The Swirling Mist

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22 Sept 2014 - 5 Oct 2014

Have actually lost the theme of documenting on this blog.

Time to look at other avenues.

After cleaning up my todos, I have lost the intent to continue posting here. Why?

The purpose was always to keep documentation for myself, but tumblr is quite an effort to read / search through.

One of the key projects that I made was a self-authored HTML5 blog system, but it is too much of effort to post in a self-made system. Shifting to a dropbox based blogging platform so that all I need is markdown in a text file.

So bbye Swirling Mist, till I concoct something new.

[the-swirling-mist]

15 Sept 2014 - 21 Sept 2014

Not really much progress on the project front, but finished with the Rama series of Arthur Clarke. It was amazing and awesome!

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08 Sept 2014 - 14 Sept 2014

Back to Clarke.

Didn't actually pursue the learning aspect and was quite stuck in work. This week shall be doing a lot of it.

This weekly project shall be jumping into work territory.

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01 Sept 2014 - 07 Sept 2014

Dropped in a bit of Asimov between Clarke.

Got started with http://www.mysliderule.com/learning-paths/beginners-guide-front-end-programming/learn/

Have commenced https://www.udemy.com/learn-html5-programming-from-scratch/ - HTML 5 on Udemy and Eloquent Javascript - http://eloquentjavascript.net/00_intro.html

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25 Aug 2014 - 31 Aug 2014

Almost the end of the month and Sci-fi is slowing down. Perhaps time for something new.

Commenced the Rama series and shall continue it with perhaps something more in design or more literary or the printed stuff that I have and can dispense with.

Okay decided! Going to start the Elegant Universe and then move to Surely you're joking feynman.

[the-swirling-mist]

18 Aug 2014 - 24 Aug 2014

Burning through the Space Odyssey series.

Being able to read books written in 1960s predicting the 2000s is amazing. We are a long way from the predictions, but we will get there.

Really encouraging to work harder and create the future now.

Working hard on the weekly project as well.

[the-swirling-mist]

11 Aug 2014 - 17 Aug 2014

Clarke is just marvellous. A mind receiving from the universe is infinitely powerful!

Wrapped up 2001 - A Space odyssey. More to go.

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03 Aug 2014 - 10 Aug 2014 - Readings

Finished Arthur Clarke's - The Space Trilogy. Over 500 pages and it was an absolute delight. Adventures on Mars, Moon and in space were enthralling to say the least, but very importantly creatively stimulating.

Perhaps, the focus on reading was wrong earlier.

[the-swirling-mist]

28 July 2014 - 02 Aug 2014 - Readings

http://paulbuchheit.blogspot.in/2014/07/the-technology.html - Brilliant. In sync with my philosophy. Not sure if it's right or wrong and don't care. Very powerful for the down days.

http://www.gv.com/lib/what-fuels-great-design-and-why-most-startups-dont-do-it

Founders need a way to make great design become automatic, and there’s only one way I've found to do that reliably: invest time in listening to your customers.

Design is a powerful and often overlooked way to solve problems. But without the right fuel, design is worthless.

You’ve probably heard this advice a hundred times before. Whether you call it “user research” or “customer development” or just “getting out of the building”, we all know that hearing directly from customers is one of the fastest ways to learn and improve our products. But when I ask founders how long it’s been since they’ve watched a real customer (not a family member) use their product, they usually look embarrassed and admit they haven’t tested anything in months. - Very true in my case and extremely embarrassed.

So if customers say they want faster horses, what you should hear is that getting around is too slow. It’s the team’s job to take all that raw input and build products to delight customers.

Startups need to stop pitching and start listening. - Guilty as charged.

If your goal is to launch something as fast as possible, user research will absolutely slow you down. But if you want to create great products, research will speed you up. Teams often avoid user research because they believe getting a product into the market is the fastest way to learn.

So replace the startup dogma of “launch early and often” with “learn early and often”. For me, it opened my mind to all the different kinds of ways startups can learn, and how valuable user research can be to the core mission of any startup. - Need to step up on this.

I want my work to be perfect, and I hate showing a design that’s half-done. But over time I’ve realized that if I work too long in isolation, I’ll spent a lot of time on the details when the idea really needs fundamental changes. In short: I’ve wasted time polishing a turd. And teams tend to do the exact same thing: they fall in love with a solution and waste time hashing out the details before validating that the idea is any good.

In my experience, startups don’t need to build much to get good feedback from customers. I’ve relied heavily on very simple prototypes built as clickable mockups in Keynote or Powerpoint. And if your startup doesn’t have a prototype to test, you can always use your competitor’s products as free prototypes. So use deadlines to your advantage. Find some target customers, and schedule your first user study before you think you’re ready.

