wync

10 innovative office spaces

The Red Bull office has slides in-between floors. That is seriously cool.

10 Seeeriously Cool Workspaces

[via lifehacker.org]

Meebo founders on iinnovate

Check out the new iinnovate episode, where Julio and I interview the founders of Meebo.

The Good is Bad and Ugly

Sitepoint's monthly newletter has a great anecdote about redesigning an ugly, mistake-ridden web with a more attractive, more accurate site. After the redesign, to everyones amazement, sales on the site dropped precipitously.

 

How an Ugly, Mistake-Ridden Web Site Outperformed a 'Better' Site

 

The crux of the story is that the old site contained little info and forced interested parties to call a salesperson, who often closed the deal Once the site was redesigned, users were given all the information and had no need to call. They therefore made the decision without the added persuasion of a person on the phone, and less often bought.

Designers often design based on what users want. This is certainly the focus of the type of design taught to us at the (Stanford) d.school. Yet sometimes what the users and companies want are at odds. This often leads to result-centric design as opposed to user-centric design. Think of the process of buying a mattress or used car. Think how difficult it is to cancel services such as AOL.

Yet, over the long term, a company's brand is affected and a company wishing to build a lasting brand ignores users at their own peril. Microsoft consistently focused its design on building the bottom line, but in the process alienated users. Apple and Google have taken the opposite approach and have built up tremendous brand loyalty with users.

Besides, user-centric design is more fun.

Why MySpace Beat Friendster

There was much conversation in the Valley this week stemming from the NYT article on the fall of Friendster. If you're interested in the topic, definitely check out Danah Boyd's excellent paper, Friendster lost Steam, is MySpace just a Fad?

In the paper, Danah, a Berkley PhD and Yahoo researcher, serves to answer the question "What went wrong with Friendster? Why is MySpace any different?" This is a great question and one which most coverage, in my opinion, too often ignored. Danah goes beyond the "slow servers" issue and gets to granular design and functionality differences which caused influential Freindster users to flock to MySpace. Probably my single favorite reading in the Social Networking space.

Beautiful Woman

A very powerful video as part of Dove's campaign. Brilliant! I have a feeling this ad is going to get emailed around a lot.

Direct YouTube link

[Via apophenia]

Business by Design vs. Business as Usual

Last week Diego Rodriguez of Metacool/IDEO dropped by the d.school to give a presentation. It was typically engrossing and the discussion focused on whether companies are designed around innovation (Business by Design) or optimization (Business as Usual).

We all love innovative firms, but some businesses function much better in the "Business as Usual" mode. Diego pointed out that he would prefer that his pilot not get overly creative about his approach to JFK. Heart Surgeons and Firemen face similar constraints. Alternatively, some firms live or die based on their ability to continually innovate. Many car and electronics makers would fit in this category. A firm that has been able to do both? Apple is a rare example.

For more on this topic, check out Bob Sutton's excellent podcast on this topic. We're hopefully going to be featuring both Bob and Diego soon on this topic for iinnovate.

Market Trumps Team

In my amazing "Formation of New Ventures" class, Andy Rachleff (co-founder of Benchmark Capital) discussed which matters more in a new company, market or team.

"When great management meets lousy market, market wins.
When lousy management meets great market, market wins.
When great management meets great market, something magic happens."

Note that andy talks more about that issue in the iinnovate interview.