Stay Hungry, Stay Foolish. R.I.P. Steve Jobs

Today, we've lost a visionary, which has been surprisingly hard for me to say. If there was one thing that I could really thank Steve Jobs for is his steadfast dedication to making products for people and his ability to create products based on the human experience. His understanding for human interaction and simple product design is an inspiration to me.

As a tech guru, it's no surprise that Steve was always in the spotlight, bringing Apple to the forefront of the technology age (on more than one occasion). But Steve was never jaded, only accepting interviews for Apple product releases and never drawing attention to himself. I'm sure it was largely attributed to his humble beginnings, being raised by a foster home that only wanted the best for him. This humbleness from a CEO of the second most valuable company only rivaling Exxon Mobil is a sight to be marveled by all.

In the months leading up to his death, it seemed like Steve was still in control. Perhaps finally believing that he'd helped built a company and culture that would live on in his absence - and he sure has. I truly believe that the impact he's made on technology and on the world will continue to pervade in our everyday lives. Some have even compared Steve Jobs to the likes of Edison and Einstein. Though I can't make the same parallels, I can certainly say he was a visionary and will be remembered for decades to come.

If you haven't had the honor to take watch Steve Jobs' commencement speech at Stanford University in 2005, I think it's time. You can also get a transcribed version of his speech here. 

I live by and will continue to live by some of his famous words:

Live on your own terms, don't let others bring you down.

Your time is limited, so don't waste it living someone else's life. Don't be trapped by dogma — which is living with the results of other people's thinking. Don't let the noise of others' opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.

Trust your gut and follow your heart.

Again, you can't connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something — your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever. This approach has never let me down, and it has made all the difference in my life.

Do what you love and don't settle for less.

You've got to find what you love. And that is as true for your work as it is for your lovers. Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. And the only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven't found it yet, keep looking. Don't settle. As with all matters of the heart, you'll know when you find it. And, like any great relationship, it just gets better and better as the years roll on. So keep looking until you find it. Don't settle.

In the words of the great: "Stay Hungry, Stay Foolish."

Rest in peace, Steve Jobs.

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Facebook On-Board with Inner "Circles"

Just seeing the latest update on Facebook this morning, giving users the ability to customize share/privacy settings inline in status updates.

Logging in you'll see three things:

1. A more obvious dialogue box bringing attention to adding friends. The description indicates that "tagging" friends allows them and their friends to see your posts.

2. Select location, which is something we've been hearing more about lately. Facebook is finally integrating location more in depth with their product offering. Tying location to everyday Facebook actions is important and that's why locking your location for status updates is front and center.

3. Probably the most drastic change would be the ability to "Control privacy when you post - or after," and what I'm calling Facebook Circles? Because really, where have we seen this if not Google+ Circles? Select the "Group" of people you've already curated on Facebook so that only THEY can see it.

Here's what Facebook has to say on that:

"Use this to manage who can see and comment on posts you share, including ones with location, if you add it. When you change this setting, it will stay how you set it for future posts until you change it again. Posts (including check-ins) from old mobile Facebook apps will use your new default privacy setting.

Also, we've changed the label for "Everyone" to "Public," but your posts will still reach the same people."

What do you think? Will this catch on with the mainstream Facebook user and validate the Google+ circles use case? 

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My Beef Against Dropdown Menus

I'd say, use it sparingly and use it wisely. When content really doesn't require another click for the sake of the dropdown, don't do it.

When you do it, be conscious of the placement of your selection choices. In Google Docs, selecting both text color and highlight color gives you options that are no longer sitting under the parent option. Now, when users go to select an option in the far right, the obvious move is in a direct line, which collapses the dropdown. Instead, the dropdown forces users to navigate the mouse down and to the right in an "L" shape.

No, bad user experience! Bad!

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Jambox by Jawbone and the Benefit of Awesome Promo Videos

Sharing the latest addition to my tech gadget wishlist: Jambox by Jawbone.

How, you might ask, did you find this? Well, I was invited to UXWeek 2011 by the guys over at Adaptive Path, an experience design consultancy. As a UI/UX designer, I'm thrilled to check out this 4-day conference dedicated to one of the things I'm most passionate about - making products more awesome by designing them to the way people work.

