Silverback launched just over a month ago and what a roller coaster month that was. We launched towards the end of July and within the first couple of days the app had been downloaded 7,000 times. Thirty days on and well over 20,000 people have grabbed themselves a copy. Crikey!
For the first couple of weeks the whole company was hooked on the Twitter feedback. I had a Summize window permanently open and kept refreshing the search every few minutes. Messages were coming thick and fast and I was pretty bowled over by the feedback. The messages were so unbelievably positive I actually started to worry. After all it was just a little usability testing app and wasn’t going to cure hunger and bring about world peace.
Here is just a small selection of the comments we received…
Is so stoked about the utter incredibleness of @silverbackapp he can’t sleep. - @CliffSpence
Holy CRAP! Silverback (http://silverbackapp.com) is out and it rocked my world! - @erickaweb
Think @clearleft are on to a sure fire hit. Already my clients are asking about using Silverback, just a day after it’s release! - @paulrobertlloyd
Love silverback. so much love in the details. even the stupid ape is animated when you export a session. thank you so much @clearleft ! - @reimund
Has a major user-testing chubby over Silverback. This is fantastic and just what we needed for our upcoming sessions. - @gb
It’s been longer than I can remember that I found an application to fill such a gaping void in my work. @silverbackapp is oozing promise. - @niccai
Chubbies and gaping voids aside, that’s some pretty sweet praise. As people got over the initial rush of excitement and started playing around with the app, we started to get some more detailed reviews and a stack load of useful feedback.
- Silverback: Making Usability Testing That Much Cooler
- Silverback - Usability Testing for the Rest of Us
- Silverback - Guerrilla Usability Testing
- A Review of Silverback
- Initial Impressions of Silverback
- Silverback: Usability testing for apes
- A review of Clearleft’s Silverback
- Usability testing with Silverback
- Software Usability Testing for the Rest of Us
When designing Silverback our goal was to keep the interface as simple and intuitive as possible. We wanted to include features that the majority of people would use while removing features that were only of interest to a niche crowd. After all we were trying to create a lightweight guerilla usability testing app for the masses rather than a pro solution, so less Photoshop and more iPhoto. We also wanted to democratise usability testing and put it back in the hands of the creators, so price was going to be a key factor. As such we were careful not to include any features that were overly complicated to implement and could push the budget up. This is why playback got cut from the initial release and we didn’t include things like editing.
As this is just the first release, there is is a lot more functionality to come and we’ve already got a bit of a roadmap planned out. For instance we want to improve file management, add the ability to preview your session and export multiple sessions in one go. We also want to do more stuff around notes and chapter markers to name but a few.
However rather than packing the app full of features from the outset, we wanted to get the app out there and see exactly how people were using it. This process has been really insightful and we’ve had some some great ideas so far. In fact it’s really interesting to see how many different testing styles there are and which features benefit each style. If you’ve got a spare 5 minutes I’d love to hear how you run your tests and which features would make your lives easier.
One popular feature request is remote usability testing. As it happens the idea of remote moderated testing came up very early in the development cycle and was something I was keen to explore. However we’d need to build it on the back of protocols like VNC which would have been time consuming and costly. Also, if you’ve ever used VNC you’ll know how much bandwidth this requires. It could potentially work over a local network, but it would be pretty ropey across the web, especially if your test subject didn’t share the same fat pipe as you.
Remote testing is actually an interesting one. If we’re talking about testing over a local network so the moderator and clients can be in another room you’re actually moving away from the idea of guerilla testing and towards something more formal. As such, this really feels like a pro feature to me. If we’re talking about remote testing over the web, I wonder how many people would actually do this? It’s still a fairly niche activity so I’m unsure of the demand. I personally find it awkward having a video chat using Skype or iChat, so wouldn’t get the same sense of empathy as actually being in the same room as the person. That being said we’re definitely open minded about these things and may consider it for a future release, assuming the engineering and budget constraints aren’t too high.
As Silverback was our first desktop app, there were always going to be a few teething problems, and in all honesty I’m surprised there haven’t been more. However we did put a huge amount of effort into the testing phase of the project, which I’m sure helped a lot. There are a couple of intermittent exporting bugs which we hope to have fixed shortly, along with some minor UI issues. We’re also aware that the exporting speed, while similar to other apps in its class, is still a little slower than desired. So we’re currently working on that. If you do come across any issues please don’t be shy, and post them up to our get satisfaction page.
