@Strategyist

→ Startups, This Is How Design Works

Jean Friesewinkel — Mon, 07 May 2012 10:33:15 +0000

Wells Riley sets out to explain “design” to non-designer entrepreneurs — and makes a great job:

It’s so much more than that. It’s a state of mind. It’s an approach to a problem. It’s how you’re going to kick your competitor’s ass. This handy guide will help you understand design and provide resources to help you find awesome design talent.

The key takeaways for me are that:

Design is part of solving the problem — just as finding the right business model and the technical solution are.
Design should now be built into any venture from the start, not something to plug “on top” of an MVP.

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→ Principles of User Interface Design

Jean Friesewinkel — Sun, 06 May 2012 21:52:55 +0000

Joshua Porter offers an interesting list (… at least for a beginner like me) of principles of UI design. For example:

01. Interfaces exist to enable interaction

Interfaces exist to enable interaction between humans and our world. They can help clarify, illuminate, enable, show relationships, bring us together, pull us apart, manage our expectations, and give us access to services. The act of designing interfaces is not art and they are not monuments unto themselves. Interfaces do a job and their effectiveness can be measured. They are not just utilitarian, however. The best interfaces can inspire, evoke, mystify, and intensify our relationship with the world.

See the 19 other principles here.

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→ The Cult of Amazon Prime

Jean Friesewinkel — Sun, 29 Jan 2012 22:29:57 +0000

Jason Calacanis describes the world that Amazon Prime is enabling:

All of these malls and choices seemed fun for a while, but Prime cult members have now won their freedom. They are opting for a simpler and more efficient form of consumption.

After the Cult of the Mac — the Cult of Amazon?

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→ Nobody Goes to Facebook Anymore. It’s Too Crowded.

Jean Friesewinkel — Sun, 08 Jan 2012 23:44:37 +0000

It’s just a little satisfying to see veteran blogger Michael Arrington say something I’ve blogged about almost a year ago :-). Admittedly, recent moves such as the controversial frictionless sharing haven’t helped lower the noise volume either…

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→ This Tech Bubble Is Different

Jean Friesewinkel — Mon, 02 Jan 2012 16:56:48 +0000

Jeff Hammerbacher, former research scientist at Facebook and now founder of Cloudera:

“The best minds of my generation are thinking about how to make people click ads. That sucks.”

Great piece showing why it may be time to move past ad-based business models.

(via Yves-Alexandre de Montjoye)

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→ David Ascher: You knew the old Mozilla, meet the new Mozilla

Jean Friesewinkel — Thu, 29 Dec 2011 19:20:33 +0000

Mozilla’s David Ascher explains how Mozilla is adapting to take on the new challenges posed by today’s closed platforms, such as Facebook and Apple.

I’m delighted to see that Mozilla is fighting for user freedom again, and has broadened its thinking outside of Firefox, setting its priorities on identity and apps.

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★ Fab.com’s amazing pivot story

Jean Friesewinkel — Thu, 29 Dec 2011 11:32:59 +0000

Fab.com‘s pivot is nothing short of spectacular. Founder and CEO Jason Goldberg tells this fascinating story with a presentation:

In about 3 weeks, they completely changed their strategy — and now they’ve got significant traction and raised $40M more funding. I am amazed.

(thanks to Jean-Christophe Fann for the link)

★ Money, Freedom or Privacy: what do we prefer to give away?

Jean Friesewinkel — Thu, 29 Dec 2011 10:16:16 +0000

Marco Arment compares claims that Apple, Google, and Facebook keep telling their users, and concludes:

Everyone has their bullshit. You can simply decide whose you’re willing to tolerate.

Each of these companies’ business models takes something from us — we just have to decide what we prefer to give away:

Money,
Freedom,
Privacy.

Personally, I try to balance my “spending” between these companies (and others), to avoid relying too much on one supplier and sacrificing too much of either assets.

→ Mark Suster: The End of the Web? Don’t Bet on It. Here’s Why

Jean Friesewinkel — Wed, 21 Dec 2011 15:54:26 +0000

Mark Suster has strong arguments on why the rise of the “App Internet” driven by the current generation of mobile and social products does not mean the end of the web.

From my perspective, unless major breakthroughs are made in cross-platform development, distribution and synchronization between native apps, native/client-side apps will fade again as open web technologies will catch up.

In other words, the web isn’t dead — it’s just taking some time to build the right open tools to match what closed ecosystems have been able to achieve.

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→ Harvard study shows Facebook friends don’t influence your taste

Jean Friesewinkel — Tue, 20 Dec 2011 13:38:07 +0000

A Harvard study just published in PNAS [1]:

[...] the overreaching conclusion was that on Facebook, people befriend others who are similar to them rather than becoming more similar to their friends over time.

In other words, tastes influence who you become friends with, but your friends have limited influence on your tastes.

(via Mike Elgan on Google+)

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Notes:

I can’t find a direct link to the study. If you have it please let me know in the comments.