Note: this is an excerpt from my forthcoming book Make them Care!

In a recent post (Why you should bury the sign up button) I told the story of a redesign I did in which people just didn’t want to click the “sign up” button on the home page, no matter how beautiful or sexy that sign up button was. What I realized from that project is that there are cases in which no amount of visual design will significantly improve the state of things…instead we need to focus on making people care.

Here’s another example. On cyber Monday this past November I received an email from the New York Times informing me that I could save 50% on a Times Digital Subscription. It was time sensitive…offered today only, so I had to act fast in order to take advantage. While I don’t read many emails like this, I did read this email because I think the New York Times is one of the better news outlets out there (although now I’m not so sure) and I have an iPad that I enjoy reading on. Perhaps the Times had something interesting here, so I kept reading. Here’s the email:

I ask you to notice several things about this:

1. It’s an offer about money. The primary content of this email is about the savings one would get for taking advantage of this offer. “Save 50%” is the first text you read and the most visually heavy content on the page. Variants of the message of “saving” are repeated throughout the email. The number one message this email communicates is that I can get a very good financial deal here.
2. The email assumes the value of the offer is already known. There is almost no information at all about what a digital subscription from the New York Times is. The only clue are the few words in this sentence: “Award-winning articles, videos, blogs, and more – it’s all wrapped up in a perfect package…”. That is the only description of what one would actually get with this offer.
3. I have to make up my mind immediately. The only call-to-action on this page is “Get it Now”. Clearly this is designed for people who already know they want a digital subscription, or have decided to get one after reading this email. People who click that button are people who have made up their mind…who have already decided that now they want to get it.

Well, even though I’ve read the Times online for years I have no idea what a “digital subscription” is. I can already read the Times on my computer, my tablet, and my smartphone (I simply visit nytimes.com or the nice Skimmer app), so I’m already receiving the Times “digitally”. What exactly is different about a digital subscription? The only thing I know about it is that I’m not currently paying for the Times but with a subscription I would have to…but I have absolutely no idea what I would get by doing that!

A Straight-forward Fix

The design solution to this is relatively straight-forward.

The first piece of missing information is my current status as a New York Times reader. Tell me what I’m currently getting by stating it plainly. Say something like: “You currently enjoy the free Times online edition, which includes loads of free content, including top news, sports, and political news”. This could be in pretty good depth, too. Reiterate the amazing breadth of content that the Times offers for free online…and perhaps showcase one or two amazing stories of late. It’s easy to assume that readers/users/people know their current status but in many cases they will not.

The second piece of missing information is the difference between where I’m currently at and where I could be…what exactly is being offered here? Explain what is included in the digital subscription. What additional content, commentary, and news is delivered if one were to subscribe? Is there a different delivery mechanism or app I would use on my various devices? How are they better? And don’t be generic here…”videos” and “blogs” are not compelling features of a digital subscription! I’ve got those in spades, baby. Show me…dive deep into the details about how this experience is superior to the one I currently have. The design problem here is to answer the question of what makes the Times videos and blogs different and better.

Remember that comparison is how people make decisions. The email the Times sent does not allow me to make the comparison they need me to. By sending an email with merely an offer to pay money the only comparison I can make is between not spending money and spending money…think about that for a second! I think we all know which one will be chosen. Choosing to not spend money is the rational choice here. So give people something to compare! Show the comparison between these two sets of information side-by-side and let people compare what they’re getting with what they could get. Paint a beautiful future for them! Never assume that people know anything about an offer…and strive hard to clearly communicate that comparison every single time you make the offer.

The Times email problem and the sign up problem from my last piece are similar. The designer(s) are trying to compress a process that takes time into an immediate decision with little information. In both cases the conversion rate is going to be low…very low…I would bet dollars to doughnuts the Times was not overwhelmed with the success of their Cyber Monday email campaign.

Designing for the Next Step

I call these design failures a failure to “Design for the Next Step”. When designs fail to provide an appropriate next step for users it stops them in their tracks. They simply click away to another web site, stop using an app, or otherwise leave.

So let’s dive into this fundamental problem of interaction design. It is easiest to start by putting the problem in context. The Usage Lifecycle shows the progression someone makes as they use your software over time. From a practical standpoint most people go through stages as they learn about, try out, make the decision to use, and continue to use your software.

