Startuple

Startup. Couple. Startuple! Following the *extra* lean principle. Designing bespoke solutions to our own first world problems, one dinner at a time. About

[startuple]

Monki Gras 2016

Our second Monki Gras, and it just keeps getting better! The theme this year was homebrew - the joy of side projects. A few of our favourites...

Fabulous Beasts! It’s like... augmented reality jenga? Anyway, it’s on Kickstarter, so, let’s make it happen.

Emojideck is the presentation tool we’ve all been waiting for: no bullshit, just emoji 😻 😻 😻

Special shoutout to the bot that so perfectly appropriated the monkigras hashtag. We will now think Beyonce every time we see blockchain, just as we mentally substitute snake people for millennials.

Tasting notes:

Toast Ale - the best thing since sliced bread, literally

Pomegranite ketchup - it exists, and it’s delicious

Alpine Wines - the Alps’ best kept secret

Looking forward to next year!

[startuple]

Hato Press Workshop

We’ve been wanting to try Risograph printing for ages, so we were very excited to join Hato Press for one of their regular workshops. We chose the two colour taster session: it’s ideal for beginners, as they take you through the manual colour separation process - no Photoshop required!

It’s a good idea to show up with a design in mind, in case inspiration fails to strike you on the day. I took a small sketchbook with me, and selected two recent sketches to replicate: one of my niece, and one from a friend’s wedding.

The next decision is which two colours to select. Soya-based riso inks are available in a limited palette, though you can layer pigments to achieve blended tones. I went for a combination of black and gold, hoping that would give enough contrast for a simple design. Having laid down the outlines on a base layer, you need to block out each colour on a separate layer of tracing paper. You can use different media to vary the textures: I used a Sharpie for the hard edges, and soft pencil to fade the gold into a subtler skin tone.

Once the sheets were ready to go, our print wizards fired up the mighty Risograph, loaded the ink drums, helped us line up the layers, and ran off our first copies.

Here, the magic, happening:

We each ended up with ten test pages, and ten final prints. It was super fun to compare results and swap copies with other illustrators!

Maybe next time we’ll give the four colour workshop a try. Or Christmas cards...

Thanks for an awesome afternoon, Hato Press!

[startuple]

🎂 Startuple is one year old! 🎂

[startuple]

Echo

We’ve seen a lot of sites that encourage recycling, swapping, and skill sharing, but Echo is the first to barter time. Short for Economy of Hours, the basic concept is that an hour of any person’s time is worth equal to an hour of another person’s time. The platform allows you to trade time with others, earning time by providing services, and spending time by receiving them. 

We thought the best way to test the system would be to put up a listing! Having had so much fun at the last hackathon, we put up a listing offering a product design and prototyping sprint. Echo could be a great place to find interesting pro bono projects, giving back to the local community while also meeting new people and learning new skills. 

[startuple]

ReHacking

We teamed up for Unilever’s sustainability hackathon ReHack. The brief was pretty open - loose categories around health and wellbeing, sustainability and the environment, and supporting local businesses.

The first thing we did was rummage around in the Unilever goody bag. What delights would we find within? Laundry liquid, tea bags, deodorant, shower gel and wet wipes. Woo! Would we actually use any of these products? No, not really. Maybe the wet wipes, at a push. Why?

We started thinking about how we make purchase decisions. For the tea bags, it’s a taste preference. For skincare and cleaning products, it’s all about the labels. See, French reads ALL the labels, to find out if there are any nasty chemicals. For example, he came home with Korres shower gel because it has a formula fact sheet on every single product.

Impressed as I am by this dedication to transparency, I’m still completely clueless about these ingredients. What are parabens? Are they good or bad? Why is mineral oil a bad thing? What health risks are associated with these chemicals?

Normally, I don’t worry too much about this kind of thing. I just assume that if a product is stocked by the main retailers, it can’t be too bad for you. But every now and again you read something terrifying, like the Vice story of the model who lost a leg due to toxic shock syndrome, and you realise it’s actually really important to know the facts about your everyday purchases.