So I guess that’s about it for now. It’s been an absolutely fantastic month for our hairy friend (no I don’t mean Jeremy), and I’m really excited to see what the future holds. We’ve had all kinds of people using it from Apple to NASA and 20,000 downloads can’t be bad. It’s been amazing to hear from designers who have used the app to prove the value of usability to their boss, or universities who have decided to use the app on their interaction courses. But more importantly I’d love to hear you’re thoughts, experiences and suggestions.
Oh, and I believe Steve the Gorilla may be making a surprise appearance at dConstruct next week, so I’m sure he looks forward to seeing you there.
So I’m very excited (and a little bit scared) to be speaking at Web Directions East in Tokyo this November. I’ve never been to Japan before, but it’s somewhere I’ve always dreamt of going. I’ve got around 10 days to explore, so would love to hear your thoughts, ideas and recommendations.
I obviously want to see Downtown Tokyo, including all the crazy Otaku haunts. I’m not one for Karaoke but definitely want to check out a cosplay bar or two! And before you ask, no I won’t be dressing up as my favourite manga character! I’m also keen to do a spot of “Lost in Translation” sightseeing as I kinda like the movie. Maybe just grabbing a drink at the hotel bar. Daft I know.
I’m equally keen to get out of Tokyo and explore the more traditional side of Japan. I’ve been a big fan of the rural, feudal face of Japan ever since seeing Shogun with Richard Chamberlain on TV in the 80s and then discovering the joy of Akira Kurosawa while at school. So any tips for traditional places to visit or stay would be most welcome. Oh, and I’m wondering if I’ll have time to see Mount Fuji and if in fact, it’s worth the trip.
So suggestions on a postcard please.
How your online business can survive a global recession.
Traditional business is simple. You create a product or service you think customers will want, and then spend money to drive people towards that product or service. If you’re lucky, some of those people will want to user your product or service and you’ll make money. This can be through direct charges or, in the case of content creation, selling this attention on to other companies.
During times of economic slowdowns, marketing budgets are usually the first things to be cut. However in doing so you reduce the number of people who’s attention you capture, reducing your potential market, and the whole things turns into a downward spiral. This is why most marketing pundits recommend that you increase your marketing budget during time of crisis, in order to shore up potential customer numbers.
Despite this obvious logic, there is a lack of liquidity in the market and budgets are going to be cut whether we like it or not. So product owners need to think of better, more effective ways of spending their money and maximising their return on investment.
The ironic thing about the preceding couple of paragraphs is that I’ve not actually mentioned the quality or suitability of the product or service, only the fact that marketing spend can drive attention. Yet we all know that it’s harder and more costly to acquire new customers than it is to satisfy existing ones. So rather than driving more traffic and hoping that some of those people will stick, we need to improve the core offering itself.
What does that mean? Well, first off, most websites are incredibly inefficient and converting customers, and can you blame them? Up until now it’s all been about volume rather than efficiency. As such sites are littered with usability problems that literally block your clients from spending money with you. In fact only this afternoon I abandoned a website for its competition because the site was so painful to use. You wouldn’t lay barriers in front of your customers in the real world, yet this is what we’re currently doing every day online. So the first step to slowdown success is to spend time removing these barriers and reducing your drop-out rates. This can be done quickly and for a fraction of what it would have cost to recruit those customers in the first place.
Next, we need to use our understanding of consumer psychology to promote our products more effectively. So rather than just laying out all our wares on the ground and hoping that somebody will wander past and buy something, we need to think about the purchasing process and make it more enticing for our users. This is the stuff that any marketing graduate will have learnt in their first year at school, yet for some reason it rarely seems to make it onto the web. This is largely because marketing departments don’t really get the web and either ignore it completely or shout at the top of their voices. However the web is full of discerning consumers who want to escape from overt marketing, so this stuff needs to be done subtly and with aplomb.
