- How Obama’s speechwriters (who are under 30 btw) work with the candidate
- “What I do is to sit with him for half an hour. He talks and I type everything he says. I reshape it, I write. He writes, he reshapes it. That’s how we get a finished product. It’s a great way to write speeches. A lot of times, you write something, you hand it in, it gets hacked by advisers, it gets to the candidate and then it gets sent back to you. This is a much more intimate way to work.”
- Customer experience case studies: Amazon, Apple, SAS, Whole Foods, and Zappos
- “We now can point to case studies of major successes that explicitly and provably stem from a focus on good experience. (And they’re getting more frequent; these five case studies all popped up within the last few weeks.)”
- The downside of home-office life
- “For home-office workers who aren’t in regular touch with colleagues or clients, a frequent complaint — even among those who say they are distracted by other members of their households — is of isolation.”
- 49 simple and clean designs
- “Let’s put it straight – simplicity is more complex than you probably think it is. To design a web-site in user-friendly tones, presenting all information and removing unnecessary details isn’t easy. In fact, many designers don’t manage to find the right mix between details and their presentation on the screen, which usually results in an information overkill and/or decreased usability. However, some designers do manage to find the right balance and create usable, elegant and clean web-sites with simple layouts. We’ve selected some of them.”
- How the iPhone blew up the wireless industry
- “Even the iPhone’s hardware and software teams were kept apart: Hardware engineers worked on circuitry that was loaded with fake software, while software engineers worked off circuit boards sitting in wooden boxes. By January 2007, when Jobs announced the iPhone at Macworld, only 30 or so of the most senior people on the project had seen it.”
- Scrubbing the iPhone Scrubber
- “For scrolling through menus and adjusting volume, the iPhone’s new UI methods are, IMHO, superior to the old iPod’s wheel. But the “jog dial” is still the ideal user interface for arbitrary positioning the playhead in audio and video tracks. It’s a hardware solution that has been in professional and consumer use for decades.”
- Whom are you excluding?
- “The first thing I’d ask myself before launching a product, a service, or a candidate is, ‘who are we leaving out?’ If the answer is no one, be prepared for uncharted waters. The future of marketing (at least the big successes) is going to be fueled by those with the guts to embrace the masses. The profits, at least in the short run, may well be found by those that embrace exclusion.”
- Why Tuscany fears too many tourists
- ”’Progress cannot be measured only in terms of raising gross domestic product,’ said Luciano Fiordoni, an economist who spoke at a recent anti-airport rally in Siena. ‘You have to factor in quality of life,’ he said. ‘We don’t object to growth, but our main intent is to remain human.’”
Matt T.
on 11 Jan 08Can we go a week without an Obama post please?
Matthew K.
on 11 Jan 08Ditto that.
Walker Hamilton
on 11 Jan 08Now, why would we want to do that?
Anonymous Coward
on 11 Jan 08@Matt T. and Matthew K.
Isn’t that the beauty of freedom of speech? 37s can post anything on SVN that they want. While you may not always agree with what the crew has to say, you should still be respectful. What’s disrespectful is making an attempt at giving editorial direction.
If you don’t want to hear about BO for a week, how about not read this blog for a week.
Anonymous Coward
on 11 Jan 08As long as there’s no Hillary posts, I’m fine.
carlivar
on 11 Jan 08Sorry to nitpick, but not all BHO’s speechwriters are under 30…
Axel
on 12 Jan 08I like how remaining human seemingly goes against making progress or growing. This seems backward. Making intentional progress is the most human thing one can do.
RF
on 14 Jan 08I’m torn about the Obama thing, because I personally love him to death, but yeah, it can be a little unattractive to just show off one’s political preferences and think of that as a favor done to the world.
This blog talks about all kinds of nontechnical things, though, presumably whatever’s on their minds and inspires them to make good stuff. I think the test isn’t how long they can go without saying “Obama,” or whether or not they’re openly political, but how well they communicate specifically what they’re jazzed about: why the speech was great, why the website is pretty, why the speechwriting process is good. So we can be jazzed as well, whether we like the guy or not.
Analogy corner: I ain’t no libertarian (anymore), but there’s probably a lot to learn from Ron Paul’s operation - at least, going by his insane and disproportionate online success. I would happily read posts from one of his supporters that insightfully analyze his success, even though I don’t like the guy one bit or want him to be President.
Simon
on 14 Jan 08Re: Customer experience case studies.
Eurostar’s focus on customer experience recently rewarded them with a £26 million increase ($51m USD) in online revenue.
Eric
on 14 Jan 08Kind of late to this one, but the Exclusion piece seems to contradict some of the Getting Real philosophy (“If you try to please everyone, you won’t please anyone”).
From personal experience working on enterprise-level apps, I tend to agree with the idea of focusing on a core group of users, and that exclusion helps to streamline the app and make it more usable for those users.
Curious to know what 37s thinks and what they were implying (if anything) by quoting Seth’s piece.
mrpinto
on 17 Jan 08Not that they wouldn’t be welcome to post about him anyway, but do remember that Obama is a Senator from Illinois, and 37s is a company from Illinois. Maybe if your (or my) favorite candidate lived in their backyard, they’d be posting about him/her instead.
More interesting, but more overdone perhaps is the case of Ron Paul (not advocating, just sayin’). A dude with views as unconventional and extreme as his would have been completely ignored in a previous election. He’s still being ignored by the public at large and the electorate in particular, but his fanboys have managed to put themselves right up there with those for Apple or Rails. It’s certainly out of the ordinary that a candidate could create such online passion yet remain unable to convert that into meatspace success (like Dean, but MORE).
Anyway, perhaps the whiners don’t care about the primary whatsoever, or the Dems/Obama in particular. Fine, I don’t care about American Idol. Still, I’ve come to terms with the fact that pretty much every other person in our fine country IS an idol-head, so I’ve steeled myself to withstand the coverage without excessive complaint. I feel that it makes things more pleasant for everyone.
This discussion is closed.