So, where do you go to educate yourself? There are plenty of scaremongering blogs telling you to avoid everything, but there’s no way of knowing which sources are credible. Why doesn’t Unilever do the research, and publish rankings for all their products? And not just their products, but all their competitors, in every category? This information could help people find the right product for their priorities: is it pet safe, hypoallergenic, fair trade, or sustainably sourced?

We sketched out how this might look as an app: Soapbox! First, rank your priorities: safety, sustainability, ethics and value. Then find your current product, either by searching or scanning the barcode. Your personalised product score is displayed, along with the breakdown of how it ranks in each category. 

You can then see which products in the same category score higher, and get a free or discounted sample.

We figured we could use something like Adimo to add products to the online shopping basket of your preferred supermarket, so we didn’t need to worry about transactions and delivery. Plus, we only had three minutes to pitch this, so no time for details!

Anyway *SPOILER ALERT* we didn’t win. However, given that at least three or four teams out of thirty came up with ideas based on using ranking/scoring to help consumers make better choices, it’s probably a pretty promising area for Unilever to explore.

[startuple]

Algodeck

Playing cards are kind of amazing. They’re the perfect size to put in your pocket, pleasing to shuffle, and they can store a tweet-length idea. This is why Artefact cards are so awesome.

French was playing around with some ideas to help solve a problem he was stuck on. He started sketching out some algorithms, data structures and concepts on cards, for inspiration. By flicking through, pairing and combining ideas, he got himself un-stuck. Maybe this approach could work for other people, too?

So we drew up a list of around 50 concepts that might make a useful deck of cards. We have a shortlist of 10 to prototype and test.

Know any good illustrators?

[startuple]

From gifs to gifts

Since we started thinking about gif messaging, a lot has happened. The magnificent Relay app, which I loved, got bought by Kik, and disappeared into the black hole where good ideas go to die.

Facebook Messenger Platform launched, effectively rendering all efforts at developing rival apps based on unique features utterly futile. It’s like they’re saying: “Yeah, build whatever you like, as long as we get to keep the social graph. Later, suckers!” 

However, if you can’t beat ’em, you may as well join ‘em. How hard could it be to make a simple gif messaging service as a Messenger Platform app? Obviously Giphy for Messenger is way ahead of us there, but maybe we could do something slightly different.

We came back to the old Gifittome idea, which we had originally imagined tapping into Twitter. How about taking that idea of the gif as a gift, and experimenting with other digital gifts we could combine it with?

Say it’s your friend’s birthday, and you want to do more than the lazy “HBD!” Facebook wall post. You might want to send them an awesome gif. It’s surprisingly hard to find really beautiful, interesting gifs amidst all the celebrity reactions shit. Is Snow White blowing out candles really the best we can do?

And what if you want to go one better? Send a song, video, game or ebook that you know they’ll love! Let’s see where this goes.

[startuple]

Playing with Porridge

I never really liked porridge. It was one of those morning rituals I associated with winter’s darkest days, like de-icing the car before school.  My mother liked to make it very salty, which probably didn’t help.

I never had much enthusiasm for breakfast of any kind, until French started making it for me. In the last few years, we’ve experimented with LBJ jam on sourdough toast, moving on to muesli, before growing into granola. This winter felt like a good time to give porridge another chance.

First of all, we went for the classic: chunky rolled oats boiled in full fat milk, nutmeg and cinnamon, stirred through with a spoon of local E8 honey from Barnes & Webb.

Thinking back to the amazing Thai sticky rice dessert we had in Singapore last year, we had a go with some more exotic flavours: mango and coconut milk porridge!

And then the Porridge Cafe opened. So I guess porridge has already jumped the shark, guys. When a pop-up is selling delicious banana, almond and cocoa nib creations for just shy of a fiver, I think we can all safely say that porridge is over. Roll on spring ; )

[startuple]

Arduino Spaceship Interface

It’s not much to look at, but with some cardboard and a bit of imagination, it could almost be something from the orginal series of Star Trek (or, alternatively, Spaceteam).