Lastly, we fundamentally need to rethink what we’re selling. Rather than coming up with a great new product and services and then hoping we find a market to sell it to, we need to learn about the needs of our customers and provide tools they actually want. So you need to go right back to basics and start talking to your customers to see what they need. Doing some smart research can show you’re where you’re currently falling down as well as opening up whole other opportunities you never even knew existed, simply by asking questions like “what do you wish this product did that you currently can’t do”. So surveys, customer interviews, and ethnographic studies can be a powerful tool in your business armoury.
One canny pundit once quipped, “people aren’t queuing up to buy your crappy product”, yet we keep trying to sell mediocre goods by upping the marketing spend. Instead, why not do what numerous other companies do and spend your money making your products better. By focussing your attention on building value in your products and providing an outstanding consumer experience you’ll create products that literally market themselves. Or to put it another way, it costs a lot less to market a good product than it does to market a crappy one.
So in order to weather this current economic downturn and come out ahead, we need to start thinking more strategically and less tactically, more about long term vision than short term success. Otherwise we’ll end up with a slash and burn mentality to driving online success. Instead, we need to build better products, we need remove the barriers to adoption, and we need to promote them more effectively. Doing any one of these things will significantly improve your conversion rates, but doing all three will see you weather the current storm and come out ahead. What are you waiting for?
My blog is dying, long live my blog.
You may have noticed that things have gone a little quiet round here of late. In fact, if you’ve been reading my blog through your feed reader you probably haven’t noticed anything as I average about one post every six week at the moment which is pretty poor. Especially when you consider that at the height of my output I was blogging several times a week and occasionally several times a day. So what’s the reason for this lack of activity? I think it’s several things really.
Too darned busy
The last few years have been pretty hectic and an increasing amount of my time is being taken up by Clearleft and other related activities. There was a time when I’d spend my days reading blogs posts and hacking on web sites, then head home to work on personal projects and blog about my discoveries. These days I spend my working life in business meetings or with my head in my email client. When I get home I’ll simply end up writing that report or catching up the emails I failed to do during the day. Rather than my work being an extension of my life, it seems that my life has become an extension of my work, and without me realising it.
A lack of attention
No, I don’t mean that I lack focus and er, what was I saying again? Oh yes, that’s right. When I first started blogging there were around 10 websites I’d follow on a regular basis and another 10 I’d dip into every now and again. That quickly expanded to 50, then 100 and then, well, you can see where I’m going here. I hit saturation point around 2 years ago and just couldn’t keep up with all the blogs I felt I was supposed to be reading. My attention became spread too thin. I tried to prune my feed reader, but every time I did I ended up discovering more interesting feeds than I’d kill. So I basically stopped reading my news reader two years ago as the number of unread posts was too depressing.
Signal to noise
The ever increasing noise to single ratio combined with a reduction in actual hands on work resulted in less stuff to talk about. Well less techie stuff anyway. I’d fought the good web standards fight and was more interested in UX related stuff or the nuances of running a business. Furthermore, with so many more broadcasters to choose from, the relevance of what I had to say was diminishing as was my reach. That’s assuming I could find time to blog.
New ways of expression
One of the key reasons for blogging is to express yourself and your feelings. I used to get back from a hard days work and want to discuss my discoveries with other people. Blogging allowed me to do this. However with the inception of Clearleft I’d inadvertently surrounded myself with super smart people I could discuss my ideas with and who would usually either tell me that my ideas were stupid or that somebody else had said the same thing more eloquently six months ago.
This is also when services like Twitter and Facebook entered the scene. Now I’m not going to say that micro publishing tools killed the blogging star, but I think they’ve certainly made a dent. Rather than publishing fully formed ideas on your own website, you could post snippets of an idea with much more ease and to a more targeted audience. So I started to find that my desire to express myself was sated by a stream of nano thought published to Twitter rather than a few bigger ideas published to my blog. The format my be different, but the psychological result was the same.
So what’s next
Well I know that I don’t want to stop blogging as it’s an integral part of who I’ve become, if not who I am at the moment. However I do realise that some serious changes need to take place. First up I need to decide if I want to be multi-chanel or single channel. Do I open up my Twitter account to everybody (it’s currently private) and see it more as a micro publishing tool than a way of staying in touch with friends, then keep my blog for longer and less frequent articles. Or do I try and bake some of that instant gratification into this blog and make it more of a tumble log, supplementing the long posts with links, quotes, flickr images and YouTube videos?