Investing in user research is just about the only way to consistently generate a rich stream of data about customer needs and behaviors. As a designer, I can’t live without it. And as data about customers flows through your team, it informs product managers, engineers, and just about everyone else. It forms the foundation of intuitive designs, indispensable products, and successful companies. So what are you waiting for? Go listen to your customers!

[the-swirling-mist]

21 July 2014 - 27 July 2014 - Weekly Reading & Project

Have commenced reading Arthur Clarke's books. Revisiting Sci-fi again.

In progress - The Space Trilogy. The depth of description of space travel and life on Mars and Moon and Space is quite amazing and detailed.

Project wise no specific progress as well as no specific idea. But last week had written a poem after quite a while.

This week a bit of sketching and possibly creating a science game.

Stopped working on the Growth Hacking course, since these seem to be more focused on Landing page design + science and then marketing. What I believe is that Growth Hacking is not something very different from successful product development and business building. You can't perfectly plan for it. It is certainly iterative in nature and involves a huge deal of learning, but just practicing setting up landing pages and selling a product is not really growth hacking.

The more I read growth hacking, I realize that it is as sporadic and as serendipitous as say making hit products. Looking backward it is easy to rationalize a product's success, but looking forward it is still impossible to predict an optimal path or even walk a known path.

This doesn't take away from the fact that studying and learning are the only known mechanisms to unlocking opinions and even building thought processes. - Random writing

Ohh yes! This week, I shall be writing articles on Learning and Education.

[the-swirling-mist]

14 July 2014 - 20 July 2014 - Reading & Links

http://www.kevinwmccarthy.com/my_weblog/2014/07/convincing-sales.html

Stop trying to convince, but build your confidence. Stay on the customer's side and rather than the seller's side. Support and guide the customer to their decision and learn more about them along the way.

Competing and forcing are easily trumped by collaborating and trust.

https://medium.com/brandid-product-blog/how-we-generated-13k-of-sales-in-24hrs-through-product-hunt-4ab5a28f018c

Craft an experience that resonates - If you build a resonating experience, people will tell their friends

A resonating experience is delivering 4 "aha" moments

Great products deliver continuous value

1. Before they buy - Aha moment: 100% of visits result in speaking to a personal shopper within 20 seconds

2. First Purchase - Aha moment: Try multiple sizes of any clothes from any store, at home for free.

3. Repeat Purchase - Aha moment: Our drivers come and collect and process all your returns for free.

Our Return Like a Man™ service is where we come and collect anything you don’t want for free. We do all the hard work of dealing with pesky retailers who are incentivised to make you mess this part up. RLAM™ has such an incredible impact on lifetime value that we invest in the RLAM™ experience instead of paid acquisition.

4. Referral - Aha moment: “BRANDiD delivered way more value than I was expecting”.

Using the 4-step framework to simplify your messaging, you can shorten the time to resonate with a customer, and therefore shorten the viral loop like we have.

5. The must-have experience vs. overarching value proposition

This is not simply a combination of your aha moments. If it is, it is a sign that you probably haven’t thought hard enough about delivering continuous value.

As a customer of BRANDiD, you know all your current and future clothing needs are always taken care of, because you have a team of personal shoppers and drivers on call 24/7. Jeans too long? We collect it and get it done for you for free. Need to know how take care of suede? Drop a message in the live chat. We’re always here, waiting to serve you. No matter what feature we add to the app in the future, we know it will always align with our value proposition, which makes it easy to communicate to customers and investors. That’s how we built a resonating experience.

http://open.bufferapp.com/customer-service-emails-words/

Happiness hacks in Customer service emails (or rather for life):

Replace "actually" with "Sure thing"

Kill "but" and replace with !

In fact -> Another option

Instead -> You might

Should -> Perhaps

Another word I avoid is "unfortunately". Fortune has nothing to do with how an app works. When I am being told "unfortunately" I feel like it's just my bad luck that I encountered the problem or that the feature X does not exist yet. Let's not make it fortune-related for the users! 

Use can use "actually" to your advantage, since the word is an intensifier that cuts both ways. It makes bad news worse and good news better.

You can also "happiness hack" the word "but" by using it to precede good news that follows bad news. In other words, you can say something like "I can't X, but I can do Y and Z for you!" When this response pattern becomes habitual, your brain automatically starts thinking of options that you can offer instead of defaulting to flat variations of "I can't".

http://genius.cat-v.org/richard-feynman/writtings/letters/problems

It seems that the influence of your teacher has been to give you a false idea of what are worthwhile problems. The worthwhile problems are the ones you can really solve or help solve, the ones you can really contribute something to. A problem is grand in science if it lies before us unsolved and we see some way for us to make some headway into it.

