm still trying to figure out the business model for discovering boutique guitar pedals.

[soundquestco]

Brand

For the next couple of weeks, I'll be focusing on defining the brand of SoundQuest.  In particular, brand definition will be twofold: values and logo.  After refining the vision of my business, I need to create a set of values that can serve as a reference for the logo design and, more importantly, serve as a set of principles for developing my business.  Then, I plan to use a crowdsource design service, in hopes that I can leverage the talents of people across the world in a competitive and creative process for logo design.

That said, my current goal is to have the values and logo of SoundQuest defined in two weeks.

[soundquestco]

Application Submitted

Well, I finally finished.  I submitted an application of what I would do #ifihadglass.  A recent browse through the Google Glass page showed a ton of ideas pouring in, as everyone (myself included) has been submitting their ideas at the 11th hour.

The actual process of creating my Google Glass short film was really fun.  I had never done video editing before, much less recorded video with an iPhone hanging an inch in front of my face.  Even my friends at work pitched in by allowing me to record audio of them chanting and cheering.  And, the lead designer on my team drew some incredible point of view pictures.  Most importantly, though, I am super appreciative of my wife, Elaine, for encouraging and supporting me over the last few days as I buried myself in creating my idea.

I'll leave you all with a picture of my ridiculous contraption for creating my Google Glass video.

[soundquestco]

Glass

Last night over dinner, my friends told me about a campaign that was launched this past week for Google Glass in which applicants can submit their ideas of what they would do if they had Glass.

Coincidentally, before dinner, I had told my wife about an article (http://www.entrepreneur.com/article/225462) I had read and how I was inspired to create a promotional video showing the perspective of me packing a pedal into a box and sending it out, then showing how a musician receives it, uses it in the studio, takes it to a gig, and then sends it back.  I think it'd be a great way to illustrate what my service is.

So, when my friends mentioned the Google Glass news, I decided to apply.  Deadline is 2/27.

Stay tuned.

[soundquestco]

Status Update

It's hard to believe it's only been three weeks.  I feel like I've spent a lot of time thinking and working on creating my business.  Since I only talked about the idea in my first post last week, I'll lay out what I've done so far and where I'm going.

I've got a few things right now: an idea, a domain, and a Google Apps account.  I've also got a list of my next actions for building my site and bringing in initial customers.  For now, soundquest.co will redirect to this Tumblr blog until I've launched my the first page of my website.

Using Squarespace, the first iteration of my site will be a page to share information about my business and collect contact information.  Using Google Ads, I plan to direct search traffic to my site, and build a short list of potential customers.  On my site I will have a form that asks 3 questions: What's your email? What your zip code? What's the first pedal you want to try?  With answers to these three things, I'll be able to start my business in the SF Bay Area, and build my inventory of boutique guitar pedals that are in demand.  From there, I'm hoping that I can learn first hand about my customers' needs and their experiences with my business.

[soundquestco]

The Idea

A couple weeks ago, I had an idea.  What if I could create a service that allowed musicians to try out the best gear, at an affordable price, in the comfort of their own home?

As a guitarist, I'm usually checking out the latest and greatest in pedals.  The problem I always run into is that the coolest pedals are expensive.  On top of that, most large music retailers don't carry these pedals in stock.  Even if they did, sitting in a gigantic store where strangers could be listening to me learn how to use a new pedal is not conducive to experimentation and, frankly, it doesn't help my purchase decision.  Lastly, this pedal might only used a few times, if I'm laying down a track in the studio or taking it to a gig.  It would be great if I could try out the best guitar pedals for a week or two, and then choose to buy it.

That's the problem I want to solve.  I did some scouring of the internet for services like the one I want to create.  There are, but very few, and they're all in the early stages of development.

So, I'm setting out to build a small business.  The first question I need to solve is: Are there other musicians out there who would find value in this service?  If so, this could be a fun business to build.

-Brian