I’m sure a log of you guys have been going through the same thing recently, so I’d love to hear your thoughts on the future of blogging and your own blog in particular. Are blogs being supplemented by short form alternatives? Is this the death of narrative cinema. Er, I mean narrative online article writing. How has your blog and your approach to blogging changed over the past few years and what should I do to combat this change, if combating it is indeed the right approach.
Your thoughts, as always, on the electronic version of “the back of a postcard” that is my comments form.
Garth Marenghi's Darkplace Season 2.
OK, so that was a bit mean. If you’re a Garth Marenghi fan (and who wouldn’t be) there isn’t a season 2. At least not yet. However there would be if I had it my way. You see I’ve been re-visiting this classic TV comedy show over Christmas and it got me thinking about the possibilities for a second season.
As some of you know, Gath Marenghi’s Darkplace was a parody of bad 70’s and 80’s TV shows, complete with implausible story lines, bad acting and terrible special effects. Supposedly resurrected from the Channel 4 archives to fill a scheduling gap, the show mixed the “original” footage with cast interviews reminiscing about the good old days.
Sadly this show received a fairly lukewarm reception on it’s initial release, although it later went on to generate a cult following and clocked up a load of DVD sales. The writers of this show went on to pen the IT crowd, while other cast members went on to appear is series like the Mighty Boosh. Anyway, enough preamble. Here’s my idea for Garth Marenghi’s Darkplace, USA.
Set in current day Hollywood, Garth Marenghi has sold the right for Darkplace to a US studio who are going to remake the classic British horror series for an American audience. Garth and his partner Dean Learner are bought in as plot advisors to help keep some of the original creativity. The pilot episode will feature them remaking one of their classic episodes, although later shows will obviously diverge from the original.
The new show will be modernised in every sense, with CSI style graphics, 24 style split screens, and plenty of meaningless technobabble to make the show feel smart and edgy. Some of the original UK cast will remain on the show, although they will have to adopt phoney US accents. On top of this there will be a whole new cast of American wannabes along with a load of cameo performances by famous US fans and stars from the original series.
The show would still be cut with interviews with the cast, but this time they would be discussing the making of the new show and how it differed to the old one. They’d also be talking about how their careers had changed in the last 30 years, some becoming a huge success and some disappearing into obscurity. So plenty of opportunity for character development.
So rather than being a parody of 70’s and 80’s TV shows as per the original, this second season would be a parody of modern TV making. You’d still have the overblown acting and heaps of slow motion. However instead of bad 80’s music and shaky cameras you’d have MTV style cut scenes to a rock or techno soundtrack. It would essentially become a piss take of all the modern remakes of old TV shows like Dr Who as well as an indictment on the excess and implausibility of modern television.
I’m not sure if I’ve done a good job at describing Darkplace USA, but I can picture it in my head and in there it’s pretty awesome. What do you think?
January – “Forgiveness” by Engineers
I got this album around Christmas time and it’s been my drifting to sleep music ever since.February – “Catastrophe And The Cure” by Explosions in the Sky
Explosions have been playing in the office for the previous 12 months, thanks largely to James. However it really came to the fore after seeing them play live.March – “Chemistry” by Unkle
This one’s been on the boil since christmas, but the thumping intensity of Chemistry finally bubbled over in March.April – “The Salmon Dance” by The Chemical Brothers
Stupid but fun.May – “Kicking and Screaming” by The Presets
I picked the album up in Australia and it quickly became the soundtrack to my roadtrip and one of my most played albums of the year.June – “A-Punk” by Vampire Weekend
Another Aussie roadtrip purchase, this one took a bit longer to grow on me.July – “Salute your Solution” by The Saboteurs
I really liked this song when I accidentally saw the music video on MTV (or equivalent). The album took a while to grow on me but it’s actually quite good if you don’t mind the country aspect.August – “Latchmere” by Maccabees
Another album that’s been played a lot in the office, it reached it’s peak towards the end of the summer.September – “Electric Feel” by MGMT
I listened to MGMT loads during my summer jaunt to Devon and just kept playing it.October – “Is There a Ghost?” by Band of Horses
This haunting track kept getting played throughout 08, with it’s peak in October.November – “C-C (You Set the Fire in Me)” by Tom Vek
Another artist I’ve played to death, I finally managed to track the album down after scouring all the local record shops to no avail.December - “Cassius” by Foals
Another group that’s been hanging round in my iPod playlist for some time and I finally got round to buying the CD. Definitely my theme tune this Christmas.Top 10 Movies I've seen in 2008.
