Quantified Irony - Could a heart-rate monitor find you love?
As quantified data products continue to bleed out from the geekdom into the mainstream we are seeing more and more people tracking their every move. Whether that be running, cycling, skiing, walking or just generally jiggling limbs around in a frenzied effort to collect “fuel". The amount and more importantly; the variety, of this data is ever increasing but the potential use and cross-referencing of this data has only just started.
So could a heart-rate monitor find you love? We think so. Data from a heart-rate monitor when combined with other user data offers incredible insight into a person’s fitness levels & activities. 'Body Type' & 'Height' are already one of the most queried metrics - so much so that OKCupid only allows its premium users to be able to filter searches via the former. But currently this data is static - it's selected once and never changes. It's also not that useful: you could be skinny and do no exercise or skinny because you do exercise, and in fact the 'activeness' is really what matters in matching lifestyles and interests.
It’s an exciting era of matchmaking and we’re proud to be at the forefront of innovation in this area. Actions really do talk louder than words.
Oh, you're having problems? That's really interesting.
Have you ever had an issue with a digital product & reported it only to be told "it's working fine for me"?
This is literally the most useless feedback ever. Especially when it's positioned as the quasi-solution.
Each individual has an individual experience with your product. it's the only experience they can possibly have so knowing that the product works for "everyone else" actually makes the situation worse.
This topic isn't straight forward either - it touches on many areas:
customer relations
communication strategy
bug reporting
product roadmap
Bug reporting is an interesting one in itself. We often only consider reporting bugs to engineers and product owners but how many times has an app crashed on you with no explanation?
Some apps do it & that's great, it goes some of the way to letting a user know that you know and care about their experience - i.e. the only experience. The worst thing to do is do what Microsoft does - pump out an error code like "x729y40Bg62". Wow, really helpful. This is what happens when you let the machines do the talking.
So, we write rules for testing our code - lets start doing the same to inform users:
User has issue ZOMG!
Error is logged & reported to team
If error is understood then it is reported to user with what you think happened - be apologetic!
Else error is reported to user with generic response - being human works better "Well this is awkward, we're not sure what happened but the issue has been reported so this can never. happen. again". Humour can go a long way but make sure you DO address the issue at hand as well.
Update users? This generally never happens. As a user I would be pretty pleased to receive a message saying "Hey, you know that issue you had - well we fixed it, thanks for your help". Thanks for my help? But all I did was use your app?!?! :)
Don't sweat it, but don't forget it. Everything breaks - but don't turn a blind eye. Some of my favourite startups are terrible at fixing issues and seem to just leave them - but if you leave lots of little things they'll bug the hell out of users and they won't care about the TOTALLY AWESOME things you've been busy working on. Path take note.
Now, I know none of this is particularly easy but it's worth considering in the beginning even if you can't deliver it because when your business starts to grow if you'll find you can't retrofit empathy.
Just think, if Dale Carnegie were a product owner - what would he say? He'd say "Your experience is the only experience that matters" & more importantly; he'd mean it.
We’ve tried to design a sign-up which is quick, clean and offers constant visual feedback to the user so mistakes are highlighted AND the reason for the mistake or error.
I've been meaning to write this post for quite some time as 'the feedback loop' is something that I think is more important in human communication than anything else - especially when it comes to technology. Many people have written about feedback loops concerning visual feedback (i.e. does a digital button react when you touch it like a real one would?) which is specific to design and my thoughts here lead on from an earlier post 'the importance of knowing something's happening'. However, I have been obsessing about feedback loops in ALL forms of communication.
So, before we get stuck in - what is a feedback loop? Well, only yesterday I came across this fantastic post on Smashing Magazine by Loren Baxter which goes into great detail on how to design great loops - it's definitely worth a read if you want to go in to more detail. Loren breaks out the feedback loop as such:
A person takes an action,
The action has one or more effects,
The important effects of this action are presented back to the person,
This loop is repeated regularly.
Pretty straightforward to understand but then when you start to break it down you realise just how engrained these loops are in our everyday lives: You say something to a friend, they smile, this lets you know they liked what you said. That's a feedback loop, but it has nothing to do with design yet it is the very cornerstone of communication.
So if I'm not talking about design per se - how does any of this fit into building applications like TGTHR? Well, it's quite simple. Think about how many loops you have opened in your life but were never closed? How many of you have sent someone a message only for them to never respond? You then begin to ask yourself why and this can have negative effects on the next time you perform a similar task. Were they too busy to respond? Maybe they haven't seen it yet? Maybe it got lost in the ether? Maybe it's just me.
When a loop remains open we quite often begin to question ourselves, the technology, the other person. This is bad. So we've thought long and hard about how we can close every loop possible in TGTHR whether that be the design communicating to you or other users. We're not quite ready to share how we're doing this but once the app has launched you'll be able to see for yourself. But in the meantime, have a think about all the instances in which you've had no feedback - wouldn't it have been better to have had some response so that you could process the information, learn from it & move on? Just an acknowledgement of your efforts?
As we move further towards a culture where reactions are masked by technology; everyone building new communication tools needs to think about every single loop. We're not talking about design anymore - we're talking about user psychology. Now go close some loops and make people happier.
Happy Valentines! We just launched our new website
What better way to celebrate Valentines Day than with a brand spanking new website to replace that yucky holding page! We hope you like it & if you haven't signed up to be one of the first to try the app before it launches publicly the go do it now! :)
"A vacuum cleaner's not cool.... you know what's cool? A dyson vacuum cleaner"
Dating apps & sites are certainly not cool. If you ever ask an audience to raise their hands to show whether they are on a dating service expect to hear the creaking sound of your soul trying to disown your foolhardy body accompanied by the thrusting of hands unter ärsche. One of the core reasons for this is because those who have been the guardians of online and mobile dating have done as all incumbents generally do when left unchallenged - they do, well, 'enough'. Online dating is not just uncool; it is cringey, embarrassing and desperate. But this is not the users fault - they have been led to think this is how dating sites and apps should be.
