At this year’s SXSW I didn’t feel like pulling out my laptop to take notes. Instead, I mastered the iPhone keyboard and jotted down some quick notes from the more interesting sessions. Here are my notes from Kathy Sierra’s excellent talk on helping your users kick ass.
20 Things You Could Do To Help Your Users Kick Ass
How do we help our users kick ass?
We don’t want the user talking about us or our product. We want them talking about their experience.
The hi-res user experience: Change the way you view your world.
Nueroscience: Environment can inhibit brain growth.
Difference between natural and acquired talents.
- It’s not about natural talent its about the ability to take the time to practice.
- You just need to put in the time.
- You need to give them shortcuts.
“We need a rage to master.”
1. Use telepathy
- it started with a monkey.
- two flavors of mirror neurons
- Just being able to read expressions. It’s like you’re simulating what they’re thinking.
- For visualization - if you imagine seeing what you would see if you did it.
2. Serendipity
- Psychic shuffle
- people believe the random selection on the iPod shuffle know what they wanted to hear next.
3. Add dog ears effect
- Attention to detail
- Fluidity
4. Use Joy
5. Inspire first-person language.
- how can we build our products so that users talk about their experiences and not the product I company?
7. Easter eggs
8. Tools for evangelism
- Twitter in plain English video on youtube
- help users defend this “totally lame waste of time”
- Sleeptracker
9. Exercise the brain
- Increase the performance of your brain?
- Exercise
10. Help people exercise their body
11. Give them super powers
13. Speeds their knowledge acquisition
- what can we do to keep people pushing forward
- learn to do knowledge acquisition
- give people patterns
15. Help with the reinvestment of mental resources into new problems
Speaking of twitter - we have to give people a chance to focus
- Attention offsets
- Maybe a meditation retreat
16. Make users heros
- No dumb questions
- No dumb answers
- Teach the community how to ask good questions.
17. Do NOT insist on “inclusivity”
- Jargon is good
- Passionate users talk differently
18. Practice seductive opacity.
- Brains like mystery
19. Atoms are not old school
19.5 Do what this guy does - in reference to Gary Vaynerchuk.
iPhone Notes: Jason Fried at SXSW | DontTrustThisGuy.com Says:
11:24 amMar 14[...] were lucky enough to see an awesome lecture from Jason Fried at SXSW. Like Kathy Sierra’s lecture, all of the notes below were taken on my [...]
Frank White Says:
9:43 amJun 16YES @ #11 - Definitely give your users Super Powers - and make sure your rivals are Kryptonite…I also agree with #17 Jargon is good - and the global nature of the net undoubtebly brings different jargon to one place. So let’s embrace it…