Good Experience

I think you bring up a reasonable point: that the forced tipping system with no values below 20% was previously discussed in other articles such as that of Grynbaum from January 8, 2012:

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/09/nyregion/new-nyc-livery-cabs-wont-have-to-have-tvs.html

In fact it's not a secret at all since New Yorkers and those visiting the city are quite acquainted with the system, it's no secret, so I am not sure Mr. Grynbaum is a reasonable original source of information about the system, millions who have taken a
taxi are reasonable sources.

Worth mentioning is the article on the usability blog from which Mr. Gross hotlinked his image of the interface, dating back to February 2011:

http://goodexperience.com/2011/02/how-a-taxi-button-cha.php

Their reaction was similar to many others, that a design that forces a minimum tip of 20% is an annoying dodgy system for forcible shakedowns of hapless credit card customers, and sure to enrage many people.

GoodExperience's blog's conclusion was nearly the opposite of Mr. Gross's:

> The lesson: details matter. One change to one button in the interface changes the experience from delightful to annoying, leaving the rider feeling taken advantage of.

The cab customers are the victims here, they are in essence a captive audience who can not seek competition since the system has been dictated system wide by the same government that profits well from the system since it prevents drivers from underreporting tips.

Mr.…

No, it's not a contradiction to have an agenda in mind and to also try not to ask leading questions.

An example of a leading question in this context would be like asking them "do you see the button labeled 'learn more' to your right?", which really doesn't test anything other than the fact that they're literate and their eyes work.

Compare this to asking them "now what do you see on the page and what do you want to do?" Maybe they'll want more information and hit the learn more button, maybe they want info and don't see it, or maybe they want to do something else entirely.

And sure, you can just give the app to the user and see what they do, without writing up goals in advance. That's the unscripted method that Mark Hurst popularized and I linked to. Here's an even longer article by him on the same method:

http://www.goodexperience.com/blog/2004/12/tips-on-moderating-listening-l.php

But that's not appropriate for every situation. Unscripted stuff is great for getting the lay of the land and uncovering as many problems as you can, or finding out if they'd use your app at all even if you got rid of all the obstacles. Often times you already know about specific usability issues, however, or you want to make sure they cover all the bases in an app with a lot of moving pieces.

I love this game!! Once I got past the second level, I really got the hang of it and loved the mental challenge of solving levels.

One thought: I'd consider making the first few levels much easier. This article on Yoyodyne's trivia games is along those lines:

"As Yoyodyne got busier, we had less and less time to write each game's questions. Finally, one day, we launched a game that had very little effort put into the questions - a rush job, as I recall. The questions were factually correct, but there was no witty writing, no twist, and the questions were really easy to answer.

When the game ran, we were surprised to see that the response rate, instead of hovering around 30%, actually exceeded 60%. We had put less work into crafting the experience, and there were more players who wanted to participate. ... [u]sers wanted two things from their e-mail game experience:

1. POSITIVE REINFORCEMENT: Users wanted to be told that they got the answer right, and that they were winning.

2. NO INVESTMENT: Users did not want to pay for that positive reinforcement in any way. They didn't want to think, work, get up from their chair, or otherwise make any effort to get the reward."

http://www.goodexperience.com/columns/04/0513.slots.html

Great post and I agree... I think newsletters fit with what people are looking for these days and the market is wide open.

A newsletter/founder that probably isn't big enough to make it on that list, but that I would highly recommend is Mark Hurst's Good Experience newsletter - http://www.goodexperience.com.

It is what originally inspired me to want to create a newsletter (which ended up finally being Hacker Newsletter - http://www.hackernewsletter.com) and is the only newsletter that I open and read each one. To me it is just like getting your favorite magazine, but better since I don't have to do anything but open gmail.