This is exactly why we are entering the market.
Have you ever sat and thought "if only [good designer/brand] made [currently unpleasant object/service]"? Carlsberg don't do flatmates, but if they did, they'd probably be the best in the world (perfect example alert). Well, I don't think this attitude should just be employed for selling beer - although it is very clever. This is why I opened with a mention of Dyson. Never in my life did I think I would legitimately and openly lust after a vaccuum cleaner, followed by a hand-dryer, fan, heater - who knows what's next. At the core of what Dyson did was to actually make the product better. However, if his vacuum looked like all the others I don't think we'd all know his name and Wikipedia would certainly not list him as 'Sir'. He not only made the vacuum better but continued to wrap it in beautiful design that highlighted the innovation at the heart of the product. Genius.
Follow your passion
In this modern day-and-age of 'how to be an entrepreneur' book saturation we are often told to follow our passion{s}. This is often confused as - the industry you go in to must be your area of passion. But what if you just like solving problems/providing better solutions? If you merely take the 'passion protocol' on face value you would have to assume that James Dyson was extremely passionate about cleaning. His startup story would read of how the dog hair made such a mess of the carpet in the lounge and although he really loved running a brush through the rug for best part of half an hour, he really wanted to save time so he could get on and dry his hands on the tea towel *eureka*. Personally, I think it came down to him knowing he could add value and improve on the past, full stop. If dyson made urinals I'd probably reach my RDA of H2O before leaving the house in the morning. 30p at the station - cheaper than Chessington World of Adventures.
The mundane and overlooked becomes desirable
Sometimes you just don't appreciate things can be better - you're so used to accepting the standard you've always received and more often than not they're things you'll happily overlook anyway. That is until something better comes along and changes everything. So when I tell people I am making a dating app, I embrace the wincing expressions - it's to be expected; I almost invite it. It validates why we're doing what we're doing.
Innovation wrapped in beauty. Enabling people to reach their goal quicker and enjoy the experience of doing so thus replacing formality with desirability.
My parents were materialists; they had no choice to be anything else. Music came in the form of vinyl and later cassette tapes, movies on VHS and photographs that captured vivid or forgotten memories. These physical objects were important. Each one connected to an emotion; a symbiotic relationship.
Things are different now. The majority of us now place all of these things online - we share all of these things with our 'friends'. In one way becoming more detached from them yet in other ways becoming more materialistic; digitalistic even. How many of us would delete our Facebook account - permanently? I mean, no logging in again and suddenly everything is back to normal deleting. I mean DELETING. Deleting your Facebook would be like setting fire to your house. All those 'things' would be destroyed and you'd be forced to start again.
The British artist Michael Landy destroyed every one of his possessions in Break Down and he described the feeling he had afterwards as 'a rush'. In a way, we are now able to do the same online with the click of a few buttons. Not many of us would dream of submitting ourselves to such a thing.
But do we not feel like starting again sometimes? We start new relationships, we start new jobs, we make new friends. These in essence are all new starts to your life - they invigorate us. They challenge us.
Now, this post isn't about advising you to delete your Facebook account; it's about thinking about the importance we place on our digital belongings compared to physical ones. Things that don't really exist - and is that a good thing? When you die will you leave your children a .zip file? I think the internet is a beautiful thing but the more we can do online that makes a difference offline the better. Why would i make a dating app? To help people meet other people in the flesh and hopefully be happy; together.
As human beings we like to know that things are happening whether it be that our government is working hard doing what's right for us (sic), that the chef is cooking the dinner we just ordered or simply that the cash machine will give us our own money when we ask for it.
It comes down to expectations. We expect that these things should be happening and if they're not then we want to know. If we know it's not then we can work with it and react appropriately. However, when we've not been informed that nothing is happening - that is when we tend to lose it.
However, i am a firm believer it letting people know when something is and/or isn't happening regardless. This way you don't have to rely on unspoken expectations - everything is out in the open. For this reason, i can frequently be seen frowning at a plethora of apps and webpages that ignores this rule.
Did you know that the whirring sound that an ATM makes is not mechanical? Yup, i know you thought it was some sort of piston and pulley counting out your money but that sound is purely there to let you know the machine is doing something.
Now this concept isn't new in technology; we've all seen a loading bar when installing a new piece of software. That's there purely for us to feel comfortable that the system is working - it's the same as the 'swoosh' you hear from your iPhone when your mail has sent.
I didn't write this post to name and shame anyone but purely to highlight that designers and developers should never assume that someone is going to know something. Guide a user in using the product and for gods sake let them know something is happening. It's important :)
So we've been working on a few mockups and we just wanted to share a small taster of one of the designs. We're sorry that it is pretty lo-res and not offering any great insight but we did say it was just a taster ;)
We promise to share more in the coming weeks and months as we make more progress on the the design and development. This is just the beginning!
This is our first post so don't expect too much right off the bat. In fact, if you are reading this then we really must congratulate you because you must be a greater explorer to have got here!
We're currently running in stealth mode while we work on our product proposition and 'business stuff', stuff that people who will use the product would not be interested in - especially not at this time.
But what we can tell you is is that we're working on a new dating application that we think will be a really nice experience for users and completely to what they are currently used to! Hopefully in a good way.
We'll also be keen to get user feedback as we constantly develop the product and believe the early adopters (surely if you are reading this then you are one) are paramount to the success of the product.
No good us sitting in our ivory towers pretending we know it all :)
Anyway, stay tuned, save this blog, save the RSS as we'll update you when we have more to announce.
