February 1, 2013
Process at Lift
Make it simple, Lift is an app to help you track new habits and encourage you to stay motivated to keep your (New Year’s or not) resolutions, day after day.
From this six-year-old habit i am still running, consisting in waking up at 5AM (almost) everyday to this brand new one, created three days ago and getting hard only today (not because I am stressed, only because I really love smoking while drinking beers with friends. And today is the weekend you know…), I’ve always been interested in collecting new habits.
I can’t remember how I ran into this iOS app (except for this tweet) but it seemed pretty obvious for me to test it for the above-mentioned reason.
This is also why, in the early days of our Internet Club — that means last year — we talked about developing such an app, helping people to stay motivated while tracking new habits.
We didn’t do it at the time. We won’t do it because Lift does it really well. We will stay focused on other plans, like Internet Club member Tom Galle’s Maily app, which just won the Seedcamp, reminding us another Belgian success story, or other things we hope to let you know really soon.
After this long and boring introduction, I should mention that other thing that really interests us, personally but also as designers running a small studio, known as The Process.
That's the theme of this post (remember its title). I just wanted you to read a small piece of mail I got when I sent feedback to Lift regarding multiple check-ins a day functionality.
A very simple mail I wrote…
Just a thought.
Did you planned to a kind of alarm on the app for kind of habits like "drink water every hour" and then every hour you have a small sound reminding you to drink water.
But i'm sure you did…
Damien / PLMD (pleaseletmedesign)
… lead to a very complete answer by Erin, the woman behind Lift's Community, with this interesting part regarding their Process.
Hi Damien, that’s a great idea! We've gotten some requests for this kind of reminder - I think when we add the ability to check-in multiple times a day (it's on the roadmap) this type of reminder might be created. Thanks for the feedback.
I want to give you some background on what happens next. You probably want to know how your feedback translates into future versions of Lift, right?
Here’s the answer:
All of the feedback that comes in gets categorized and tallied. That includes your email (again, thank you). Occasionally we get requests that need an immediate solution. If this happens, we drop what we are doing so we can get a change out as soon as we can. This can take anywhere from an hour to eight days depending on where we need to make the change (Apple takes about a week to approve new versions of the app).
Weekly Summaries: I send out a weekly summary of all user feedback, including what’s on Twitter, Facebook, in the app, and in email. Everyone on the team reads this and it keeps us aware of the ideas and feelings from the community. Also, everyone sees at least some of the raw un-summarized feedback. In fact, Matt has a habit of scrolling through support emails each morning to see what’s going on.
Prioritization Moments: We set priorities weekly and focus on specific themes over a few months. We draw from a list of product ideas including feature requests from users.
So, in the case of your feedback, will we do this and when will it be available? Right now we’re just finishing working on the theme of taking what’s already working in the app and making it stronger. The social support experience is getting fleshed out. The data visualizations and streaks are being moved forward and made faster. Email notifications are getting turned into native iPhone push notifications. We targeted these updates to be released around Jan 1st in time for New Years Resolutions, but since we practice continuous releases, you saw each part as soon as it was ready. We're about to go through another prioritization moment and start the process again.
One thing I really like about this company is that while the team is very driven toward our mission of a universal tool for achieving goals, we’re all humble about what’s working (and what’s not). If you’re interested in learning more about our development process, we recommend you check out The Lean Startup by Eric Ries. We’re big fans.
Thanks again for helping us improve Lift by sending us your feedback. We appreciate it. Keep it coming!
Cheers,
Erin at Lift
You can read more about Lift here or you can help them on their Quora question.
So that's it, that's what I wanted to share today.
Hope you liked it and don't forget to follow us on Twitter here, that's important for our ego.
October 23, 2012
My Facebook account has been disabled.
It happened today and I don't know how to react.
I don't know if it's a good thing or a bad thing.
I don't know if I'm pissed or if I'm relieved.
I don't know if I'm ready for this fresh start.
Like a reboot of my digital life.
Of course, as a geeky web guy who spends too much time on social networks, I do hate Facebook as much as I do love it.
Many many times I thought about leaving definitively the network, assuming that Twitter would be enough.
