Creating Passionate Users

> Something always bothered me: why using "sketch-like hand-drawn pencil" like style for that kind of tools ?

https://napkinlaf.sourceforge.net (one of my favorites from back in the day)

> The Napkin Look & Feel is a pluggable Java look and feel that looks like it was scrawled on a napkin. You can use it to make provisional work actually look provisional, or just for fun. It is released under a BSD-style license

> The idea is to try to develop a look and feel that can be used in Java applications that looks informal and provisional, yet be fully functional for development. Often when people see a GUI mock-up, or a complete GUI without full functionality, they assume that the code behind it is working. While this can be used to sleazy advantage, it can also convince people who ought to know better (like your managers) that you are already done when you have just barely begun, or when only parts are complete. No matter how much you speak to their rational side, the emotional response still says "Done!". Which after a while leads to a later question: "That was done months ago! What are they doing? Playing Quake?" A good article on this is Joel on Software's “The Iceberg Secret, Revealed”.

... and that's the place that I remember where to find this blog post:

Don't make the Demo look Done - https://headrush.typepad.com/creating_passionate_users/2006/12/dont_make_the_d.html

> When we show a work-in-progress (like an alpha release) to the public, press, a client, or boss...…

There’s a lot to like here. It reminds me of this great article I read about someone learning French by reading Harry Potter many years ago. I can’t find the first reference to it, but it seems a lot of people take this approach now and numerous articles have been written about this method.
https://www.google.com/search?q=harry+potter+language+learning

I was delighted to see that you even wrote about it yourselves on your blog.
http://blog.readlang.com/2014/03/08/learn-languages-with-harry-potter.html

Your content marketing is great, but you don’t do it enough. Good startups ship both code and marketing efforts on a regular basis…ideally, you should shoot for something going out weekly.

It’s great that you shared your numbers, but snapshots are less helpful than data or information that shows momentum. When I’m trying to figure out if a company is doing well, numbers at a fixed point in time usually isn’t enough data to help me determine what the company looks like in the future.

Early stage startups should try for at least 10%/weekly growth on your core metric. If you’re not hitting that, make sure you’re only spending time/energy on tasks to hit those numbers.

Onboarding experience can use some work. There’s not enough guidance in the app to make me feel confident that I can use your site to learn a language on my own. For instance, when I first login, I had no idea what I was supposed to do first.

http://cl.ly/image/253K373i1M2Y

Even though I saw Upload Text…

I have users that spend nearly all of their free time on my site. One recently asked me to ban them so they could kick the habit. I asked him what part of the site was addictive and he said, "Basically everything."

One of the key things, I think, is having lots of little things to do that you can get immediate feedback from. e.g. Check the forum for new replies, rate new content, see what kind of response their content is getting, etc.

Kathy Sierra has a great article on this kind of thing:
http://headrush.typepad.com/creating_passionate_users/2005/05/finegrained_tre.html

Having strict moderation keeps the general quality high, which means it's usually worth checking back to see what's new. There are also multiple tracks of achievement, like hitting 500 comments, etc. so there is always a new badge within striking distance.

You don't even need to have permanent badges. I have a list on the front page of the people who have submitted the most ratings that day. You don't get anything from being on the list, but people try to get to the top anyway. People like seeing their own names.

Having a friendly community is also a big help, since it means that other users are a direct source of positive feedback. That's a bit harder to develop, though.

Yeah, agreed. But sharing the answers is exactly what is needed in companies/organisations. I've worked in companies where people hoard data and solutions to problems because it gives them power/influence/job-security.

As for tracking commits, if the metric becomes a goal it becomes useless. People will game the system to have more commits, or worse, write a bot to break up their contributions into as many commits as they can get away with.

One line can indeed be worth more than 100 if the line fixes helps fix some production bug. The biggest issue I have is people fixing things and not documenting the fix.

Our metric of "success" for our shared knowledge is how many people outside of our company/org find our stuff useful. But this is not always possible in secretive or highly competitive industries.

Kathy Sierra said "out teach your competitors". https://youtu.be/Dsryx3Ra5pU I totally agree with this mindset. https://headrush.typepad.com/creating_passionate_users/2005/09/you_can_outspen.html

I get angry everytime that I think about how a few vile people attacked Kathy and shut down one of the best blogs to grace the internet, Creating Passionate Users (http://headrush.typepad.com/).

After she stopped blogging, I wrote a program to scrap her TypePad site and then hand edited down all of her posts into a single, massive book. I printed a single copy on Lulu for myself which I've marked up with highligher and pen calling out all of her incredible points.

I don't want to earn any money from her work, so here's a link to download a free PDF copy of the best of her blog:

http://www.kevinmconroy.com/pdf/creating_passionate_users.pdf

It's print-ready for you to upload to your favorite self publishing book website (e.g. lulu.com) and print your own copy.

Thank you for continuing to inspiring me Kathy.

"Until someone spends a good bucket of cash on hiring UI talent to clean up the abortion that is the linux desktop, they'll still be lagging way behind OSX and Windows, both of which offer a superior and consistent experience."

I'm not sure it's just a matter of money. As a UI guy myself, I can tell you that participation on OSS is not very conducive to the way I like design. Many/most of the powerful stakeholders in OSS projects tend to be hackers and power users and there's a bit too much of an emphasis on consensus (gotta keep the volunteer army happy). Great article on "the dumbness of crowds" here: http://headrush.typepad.com/creating_passionate_users/2007/01/the_dumbness_of.html

I don't think they need to HIRE great UI talent. I think they need to put 'em in charge (a la Apple).