[startuple]

Dining on Arduino

This little bundle of fun has been sitting on our shelf since September, and gazing reproachfully at us all the while. So, in the dark days of January, we blew the dust off it, and finally got round to unboxing.

The Arduino Starter Kit teaches you everything you ever wanted to know about electronic tinkering. Basically, it's Lego for grown ups. After about 20 minutes of fiddling about: success! On/off.

[startuple]

MozFest 2014

What did we expect? A two day celebration of open web culture, gadgets and geekery. What did we get? Well, lost, mostly. Ravensbourne is an absolute maze, but a fantastic venue for a DIY event like this. It felt a bit like a giant school science fair, and that's no bad thing.

Favourite session: building a mesh network messaging app with a Firefox webIDE mobile simulator :D

Award for cutest conference outfits goes to Erase All Kittens, with their matching little white kitten capes <3

Did I mention there was a mini-blimp?

A video posted by Sinead Doyle (@smcdoyle) on Oct 26, 2014 at 10:50am PDT

"We arrived as individuals, we left as a community" - a lovely sentiment. Closer to the truth: we arrived as individuals, we left with free Firefox phones ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

[startuple]

Tabulating the tabs

The results of our rigorous research...

*drumroll*

So, what did we learn?

We have way more "to-do" tabs than "keep" tabs 

Tabs tend to persist either one day, or stay open for ages

About half our tabs relate to a current project, the rest are evenly split between reading/watching/listening/booking/buying

It looks like we need help prioritizing our non-urgent to-dos. The urgent stuff tends to get done after a day or so, but the less urgent tasks slide.  If we can plan a time to do these tasks, and set some reminders, maybe we can keep on top of all the tabs?

[startuple]

'Keep' tabs. Keep. Tabs. Keep tabs? Keep Tabs?! KeepTabs™

SD

[startuple]

Our first MVH for Gif It To Me

We decided to give Gif It To Me a test! We made our first Minimum Viable Hack (MVH). Our rules for an MVH are that it should be made in a day and have the essence of the product. It should be so simple that each user flow can fit in a 2 MB gif!

Gif It To Me is an app that allows you to request a gif from your friend. When your friend receives the invitation he can then find an appropriate gif and send it to you.

Here are the two user flows of Gif It To Me:

Requesting a gif:

Responding to a request:

We tested between friends and it seems to be addictive. It's not perfect because the flow is too slow (copy and paste the link, refresh to see the gif).

We were thinking about how we can push this hack further. When using Gif It To Me you signal to your friends that you are bored, sad or that you are thinking of them. This request for attention can be delightful and make you both happy. How could we extend that? Some ideas...

GIFting. Allow people to include a real gift with the gif. For example every week we could select a product we like and let people buy and give it to their friend. We thought about doing something with itch.io. I like the idea of curating small digital gifts that people are likely to send to their friends or ask their friends to buy for them.

GIF generously. When responding to a gif request we could allow users to include a small donation to a charity of their choice.

[startuple]

If it doesn't fit in a gif it's not worth shipping it.

FH

[startuple]

Tracking the tabs

We had lunch at Mr Buckley's - a fine dining establishment on Hackney Road.

Over a delicious Sunday roast, we discussed how we could get more insight into why our tabs stay open. Is it a matter of filing information, or doing our to-dos? The interviews helped, but we need to better understand our behaviour and motives.

We decided to do a 5 day study of our tab lifecycle. At the end of each day, we will record, for each new tab:

URL

Date opened

Date closed (when we finally close it)

Category (e.g. music, work, holidays etc.)

Label (keep or do)

Comments (why it is still open)

Hopefully this will help us discover which problem is more pressing: filing or doing. In the meantime, we'll take a look at the other tools available to manage our tabs, to work out if there is space for a new solution.

[startuple]

The trouble with tabs...

We both agreed we have too many tabs. But how does it happen? What does it mean? When does it become a problem? And how can we solve it?

Time for some user research. And as we're the only people around, we'll start by interviewing ourselves. Ahem.

