@michaelsurtees

Scaling Personalities ADAPTION, WHITE LABELS AND tHE DIGITAL ECOSYSTEM

How to Build Great Products: Insights @michaelsurteesOCTOBER 1ST, 2010

INTro

HelloCurrently at Behavior

Previously Design Director at Daylife* from December 2007 to March 2010

Publisher of the blog DesignNotes.info

@michaelsurtees* it should be noted that the work with Daylife was built with a team of 20+ people

intro

Breakdown

@michaelsurtees

User has a seamless experience

User doesn’t even realize that parts of the site might have been designed from a third party

Applying new systems to their own product that they otherwise couldn’t have created themselves

Automation of systems to save resources to work on more editorially driven areas

Definitions

white Labels

@michaelsurtees

Screen agnostic—could be laptop, mobile device, tablet, TV or anything else that can be viewed and edited today

Data works and acts differently depending on the device it is being viewed on

Time and location can influence info too

Definitions

Digital Ecosystem

@michaelsurtees

Transferring and shifting behavior

Information moving from traditional streams and screens to other curated models of settings

Awareness both of the device and the person using the technology

Creating hooks to be aware of changes and expectations

Definitions

Adaption

@michaelsurtees

Daylife

The elementsThere’s a lot of integrated modules working together

@michaelsurtees

Daylife

The Site

@michaelsurtees

Daylife

Topic Page

@michaelsurtees

Daylife

using the editing toolMaking it easy to create custom verticals based on chosen sources, topics and custom css.

@michaelsurtees

Daylife

Travel Life

@michaelsurtees

Daylife

#walkingtoworktoday

@michaelsurtees

Starts as a slide show—either as main anchor or related images on a side rail

Images are hosted

Detail images have related galleries attached to them that are created automatically

Almost infinite number of new pages can be viewed

Daylife

Smart Gallery flow

@michaelsurtees

Daylife

Smart Galleries

@michaelsurtees

Design and build just enough, test it any way possible

Observe what works and what doesn’t, keep building after that

Work in advance, loop back for other things

Keep it open and allow for a lot of feedback

process

Agile & Iteration

@michaelsurtees

Process

Start with 1 atomic unit, build around itLook at the elements of the story, decide what’s the best one and build around it

@michaelsurtees

Process

Road mapThere’s no direct way from A to B

@michaelsurtees

Observations

BrandsAny brand that pushes information like tweets, photos, news and videos need a place to display all of it

@michaelsurtees

Experiment with how the same info can be released in different contexts.

Create content buckets for curating & story telling that are compelling.

Define info like sources, how people will find it, and how will it be shared

Make it easy for others to build off of

Observations

Structures & Systems

@michaelsurtees

Observations

Treating Info like waterInfo being pushed online is going to be seen through a lot of different contexts

Headline and photo—each could be emphasized differently depending on how someone expects to see it

As long as every element can flow to another related element the likelihood of the info being seen and applied increases

@michaelsurtees

Observations

Lessons1. Use the product yourself

2. Road maps should have a strategy to cannibalize your own product

3. Imagine a world without you being able to use your product, what would you use to do the same task and ask yourself if the experience would be better or worse

4. Release something every three weeks

5. Awareness is important because if you don’t know when to adjust things you will cease to exist

@michaelsurtees