This isn’t necessarily a list of movies that came out in 2008. Just ones I’ve enjoyed watching.
- King of Kong
- In Search of a Midnight Kiss
- Dark Night
- Two Days in Paris
- Sharkwater
- No Country for Old Men
- In Bruges
- The Orphanage
- Cloverfield
- Tell No One
Any must see movies I’ve missed off that you’d recommend?
I first started using Twitter when our friend Dunstan used it to announce his new Job at Flickr back in 2006. Back then I had a small number of friends on my buddy list and used it as a more immediate way of chatting to people than our mailing list.
Over the next few months more people I knew discovered the app and my buddy list slowly started to grow. However it was still mostly friends; people who’s email addresses, IM details and mobile numbers I knew and who I’d talk to on a fairly regular basis. So I used it as a way of chatting to friends, sharing links, organising meet-ups and generally staying in touch with people.
The killer app at that time was the ability to both send and receive update notifications on your phone. This meant that Twitter became location based substitute to SMS. You could send out a notification of where you were and if friends were in the area they’d simply turn up. This led to lots of spontaneous meet-ups in cafes, bars and the like. Because of this I decided to keep my Tweets restricted to friends as didn’t necessarily want random acquaintances turning up at bars. This also meant that I was fairly careful who I added to my buddy list.
My Friends list swelled when I hit SXSW the following year. In 06 all the cool San Franciscans were using a service called Dodgeball to arrange meet-ups and let people know where the cool parties were. However this was really restricted to a small minority of people. By the time 07 had come round Twitter was really kicking in and this overtook Dodgeball and the way to stay up to date with what was happening at the event. So by the end of the week my list of Twitter buddies had swelled as people started swapping their Twitter names rather than their email addresses or phone numbers.
My buddy list no longer included just local friends. It now included a whole bunch of cool bloggers I’d met in the states. So as well as just substituting SMS for my local friends, I also started using it as a way to keep in touch with people further afield. It started to become a form of social grooming, or as Leisa Reichelt put it, Ambient Intimacy. A way of keeping those loose ties open and maintaining a larger social network than would otherwise have been possible. Essentially the same sociological process that Facebook was used for, but with less sheep tossing or pirate attacks.
My buddy list has now grown to 300 people and has started to include looser and looser connections; cool people I may have met once or twice at a conference or been out for a few beers with. It’s also started to include a few people I’ve never actually met, but whose work I admire. It also contains a few bots and other interesting sources of news.
So over the last year the character of my Twitter usage has changed. I still blog my location, but due to an increase in noise to signal ratio and the lack of text updates in the UK anymore, Twitter has become much less useful as an social organisation tool. I can’t think of the last time I accidentally met up with somebody who just happened to be in town at the same time as me. So while I still do Twitter what I’m doing, I do it with much less frequency as the potential benefits have been reduced.
I use the DM feature a lot, but without phone notifications it’s now a poor cousin of IM and SMS. Only used when I’m near a free wifi network and don’t want an immediate response. So it’s most useful for sending links and the occasional nudge.
Instead of using Twitter as a way of chatting with friends, staying in touch with people and manufacturing social opportunities, it’s become much more of a short form publishing tool. Blogging my thoughts, feelings, overheard conversations, movie reviews, interesting links etc. It still has a social element, but is much less directed than before. As such I’m seeing less and less reason to keep my Tweets private, so have decided to open them up and see how things go. So if you want to follow my random thoughts on Twitter, here are my details.
Of course I’m still a little concerned about the privacy implications of letting random people know where I am every second of the day, and I do wonder when the first Twitter aided break-in will occur. I’m also interested to see how this is going to affect my Twitter usage. Rather than posting up random thoughts to my friends, not worrying too much if I make a fool of myself, I’ll probably be a little more thoughtful about what I post and the affect it’ll have on my public persona. Or maybe I won’t. Who knows?