SD: So, umm, tell me a little about yourself. What keeps you busy?

FH: I code things, and I draw things. Mainly monkeys.

SD: How many tabs do you have open now?

FH: I use Chrome and Firefox at the same time. I use Chrome for websites that use Flash and for reading documentation. I have 37 tabs open in Chrome. Firefox is my primary browser. I have my Google, Facebook and Twitter accounts signed in, so it's where I do everything else. I have 458 tabs spread across 5 spaces.

SD: What are spaces?

FH: Spaces is a little feature hidden in Firefox. They allow you to group tabs by theme, and switch between spaces for different projects.

SD: And how do you group them? By project?

FH: When I feel that I have too may tabs, I open a new space. This is my shameful secret.

SD: And why is it shameful?

FH: I like things to be tidy. It makes me feel stressed to have all of these unread things. The fear of missing out.

SD: So why do you keep so many tabs open? Why not just close them all?

FH: Sometimes I want to read something, but I want to keep it for later. Sometimes I finish reading something, but I know I'll want to read it again. For example if I see a new JavaScript library, I want to be reminded of it next time I start a project. When I see something inspiring, I want to keep it open. If I leave a tab open, it allows me to keep track of this thing, as an object.  It reminds me that I want to see a movie, book tickets to that gig, order something on Amazon...

SD: When do you close a tab?

FH: I close a tab when I think it won't be useful to me anymore. I close the tab when I've finished reading or booking or buying.

SD: So, on average, how many tabs do you open per day, and how many tabs do you close per day?

FH: I think on average I end each day with 5 more tabs.

SD: So, what do you think is the real problem? Why are your tabs growing?

FH: Whenever I have some free time, it takes me so long to review all the things I want to do, that I run out of time to do things.

SD: So the number of things you want to do each day exceeds the number of things you can actually achieve each day. Hence the chronic tab creep.

Ok, my turn to answer...

FH: So, what do you do?

SD: Well, I work at a digital agency. We use Gmail and Google Docs for everything, so I have one Chrome window signed in with my work identity, and one Chrome window signed in to my personal identity, with all my social accounts. I'll then have another Chrome window, or occasionally Firefox to log into a client's analytics data or social accounts. 

FH: And how many tabs do you have open?

SD: I currently have about 30 tabs open in my work Chrome, another 40 or so open in my personal Chrome, about 4 in Firefox, and that's not even counting other devices, like my mobile and iPad... My work laptop often struggles to keep up.

FH: Why do you leave things open?

SD: In my work Chrome, it's often multiple Google Docs that I need to refer to while I'm working. Sometimes I keep them open like a to do list, to remind what I need to finish. In my personal Chrome, it's usually links I've opened from social: things to read, songs to listen to, games I want to play...

FH: Do you use bookmarks?

SD: I used to *love* Delicious. I tagged and saved everything for years, until Yahoo basically destroyed it. (Not that I'm bitter or anything. Actually, yes, yes I am bitter.) After I gave up on that, I never really got back into the process of saving and filing links. I've thought about trying Evernote, but the price put me off.

FH: How do you keep track of things you want to be reminded of?

SD: I tend to use other people, to be honest. If I see tickets I want to book, I'll share it with my friends who might want to go. Then I close the tab. If they get back to me, it reminds me to reopen the tab and book. If no one's interested, I'll let it go. Similarly, if something is interesting enough for me to share, I'll usually tweet it, then close it. So I'll often find myself looking back through my timeline thinking "I'm sure I tweeted that thing about the thing three months ago..."

FH: When you are looking for a web page you remember, how do you find it?

SD: That's definitely a problem. It's hard to remember where I found things: was it through an email, Facebook message, tweet, or just general browsing? Sometimes I'll try looking in my Chrome history, but that's annoying because I need to remember if I viewed it through my work or personal browser identity. No easy answer there.

So, it looks like we have two kinds of problem here. One is about grouping and archiving the things we want to keep, in an easily searchable way. The other is about helping us get our to do lists done, so we can stop drowning in reminder tabs. Maybe we can build something that does both!