Here is an example of what the Usage Lifecycle looks like:

We can also dive down a level deeper and look at a stage in more detail. Here is how we might find the “Interested” stage of the Usage Lifecycle:

These steps are stable for most software. When we fail to design for the next step, we break this progression in some way. Most designs suffer from one of the following ways to blunder:

• Moving too fast through steps. When you give people too little information and ask them to continue to the next step anyway. You’re asking them to move too quickly through a process that takes time. This happens a LOT, and usually results from a lack of context given by the designer. Too little explanation, too many competing screen elements, not enough examples or supporting content, all of these things contribute.
• Skipping a step. When you completely skip an important step. This usually happens early on in design…you simply don’t make it very far if you’ve skipped a step as your usage plummets.
• Steps out of order. Asking for billing information before showing shipping rates on e-commerce sites is a common example. This tends to stop people in their tracks, as people want to know what they’re going to pay before they enter their billing information. This is exacerbated because shipping costs are often higher than expected. This is common in app design as well. Using templates is an interesting example…sometimes you choose a template before creating a thing and sometimes you want to create the thing first. I’ve seen both ways make sense, depending on the object in question.
• Showing a step too early. Timing is important, too. Take pricing, for example. Pricing is a signal, and if your pricing is relatively high it is easy to dissuade people from buying if you show them prices before you’ve convinced them of the value of your product. Another example is asking people to share your app with friends upon initial entry…while you may get some activity from happy clickers, you are asking your users to share something they are not yet familiar with. This will not only frustrate them but also stop some of them in their tracks. Better to share when appropriate, after they’ve had success with the software.
• Automating a step while taking control away from users. In general, software and hardware is an augmentation of human thinking and action, so automating tasks is usually very helpful. But in recent years we’ve seen software go way overboard. Sites that tweet for you without your permission. Apps that auto-friend you with others. The crucial aspect is control. If you do something for someone while keeping them in control you are usually good. Do something for someone and take away their control of it and you will have problems.
• Inappropriate next step. Or the next step might just be inappropriate, the wrong next step. This often happens when designers try to leverage some other action you take with what their ultimate goal is…when their priorities are not aligned with yours.

For every interaction you design, think about why it’s not working in relation to these questions. Are you moving too fast? (likely) Did you display the steps out of order? Is the next step appropriate?

Three Pieces of the Next Step Puzzle

So how do we design for the next step? Well, every design situation is different and will require a different design. But in general there are three things we have to get right. Clearly communicating the current step, the next step, and how to get from here to there.

1. Clearly communicate the current step. As I explained above, the NyTimes were not fully supporting the current step I was on as a reader of the New York Times. They did not clearly communicate to me my current status, so their promise of a better status didn’t make much sense. This often feels like a recapitulation of the obvious…I’ve heard designers say “Why would I tell people something they already know?”. Fight this tendency! It’s always better to be clear about agreed-upon status than assume people know something.
2. Clearly communicate the next step. The Times also failed to communicate the value of becoming a digital subscriber. This is a classic problem of not addressing real customer needs. The needs of NyTimes customers is to get better news than they’re already getting (to be better informed)…not to take advantage of an offer! So the task is to clearly communicate the future in which one is a digital subscriber and is better informed than they currently are now.

   If the Times had successfully communicated both the current and the next step, they would have allowed people to compare the two against each other and make a real decision.

3. Clearly communicate how to get there. The Times did this well. They clearly communicated the offer and how to take advantage of it. The call to action was clear. Unfortunately, the Times didn’t satisfy the other two requirements so the offer fell flat for anybody except those who already decided to take advantage of it.

Designing for the next step is a fundamental problem of interaction design. Almost every screen we design, be it in an app or marketing website, can be improved by really focusing on the steps and sequences of steps a user goes through. In our haste we often speed up the process too much, get steps out of order, fail to present an appropriate next step, or otherwise break the sequence. By re-assessing your app or site in light of these potential errors, you can discover the sequence and timing that your users need to successfully make it to the next step.

In my recent post The Golden Age of Design in Startups I was bullish on designers as founders, so I’m here to call bullshit on Yongfook calling bullshit…or something like that. (actually, the idea of “calling bullshit” seems silly to me…why not just respectfully debate a point?)

Yongfook’s argument is that design is not the reason why startups are successful. He suggests that startups are successful when they “create value” and in his view “Design enhances value, it does not create it.”.

It depends, of course, on your definition of design.

Implicit in Yongfook’s argument is his definition of design. He is equating design with making something look good. This is clear from his thesis:

“Stop creating shitty startups that look amazing. A product or service that is indispensably useful yet looks like ass is infinitely more likely to be successful than a product that solves zero problems but looks like a work of art. Stop this cycle of creating beautiful novelties, getting your 15 minutes, then disappearing. Create value.”

“Look amazing”, “looks like ass”, “looks like a work of art”, “beautiful novelties”. Each of these terms is about “looking good”. So if you agree that design is the act of making something look good, then you’ll undoubtedly agree with Yongfook’s piece.

I hear this notion of design every day. Many people seek out design help because they can’t make something look good on their own…they just haven’t had practice doing that. But designers secretly know that their role is much more than just making something look good…it’s solving the right problem and communicating the right message.

And this goes for startups as well. For some reason, Yongfook wants to separate “value creation” from “design”. But that’s hard to do…as design is in part the process of discovering problems and then conceiving of solutions to them. The idea that a founder would go out and “create value” without actually designing something along the way doesn’t make much sense…in solving the problem they would end up designing something, even if it only be conceptual design of a proposed product. (if they’re not conceiving of something new then they probably don’t have a business anyway)

In short, Yongfook’s dismissal of design as decoration is a long-standing, myopic view of the field. This is not just my opinion. Steve Jobs, in an interview about the iconic design of the iPod, addresses this notion of design directly:

“Most people make the mistake of thinking design is what it looks like. That’s not what we think design is. It’s not just what it looks like and feels like. Design is how it works.”