Anyway! Taking a look at the speaker list, you'll quickly get down to Adam Lisagor, also known as "sandwich man." He makes a TON of startup videos and is probably most famous for his monotone-style narration in such hits as Square Everywhere, This is My Flipboard, and Get Flow (not to mention all the others Adam has helped direct/produce. You can find them all here. So in the process of watching all his films, I run into the Jambox by Jawbone and think about how amazingly simple it is.

Bluetooth connection to your iOS device, which makes listening to music, taking conference calls, etc. all so easy. My only question is, when you take the conference call, do you have to use the iPhone as the mic? Oh whatever, this product rocks. Having a kickass video doesn't hurt either.

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Building Engagement on Facebook

Introduction to Facebook Engagement

Facebook pages are an interesting beast. Unlike Twitter, it's not likely that there will be any organic growth from "random" followers without external prompts - this is especially true if you don't have a physical presence to help you advertise. As a topic in itself, Facebook is a much more private medium for conversation between people and brands. Whenever a person comments on a Facebook page using their account, other users following the same company will be able to see the information you make public. Case and point, in order to have people interact with your Facebook page, they need to be genuinely interested in having their person associated with your brand.

Kickstart Your Page, Give It A Fighting Chance

• Fill out your page with as much content as you can (this means an address, phone #, websites, mission statement, products, email addresses). If you want people to trust your brand, give them something to work with.
• Kickstart your # of likes and get a vanity URL for your page by doing the friends and family push. It's important to get that vanity URL so you can start promoting your brand easier in passing.
• Create valuable and rich content for your users, which could be anything from HD photos to videos, or basic polls for engagement.
• Watch your language! Talk to your audience like you think they'd like to be spoken to. If that means courteous, be courteous, if it's coarse, make it coarse. This is a page for you to interact with your unique audience.
• Test keywords. Try to see what kind of action words will get comments and likes.
• As a key practice, you might try using specific words (like, take, submit, watch, post, check, comment, click, etc.) to get people to like your posts. You might need to start using other words to get comments (post, comment, tell us, check, like, submit, share, click, take, etc.). At the end of the day it will matter largely on your demographic.
• Check the competition, see what's working for them and what's not working. You can see this at face value by just visiting their page.
• Don't be inquisitive. Studies have shown that words like "how, why, what" attempt to prompt long responses from users and are too personal. Try words like "when, where, and should" to create questions that are softer but still garner response.
• Don't just post random updates happening in your company, if you don't care, no one else will.

Analyze Your Users, Customize Your Presence

• Use Facebook Insights, it's invaluable to know your audience. Insights will tell you specifically what times people are interested, what they're liking and commenting on, all of which you can optimize on and make an awesome customized forum for your people.
• Analyze the peak hours of engagement through Insights and testing different time variables. This might mean having your marketing person post at times like before work, after work, and late night because research has shown this time to have the largest effect.
• Analyze the days of peak engagement, which for some companies and brands might be the end of the week because their constituents are looking for something to procrastinate on.

Offline Engagement Is Necessary

• We've all seen brands do this. They make sure they tie their Facebook campaign closely to all of their marketing materials - whether its commercials, printed materials, on their website, at parties, etc.
• Don't just put a Facebook logo on your website and especially "unclickable" material and expect people to convert through this. It won't work. Try using conventions like QR codes to help bridge the digital to physical gap.
• It goes without saying that engaging an audience online requires offline groundwork, so start talking to people and telling them to like your brand and give them something to remember that.

Third Party Applications

• Use Facebook apps like Wildfire and Involver to drive interaction (if it works). These sites help convert viewers to "likers" by throwing up richer pages that prompt users for a "like" before they get access.

Always Remember To

• Ask yourself "Why would they care?" because if you can't answer this yourself, then chances are neither can they.
• Check statistics in Facebook Insights like impressions, comments, likes, and analyze with trends in mind. There's a reason those metrics are made available to you.
• Promote your Facebook page online with things like email signatures, website headers and footers, through Twitter or other social networks, on your business cards (with URL), and any place that gets you impressions.

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