Design Sapling.com

I just received an email asking me to volunteer my time. I didn’t want to do it.

It asked for an RSVP “Yes” if you were coming; all you have to do is click a “Yes” button. The request was sent to hundreds of people; easy to ignore.

But this email asked that you also RSVP “No” if you are NOT coming.
Why would they need that? Whoever didn’t reply “Yes” isn’t coming!

The trick is, people don’t want to disappoint.
An explicit “No” option makes it less likely you’ll ignore the request since you can easily just click the RSVP button instead. It’d be rude not to respond.

But now you’re in the position of actively saying “No“. And you don’t want to be the bearer of bad news.

I don’t have any studies at hand that back this up, but I’m guessing the tactic they used increased response rates and increased the number of people saying “Yes” who would have otherwise ignored it.

[ For the record, I clicked "No".
They sent me to a page asking for a donation. ]

“Instant Win: Not an instant winner.”

This is what a Subway Scrabble game piece says if you don’t win. Get’s your hopes up, then immediately shoots them down.

Sean Tevis is an Information Architect running for State Representative in Kansas.

http://seantevis.com/

Check out his source code! That’s smart campaigning!

An interesting thing about the web is that anyone can participate. You can get specialized news from experts in the fields your are interested in.

And there’s a lot of crap out there.

It’s hard to believe things from people who are only posting to convince you of something.

You can buy a newspaper, and with some reservations, believe what was printed. Go online and get the same info for free.
When you buy a newspaper, you’re actually buying journalistic integrity. You can trust those writers because they have fact-checkers and they’ll be fired if they abandon that trust.

You might think that a newspaper used to sell the news, but now they sell you trust. But in reality, their product hasn’t changed. The product is less valuable, however, if they are marketing the news. To continue to succeed, they need to market the trust.

This is an old perhaps obvious idea, but you’ve got to sell people on the benefits they get from using your product. In an dynamic world, the benefits people receive from a product are also dynamic. In order to really understand the benefit of a product, you have to understand your customers. It’s more than marketing, it’s truly and honestly fulfilling needs.

I previously wrote about how taking the time to learn your software can save you loads of time.

Another thing to be aware of is all the great freebies lots of programs throw in. Specifically, I’m talking about templates. Tons of software have template, but it’s not often that we really look to see what those templates have to offer.

Microsoft Word has hundreds of useful template, including legal documents, calendars, agendas, brochures, time management reminders for your team, etc… Really, there’s so much good stuff here, it’s worth it to take a few hours and figure out which ones are useful for your business. Just make sure make a note of it. After all, it’ll do you no good to flip through the templates if you forget to ever use them. I’ve got a word document on my desktop that has a list of templates useful for my team to use on projects. Whenever we get a new project, I’ve already got a huge resource of materials to help us organize, manage, and develop.

The same goes for most products from Adobe, especially InDesign.

Packaged templates are another oft overlooked feature, along with shortcut keys, that can drastically improve your productivity. The trick is taking the time to know what’s there and remember to use them.

The world is changing and book publishers are reacting.

Alternatives to physical books are popping up. E-book readers allow you to carry hundreds of different books with you.
The market isn’t very large right now and the technology certainly has room for improvement. Still, the publishers seem to be creating pioneering a new trail for delivering books.

So what’s the advantage of reading text on a $300 plain black-and-white display like on the Amazon Kindle when I already have a perfectly good laptop? Especially when most book are electronically designed these days. Well, books get leaked as PDF’s. Perhaps publishers are starting to get on board with e-books for DRM reasons. It’s harder to steal a book on proprietary technology.

A book’s PDF is going to be leaked whether or not there’s also an eBook version released. Regardless, not all publishers are keeping the PDF’s from the public. Rosenfeld Media, founded by an interaction designer, sells not only hard copies of books but PDF versions as well. The best part is that the PDFs are designed to be easy to read on a computer. Now there’s some incentive to buy. It’s cheaper than the book, full color, and you can start reading it instantly.

Do you like holding a book and seeing it on your shelf? When you buy the hard copy, the PDF is available to you for free. Start reading immediately while you wait for the actual book to get mailed.

They’re also thinking about releasing a version of the PDF that can be efficiently printed for overseas customers who don’t want to pay for shipping but still like to hold a real book.

That’s embracing technology, instead of coming up with ways to protect yourself from it. That’s evolving your business instead of fighting environmental change.

If you’re interested in becoming an entrepreneur, you may be interested in a show called Start-up Junkies. Educational and entertaining.

You see it more and more. Products are getting better and people are getting used to it. There is a demand for well designed products. And new business owners are going to be designers.

Interaction Design

Interaction Design (IxD) is here to show us a new way of doing business.

1. IxD practitioners do research on people and businesses.
2. Then, they design things in an efficient and effective way based on the results of the research.

So of course they will have some insights into how a business should be organized to meet user expectations. Interaction Designers are concerned with technology, psychology, and design. They are experts in understanding a user’s motivations in order to design a technology to meet the users goals. It’s tied to marketing and business operations.

TED

IxD is similar to the idea behind TED, which is an conference of the most successful and brilliant minds around the world present their works and methods to each other. It stands for Technology Entertainment Design.

• Technology are the tools used to do research and create products.
• Entertainment (loosely) parallels psychology in that to meet a users needs and goals, you’ve got to create engaging applications.
• Design is at the root of a company. The organization must be designed (from a business plan, perhaps?) and the services and products should all be designed.

The successful presenters at TED “get” Interaction Design. They may not call it by name, but they all practice it.
If you want to become a business owner or a better businessman, then start researching Interaction Design.

The world sure is a lot different for marketing since the advent of the internet and online social communitie.

MarketingSherpa.com (a good resource for marketing) recently interviewed the CEO of Zappos.com, a hugely successful online shoe retailer. A few things you can see from reading the article is that putting more money into ads won’t necessarily bring in more customers. You’ve got to find out who your audience and find out what works for them.

Zappos strives to be a customer-oriented service. For example, they offer free shipping on purchases and returns. An interesting point here is that discounts and ecoupons did bring in new customers, but customers they didn’t want. You can be selective in who you serve, which will help you serve them better.
Read the interview.

Guy Kawasaki refers us to an opposing view to some of his comments about how to run a successful start-up. The point:
Starting a business is hard work. Do expect to have to market you product.
Read the article

One thing you may want to do with your start-up is get a story written about it in the paper. I think that’s important, as well as getting it talked about on blogs that fit your niche market. And how hard would it be to get something written in the local paper? Redfin posted a video interview on pitching to newspapers.
Watch the interview

TED | Talks | Hans Rosling: Debunking third-world myths with the best stats you’ve ever seen (video)

This is one of my favorite examples of a good presentation of data.