But enough is never enough.
It's well known that the information is much more fresh and accurate on Twitter — everyone knows that joke: « What's the difference between Facebook and Twitter? (1) » — and that you also have more direct and immediate response if you're asking for help on the microblogging platform. But.
Without doing so much effort, since 2007, I gathered a valuable amount of contacts, in every domain of my personal or professional life. From Best Friends Forever to "we only met once but had a fucking great time" people, from prospects to clients, from music related contacts to students or interns, Facebook was a great place stay connected with people I might want to chat in a near future.
It's also really funny that this is happening right now, matching this particular period of time in which, in addition of our web design service, we are more and more consulted about social communities, web strategy and online content.
Maybe it's time for me, for us at PLMD or at The Internet Club (remind me to tell you that story about The Internet Club) to think through a new way of spreading content without using the big players. Thinking and studying cases in which smaller communities could also reach an audience, maybe smaller, but with more precision than with the blue thumbs-up button. It sounds a bit like a challenge to me but why not trying this for some times and see what good or bad thing could happen.
Now that I can't post these words on my Facebook account, it will only reach half its "usual" audience (read: the people who I annoy with my multiple posts a day) but maybe it could be a good test to see the real influence of Facebook on the propagation of a story.
(Oh, right, we still have our PLMD (pleaseletmedesign) Facebook page, check it out.)
So, now, please share this post and get this party started.
You could also follow me on Twitter here, that's all I have left.
Note that I'm still wondering why they did that. My posting has never been different these days than it was before. One option could be the "report as a violator" but same here: can't find why. And I'm not sure I'll ever know.
(1) Two weeks.
Written by damien.
June 21, 2012
Kindle iPad app upgrade.
Left: old layout. Right: new layout. (Image by Bryan Larrick)
We agree with John Gruber, himself agreeing with Bryan Larrick to say that the Kindle iPad app is more of a downgrade than an upgrade.
Reducing margins doesn't help the reader to focus on the authors words.
It's like standing three feet in front of a brick wall and pretending you’re appreciating the architecture of a building.
June 20, 2012
A handy tip for the easily distracted.
I've just seen Miranda July latest movie, The Future, based on a performance she started in 2007, just after her first one, Me and You and Everyone We Know ))<>((, mixing a talking cat, the ability to stop time
"From now on there will only be now."
Quote from her performance "Things We Don't Understand And Are Definitely Not Going To Talk About" at The Kitchen, New York, in 2007.
and some other usual ingredients like love, commitment or a worming t-shirt.
Just after the movie, there was this little video called "A handy tip for the easily distracted" that could perfectly fit a design blog like ours, sometimes dealing with productivity or procrastinating issues. Enjoy.
Source: Nowness.
June 19, 2012
Checkthis. The Shape of Web to Come.
Identity by wearebuild. After three years of hard working and the last six month working harder, our friends Fred and Melvyn, the guys behind Checkthis, have just announced that they raised enough money to move to NY, hire the people they need and continue having fun with what they built (1). As far as I can remember (when I was still studying graphic design), every project I have seen from Fred shaped the web with an advance of at least two or three years. So I wasn't surprised when this guy, the same guy behind the first version of Computerlove (2), the design oriented online magazine that started to be social even before Facebook existed, came up with such a simple and obvious idea to make the online world a better place. We briefly had the chance to work with him on a recent web project for Haus Der Kunst(3). The collaboration was very inspiring - for the project itself of course, but also the things we learnt from his expertise. It was not only a matter of "information architecture" or of tweeking some CSS, but of a vision, the one he tailored at the same time he tailored Checkthis, that was emerging everytime we met. As the very first beta-tester of the product (during one drink at our studio, Fred gave me a special secret code like DAMN007 to enter the beta), I am really happy with what is happening to them right now of course and very proud that they let me give a hand at the beginning of their adventure - even if it was only small pieces of advice. In a near future, I am sure we will continue to collaborate with this company, founded with a true love of what the web should be and most of all a true human-centered way of thinking it. In 1933, H.G. Wells wrote The Shape of Things to Come. In 1997, Refused recorded The Shape of Punk to Come. In 2012, Checkthis designed The Shape of Web to Come. Notes. Written by damien and nicely read, corrected and edited by Frederic Bourgeois.
