I love this video. I’m sure a lot of our customers can relate :-) Warning there is some nsfw language used.
The more times you watch it the more great things you notice that you missed the first time, sort of like watching Christmas Vacation for the 20th time.
One of the common complaints I hear all the time from our customers is that the screens and keyboards on mobile devices are too small. This is improving with new devices like the iPhone that has a huge screen, but you can’t make the screen or keyboard bigger without increasing the physical dimensions of the device. For example I think the sweet spot for laptop screen size is 15″, any bigger and the laptop is just too big to carry, as for the keyboard, remember IBM’s cool foldout keyboard nicknamed the butterfly keyboard, that was a great idea:
On the Mobile Device side there are a few developments that will eventually improve the screen size and keyboard size issues. First on the keyboard side, I purchased this laser keyboard a few years ago and I still love it today, I think the manufacturers goal is to OEM this technology into the actual mobile devices instead of a separate bluetooth peripheral.
As for the screen size issue, I just noticed today Texas Instruments (wow they are still around?) just posted a video of their prototype Pico Projector embedded in a BlackBerry Curve, once again a great technology when eventually miniaturized and embedded in devices will improve screen size. This following video is cool, except for the fact that the projector was embedded inside a dummy phone store BlackBerry, you can tell right away by the paper screen:
I recently attended the first ‘Social Media Breakfast’ in Ottawa, an event originally started in Boston by Bryan Person that has been created in other cities including New York City, San Francisco, Austin, Memphis, Phoenix, the Twin Cities, Cincinnati and Singapore.
The event brought local entrepreneurs, Marketers, PR pros, New Media pros, bloggers, podcasters and social networkers together to share ideas and learn from each others experiences.
The guest speaker was Adrian Salamunovic, Co-Founder of DNA 11 (our neighbour here in the ByWard Market) who, with his partner Nazim Ahmed came up with the idea of creating art from DNA. He explained how through the use of social media, their concept was heard, the story was spread, and ultimately they were discovered by the mainstream media — GQ, Playboy, Discovery Channel, The Today Show, Popular Science and Wired have all done feature stories.
 [Photo by Andrew Alexander] |
As far as social media is concerned, Adrian says the most important thing you can do is to build real relationships with bloggers. Before a press release, send the scoop to your select bloggers ahead of time so that they get to report on it first and don’t be afraid of sending communications that are not only relevant to your company but also other interesting story ideas for them to write about.
Adrian’s “10 Rules for Social PR Guerillas”
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DNA 11 currently has over 5,000 incoming links to their website from over 20,000 web page mentions.
Social Media Breakfast Ottawa was hosted by Ramius Corporation who’s products include: CommunityZero, an online community platform; and Sixent, a social network that lets you share your personal, public and professional profiles with the rest of the world.
It’s been almost a month since the last update - and it’s high time to give a glimpse into what has been on my mind during that time.
“Chutes too Narrow” by The Shins is playing, so let’s get going.
When I left off last time, I had settled upon using a hybrid approach with Fogbugz and LiquidPlanner to track and present various views of the progress and status of projects.
Splat.
On Tuesday night, I attend the OCRI/Telfer Voice of the Customer event, along with some other members of the Rove team. The panel regarding best practices in capturing customer input in product design was very relevant to us as a growing software company.
As makers of category-defining mobile network administration software, the insights from Dr. Hanan Anis, a professor at the University of Ottawa, and former CTO at Ceyba – another category defining company during the tech boom – were especially useful. How can you reach out and ask your customers what they need from your product when you are defining the entire space? This is a question with no easy answer, except working as closely as possible with your customers to make sure that the features they want in the product are there, while continuing to push the envelope on the features the product has.
Another point stemming from the panel discussion was the importance of using the data gather from customers in meaningful ways throughout the product design and business decision-making process. If you reach out to your customers to get feedback on your product, then you better incorporate that feedback into your product. There’s no easier way to alienate your customers then by asking them for help, and then ignoring them when they offer to help.
Most importantly for a growing software company is the cost-benefit analysis of the lengthening of the product design process that comes with increasing stakeholder input. In a rapidly moving environment, time-to-market is very important and the more voices in the design process just slows it down. Plus, studies to determine customer usage patterns – eye-tracking, perception studies, focus groups – are expensive. So what’s a company like Rove to do? We can ask our customers. So, what else do you need from Rove?
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