Nowadays I am more in design and human computer interaction because I started a Stanford course whereby I will learn to design technologies that bring people joy, rather than frustration….yes finally! ;)
One of my favorite parts of this project didn’t require any coding on my part. Foursquare’s brand is playful when appropriate, and we like to hide Easter eggs. Working with an iOS engineer, Brian, we added a hidden pull-to-refresh graphic. First, I gave Brian a blank, placeholder image so he could functionally complete the pull-to-refresh. As I worked on the illustration with a designer teammate, I continued to commit (and overwrite) the same image until it was done. I make many changes to our app like this.
The new 6.0 version update from foursquare brings a new way to discover more and to figure out the most interesting things going on around you. It looks great and works awesome. What I noticed is that all my daily apps now have menu’s on the left side of the screen. Will this the best way to navigate through apps? Makes this update the app easier to use? What do you think of the new design?
With the current financial situation in the world more and more ‘creativepossibilities’ turn up in the news to sell or buy products. In Oktober 2012, a guy from Winterswijk (somewhere in the Netherlands) was trying to sell his house by lots:
He has been trying for some time to sell his house. He hopes to sell a total of 60,000 lots (50 euro each!), giving him a total of three million would result. With the winning prize of his villa of one million euros. Source in Dutch.
Last week, we hear more and more about Bitcoin; a digital currency, a protocol and a software (open-source) that enables us to make instant peer-to-peer transactions, worldwide payments with low or zero processing fees and probably much more. Right now (April 6th, 6pm) is 1 Bitcoin 143,39 US Dollar and are there 11 million of them in circulation (the max will be a hard deadline of 21 million Bitcoins).
It is an interesting online and offline movement! What will you do? What will national and international banks do, what will the government do and are we willing to accept Bitcoins?
ps. it’s pretty cool that the original Bitcoin ‘just a paper is’. The idea of Bitcoin, the way of working and the open code behind Bitcoin are all written out in a paper of 9 pages!
ps2. if you want to see a movies that explains Bitcoin on a normal and easy way, checkout this short video.
It took me 7 weeks of playing with the Mailbox app before I got the real value of swiping a mail message into the future. It was that moment when I swiped the mail, included an event ticket, to the day of the event (4 weeks ahead). The snoozed mail with the event ticket, which must be printed out (a little bit old-fashioned today, but okee), returned in my inbox at the right time and at the right moment, so I didn’t forget to print out my ticket. No search was was necessary, no call to a friend was needed, no stress, just a snoozed mail at the right time!
Last week I started on a new project: the Human-Computer Interaction course from Stanford given by Scott Klemmer. The course is all about helping me build human-centered design skills, so that I have the principles and methods to create excellent interfaces with any technology.
Why? Because I think more channels can be connected to one with great design and thoughts. Bad design’s cost money, time and lives and because I like to think about it, brainstorm about it, and to make prototypes about it - which are a strategy for efficiently dealing with things that are hard to predict - I think this course will help me with that.
Below you’ll find ‘the speech’ of Crowley during the WDDBCN interview:
Foursquare will come up with more like advice services within 6 month.
Make people part of the story, that they can feel a sense of ownership and that they feel proud of it.
We didn’t pretend to be a big company, we just wanted people to be part of it.
I use Evernote and write do’s and don’ts for myself.
Top 3 tips for startups on pitching: 1) be clear about problem and product, 2) be passionate about it, and 3) talk is cheap: build it.
We got 32 no’s before the first yes from an investor. We have been very patient and methodological about it.
Life of an entrepreneur is a roller coaster inside of a roller coaster.
Got to be focussed on what your roadmap is and stick to that. Ignore people who get inspired or even copy from you.
Dont get distracted by Yelp, Facebook checkins, and competition. Keep focused on your roadmap and your own passion.
Startups are about making staff that makes u happy.
Our road so far was 6-7 years of failure.
People can copy what you’ve done, but not the vision of what you want to do.
My lessons learn from that interview:
learn by your mistakes and capture those mistakes in a note. Read them back once in a while and learn from the mistakes.
if you start a startup write down what you are, what you are building and what you are not. Write everything on a whiteboard so that everyone can see it clearly. Make your brand manual (free tip Dens)!
[Update] MWC 2013 Keynote 7: Mobile as a platform for innovation.
Last week it was the week of the ‘new’ iOS calendar application called: Sunrise. Sunrise is a beautiful designed calendar that must make your life easier but at the moment I downloaded and opened the app I realised something. I saw all of the apps on my iPhone and I realised that I don’t use any of the default apps anymore…
It’s is not just only the default calendar app, I already replaced several default apps:
On the left side you will see my old/the default home screen. On the right side you will see my current home screen.
What is it that all the default app disappear from my home screen? Maybe it’s because of all those apps haven’t changed much in the last six years.
All the services of the default apps are moving to the cloud, they become more and more social to each other but most of all, all the new apps are well designed! The way how Sunrise and Mailbox are designed is beautiful, and I prefer designed apps!
The way new apps are built shows that we have failed several times but that we have found someone that fail use more often to built beautiful designed apps. Well designed apps give me the understand of the different connections that should be connected in my life to make my life more easier. Those social connections contribute to a better world as well!
So, Pierre Valade and Jeremy Le Van congratulation with this beautiful app! Looking forward to my next Sunrise appointment and your upcoming updates!
Last week I saw The Startup Kids, a documentary about young web entrepreneurs in the U.S. and in Europe. This second Dutch event, organised by Kickstartup and hosted by De Bali, was even as the first event sold out in a few days.
Before the documentary started there were two keynote speakers: Danny Weddepohl from peerby.com - a peer-2-peer network where neighbors can share tools to each other - and a speaker from Scoupy - a Dutch groupon platform.
My lessons learn from that night:
Work hard; as an entrepreneur your work is your life and visa versa. Find solutions, bring up ideas, and fix bugs whenever you can, wherever you are.
Find the balance between your entrepreneur life and your private life; you need to give up something during your entrepreneur life but be sure that when you look back you can say that you give up the right thing.
Entrepreneurs win or lose on the quality of their product/vision, not the quality of their funding deals; once you received a funding stay to your product and vision, don’t let the amount of money fool you.
Follow your dreams and do that what you love: believe in your startup. You can always buy yourself out if the investors change your startup.
Release beta versions and test well; don’t close yourself in the closet for years and release the app with a big bang. Test well with beta versions and understand the feedback from the test users.
It is better to be found than that yourself find an investor; investors are always searching to fund new startups.
What are your lessons learn from the documentary??
See the trailer of the documentary The Startup Kids:
High-res