UX London Registration Launches.
Ticket sales for UX London launched today so I thought I’d take this opportunity to outline what we’re trying to achieve with this event.
A lot of industry conferences are what I’d describe as “talking heads” events, where well known speakers stand up for an hour and give the audience a big does of inspiration. I love these type of events and this is essentially what we do at dConstruct. I always come away with a head full of ideas and an a renewed interest in my profession.
The one criticism I hear is that, while these events are inspiring, you don’t usually end up learning new skills. I think a lot of people blame the speakers or conference organisers for this, but I actually think it’s down to the format. With just 45 minutes of productive speaking time and an audience of wildly differing needs and abilities, It’s just not possible to teach anything substantive.
So with UX London we’re trying to change that. Rather than a straight up conference, UX London is much more about professional development. Sure we’re going to have a conference track with inspiring speakers like Don Norman and Jeff Veen. However we’re then going to break off into two days of intense, half day workshops, where you can really start to focus on those hard skills.
There will be three workshop tracks at the event: “Core Skills” for people transitioning into a UX role, “Advanced Skills” for those people wanting to hone their knowledge, and a “Strategy and Management” track for people running UX teams and needing to sell the benefits of UX to their clients and managers. So you’ll get to learn practical tips and techniques from the likes of Peter Merholz, Luke Wroblewski, Dan Saffer and Jared Spool.
We’re putting the finishing touches to the program right now, but workshops so far include:
* Influencing Strategy Through Design
* Brainstorming and Concept Generation
* Design Research
* Quick Sketching for Interaction Design
* Information Architecture Essentials
* Copywriting and the Scent of Information
* Interactive Wireframing
* Getting Real with Agile Design
* Managing a Team of UX ProfessionalsAs you can see from the program, this event is aimed more towards the corporate end of the spectrum. So people working for organisations like the BBC and design agencies like LBi as well as individual consultants. Of course we hope to have all kinds of people attending, but we realise not everybody will be able to afford the ticket price. That’s why we’re still committed to bringing you great speakers at events like dConstruct.
On the subject of price, I just wanted to assure people that this isn’t an attempt to “cash in” (those of you who know us know that we’re not particularly profit motivated, much to the disappointment of our families). In fact, this event is costing so much money I doubt we’ll make a profit this year. London hotels, top name speakers and three days of catering don’t come cheap. Instead our goal is to bring over some of the best known speakers in the industry and have them share their knowledge. By doing so we hope to build the European UX community and help raise the level of education in our industry as a whole. That way we all win.
At a cost of £895 this event may still seem expensive to some. However it’s actually no more than going to the dConstruct conference and both workshop days. We’ve simply decided to do it as one fixed price rather than break it down into it’s constituent parts. That way we can keep that sense of shared experience.
I know I’m really excited about the event and I hope you are too. We’ve gone to great pains to bring together what we think is the perfect line-up. Sort of a fantasy league UX conference. I’ve already got my eye on the workshop sessions I want to attend, assuming I’m not running round like a mad person organising things. I’m also very excited by the conference sessions we’ve got planned, so look forward to making more announcements in the coming weeks.
So if you want to stay up-to-date with all the latest UX London happenings, why don’t you subscribe to our events feed or our Twitter account.
Clearleft is looking for a keen intern to join our team for 10 weeks this spring. We’re looking for somebody with a real interest in front end development. Somebody who is passionate about the quality of their code and willing to go that extra mile to see it implemented correctly. You’ll be the type of person who reads all the blogs, subscribes to all the Twitter feeds and owns at least a couple of our books :-)
This is a hands on position so you’ll need to be willing to roll up your sleeves and get stuck in. We’ll be buddying you up with our superstar programmers, so you’ll get chance to pair program with Natalie Downe and argue semantics with Jeremy Keith. It won’t be a cakewalk either, so expect to have everything you know about web standards challenged.
After 10 weeks of working on real world projects with some of the best front end developers in the industry, you’ll have developed a level of HTML, CSS and Javascript knowledge that would normally take years to accrue. So this is an excellent opportunity for all those web standards enthusiasts and budding front end developers out there.
If you’re interested in the internship yourself, or know somebody who would be, here’s the official job spec.
Refresh.