[the-swirling-mist]

07 July 2014 - 13 July 2014

FoBS Assignment 4. Yet to commence the actual project.

Last week, went through all the projects and realized that both my reading and my project work are going rather academic.

There is a clear lack of fun and reality.

So what should I be doing?

A lot more fun reading and actually making stuff. Watching videos is not the real stuff. Making things is hard and I tend to shift something that I make into a regular work domain.

Shall be focusing on both making some interesting dishes, sketches and something more useful.

Arthur Clarke books in reading list.

[the-swirling-mist]

29 June, 2014 - 06 July, 2014

Just finished FoBS assignment 3. 

Time for a mid-year review and resetting targets and expectations.

[the-swirling-mist]

The Indian Approach to Business

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KcrUs8FAt40

3 B Model

Belief -> Behaviour -> Business

As is your belief, so is your behaviour, so is your business

Jaisa vishwas, vaisa vyavhaar, vaisa vyaapar.

My hunger matters first -> Battleground -> Prosperity without peace

Your hunger matters first -> Playground -> Properity with peace

Choose!

[the-swirling-mist]

23 June 2014 - 28 June 2014

Wrapped up HCI's lectures.

Wrapped up Jo Boaler's How to Learn Maths course - EDUC115-S How to Learn Math: For Students

Wrapped up: Foundations of Biz strategy's Week 2 Assignment

Wrapped up reading through GrowHack Learn's Learn by Doing course. Time to implement it.

This week - Lots to do:

Get started on the FoBS course project for my own startup

Start implementing things learnt in GrowHack course for the product we are building

Start implementing things in GrowHack for another product that I intend to build

Finish FoBS - Week 3 assignment

Traditional book reading has stalled at the moment as I am engaged in more stuff to do.

[the-swirling-mist]

16 June 2014 - 22 June 2014

Progressing rapidly through HCI Course's lectures. Got to learn lots.

Also, finished off the week 1 assignment of Foundations of Business Strategies. Shall be reviewing the Google analysis video tomorrow.

Have gotten started on the Growth Hacking project as well, though slower than usual.

Finished the first series of Lectures from Jo Boaler's math course for students.

"The hard thing about Hard things" is still awesome, but dropping the notes at the current point. Will continue when I feel like it.

Gonna commence reading some other book.

[the-swirling-mist]

8 'Aha' moments you need to have before marketing your startup

http://ryangum.com/8-aha-moments-needed-before-marketing-your-startup/

1. I need a Minimum Desirable product rather than a Minimum Viable product

Minimum Desirable Product is the simplest experience necessary to prove out a high-value, satisfying product experience for users (independent of business viability).

An MDP offers enough value for a customer to come back to. You need to aim past the scope of an MVP. It’s a slight change of perspective, but it’s an important one if you want to build a great product.

Instead, do as Ryan Hoover advocates and build in public.

By showing what you’re building before its ready you can:

Build an audience

Get feedback early

Increase buy-in

Excite the people

2. Get the first 100 customers by doing things that don't scale

Use these interactions to uncover how your product or service can provide value to their life. As a marketer or entrepreneur, if you don’t know exactly why those people should buy from you and exactly why they’d want to buy it, then you’re not going to scale.

Once you’ve been able to offer enough value for a customer that they’re delighted and come back for more – go out and find more of those customers.

Every single company, no matter how big or successful today, started this way. One customer at a time.

This process is slow work. But its slow, purposeful work.

Takeaway: Get in the trenches.

3. Focus on marketing once I find Product / Market fit

The only thing that matters is getting to product/market fit. Product/market fit means being in a good market with a product that can satisfy that market.

Fit occurs at the point where the balance starts to move from you ‘pushing’ the product, to the market ‘pulling’ the product. Customer adoption has to started to happen organically.

Takeaway: Don’t think about marketing and growth until you have a product you know customers love. Everything else comes after that.

4. Success comes from finding out what works after a string of failures

Takeaway: Stay hungry, stay foolish, stay humble.

5. Who isn't my target market

Takeaway: Make sure you know who your ideal customer isn’t and avoid attracting them.

6. Disruption doesn’t have to be revolutionary. This is called incremental innovation. 

Eric Siu says “be creative by copying others first”. Brian Harris call this the “Picasso Formula“. Find what has been successful for others, take the best parts and apply it to your own needs.

7. Find out what works and double-down. Discard the rest.

Takeaway: Find out where the signal is strongest and focus your efforts on that channel.

8. We need a system: tools just help you execute and automate what you already have

Paradigm shift - There’s never going to be a ‘right time’, start anyway.