May 28, 2012
Chaumont 2012. Lecture transcription.
During the entire festival, Susanna Shannon together with Stefano, a graphic designer currently graduating from CalARTS and his wife Maria, an anthropologist, decided to create "LA LIFE" (that's exactly the name of this blog, that's a sign), a project focused on the release of 1m2 of newspaper every day, dealing with what's happening in Chaumont. They decided to live the experience with (quite) the same constrain (again) than a real newspaper: having no time to do stuff, writing during the day, designing at night, printing in the morning and having the issue released at 2PM.
For the issue #3, Susanna wrote almost every word we said during our lecture in this very long transcription with a very personnal touch. We left the text as it was written.
Read moreMay 27, 2012
Chaumont 2012. Day 2. The lecture.
The first phase of our intervention was a lecture in front of a whole bunch of people including students from all the workshops(1). For three reasons we decided to focus our talk on four specific design projects that started with strong constrains:
- We decided to define the brief of the workshop only a few hours before starting it, around a cup of coffee at the hotel. Not because we're lazy people but because we believe that sometimes, having a constrain of time makes you focus on what's essential.
- The students themselves had two big constrains. In one hand, the physical one was forced by the limited size of the post office standard box. On the other hand, they were in a "fuzzy mess" with a weird and bloody unprecise brief: they had to figure out what we meant by "Summarize the Festival, put it on a 38x19x25cm box and send it to another Chaumont in the world". We incited them to refuse the brief and re-invent it if something was wrong. Being able to say "NO", as we said during the talk, and adjust the brief to make it doable is sometimes an important part of the design process. Unfortunately (for the pedagogy) but fortunately (for the work to be done), there was no refuse and they actually understood what to do quite quickly.
- The last reason was more political, related to the events in Canada and the students out there being unable to demonstrate against [the rise of education fees]. The government voted a law to forbid them to walk in groups made of more than 50 people. The kind of law a government could adopt in case of, for example, a war. So, instead of being violent and burn down the city, they invented a way to continue their walk and their protest, dealing with this big constrain, finding loop-holes by staying within the law:
We like to think design as a process to find the most intelligent and reflexive answer to a problem. That's exactly what these canadians students did, and, in a way, they designed a brand new way to demonstrate.
Read the transcription of the lecture here
(1) The other workshops and the animators:- Editorial and periodical design with Coline Sunier and Charles Mazé
- About Ann and Paul Rand’s book with Prill Vieceli Cremers and Piero Bling.
- What if…? with Pinar&Viola and Moniker.
- Showmont with James Goggin.
- Introduction to a cinema and design real story with Sa_M_ael.
- Type design with The Entente / Colophon.
- Webcraft with Raphaël Bastide.
- Dreadful city, “Whatever… all that is hypocrisy, blurred face” with Thomas Mailaender and Erwan Fichou.
May 26, 2012
Chaumont 2012. Day 1. Introduction.
Every time Pierre and I are going to Nancy, we pass by a belgian village named Chaumont-Gistoux. The same name than the famous International Poster and Graphic Design Festival of Chaumont in France.
It had been a while that we were thinking of doing a spin off of this festival in Belgium but we never really had the time, the braveness or the opportunity to start this long creating process for such a big event.
A few months ago we went to Nancy to attend the Lettre-Type exhibition at My Monkey – the gallery of our partner Morgan. There, we met Étienne Hervy, the director of the French festival. After joking around the idiotic idea of creating another Chaumont Festival in Belgium, he actually took it seriously and we all ended up settling on the idea of doing a workshop around the (more generic) theme: The Chaumont(s) Festival.
So, long story short, that’s why we’re now in Chaumont (France) for the week working with 12 students from France, Switzerland, Germany or Finland to create a micro-event and send the “official” Chaumont Festival to some other Chaumont we located in the world. In a box.
A bachelorette party took place at the hotel restaurant. A nice one.