If you agree with the idea that design is how something works, then you won’t agree with Yongfook’s post. Instead, you might insist that learning about what problem to solve in the first place (which Yongfook is adamant about and which I agree with) is actually the first step of design. You cannot create a successful product without first understanding the problem you’re solving.

Founders who talk to customers are not black swans. There are people who do this all the time….UX people in general continually interview, survey, and test with users to make sure that core problems are being addressed and solved. (as much as I’m a fanboy of Blank and Ries they were not the first people to get out of the office and talk to customers) In a startup you might not have a UX person at the beginning…but I would recommend hiring one sooner rather than later. Startups who do customer research would benefit greatly from having a UX-minded designer on the team.

Yongfook also separates design from usefulness, suggesting that something can be completely useless but extremely well-designed (and vice-versa). Any designer worth their salt would disagree with this separation and would align usefulness with design success, dismissing the notion that you can have one without the other. They would argue that design only succeeds when people find a product useful, when they adopt it as part of their lives.

The act of design isn’t reserved for those with the word “designer” in their job title. Design is a universal activity that we all participate in…and it’s much more than making something look pretty.

Think about how counter-intuitive that is at first glance. You take away the call-to-action that says “sign up” and you get more sign ups. But actually it’s just focusing on what people really want, in the order that they want it, where they happen to be in the usage lifecycle. They want to find out about what you’re offering first, figure out if it makes sense for them, and then sign up. It’s a process. Too often we treat a landing page like an immediate decision.

Cue the analogies to dating and relationships. When you first meet someone you don’t usually ask them to get into a full-blown relationship (even if that’s your goal). No, you want to get to know them a little, see what they’re about, see if they like Footloose, and see if you’re compatible. You want to know that they’re not crazy or an axe murderer.

Relationships take time, no matter what kind they are. So the next time you are designing a call-to-action, first make it crystal clear but then go beyond clarity and ask: “Is this the most appropriate time to ask this?”. Too often timing considerations get lost in our rush to get calls-to-action in front of people.

So yes, timing. In the same way someone would never say “Hi, I’m Josh. Do you want to move in together?” we should be time-appropriate with our design. There is a right time for every message. If I was a religious man I would be quoting Ecclesiastes right now, but I’ll let Ren McCormack do it instead.

The evidence:

1. The startups being invested in are designer-led. Take the new Designer Fund that funds startups with designer-founders and helps mentor them. Consider the companies in the banner of their site: YouTube, Tumblr, Android, Slideshare, Feedburner, Flickr, Vimeo, Path, Airbnb…all founded by designers. I think we’ll see this continue to be the case. User experience is a huge differentiator in startups right now, with startups like Typekit, Instagram, Lovely, Oink, and others getting investment and doing well.

2. Hot startups want designer co-founders. I talked with many people who were building startups and their top priority was getting great designers on board. But they didn’t just want good designers. They wanted designer co-founders, people who could help them from day 1 and be invested in the company. This is a change from the ever-present search for technical co-founders…designer co-founders are in demand as well.

This makes sense. In a sea of competition…the survivors will be the ones who can communicate most clearly and provide value most quickly. And who specializes in those things more than designers?

3. Startups are being bought for their design talent. While I was traveling I heard news that Facebook acquired Gowalla and I had to smile. This is an obvious design talent acquisition…Gowalla has one of the most talented groups of designers around and while their service was successful, it was seen to have lost to Foursquare and was looking to reinvent itself. Now, it doesn’t have to…I’m sure Facebook has a large roadmap (apparently they’ll be working on the timeline team) that Josh Williams and company can start designing toward. Couple this with Facebook’s acquisition of Push Pop Press, Sofa, and Daytum, and you see a clear trend here…they’re pulling in as much design talent as they can.

This also jibes with what I heard from other bay-area startups. I’ve talked to friends at both Twitter and Zynga and the message is the same…they are 100% focused on design and investing heavily in it (and have been for a couple years now). I’ve even been asked if I know world-class design teams or agencies who want something new…not because these companies want to work with them but because they want to BUY them…because they can’t get design talent fast enough by recruiting individuals. Seriously.

I also met the design recruiter for Groupon who said that they can’t get enough designers. He was currently fighting against a bit of public pushback b/c of the IPO filing but in general had an amazing growth engine with which to recruit. He could be as aggressive as he wanted in getting designers.

So I’m not sure what the precursor to all of this was…perhaps Apple’s rise to the most valuable tech company in the world on the back of well-designed products? Or maybe the rise of the social networks like Twitter and Facebook who now are poised to be the primary point of communication for the next decade? I don’t know, but those events probably helped. I also think repeated failure of poorly-designed products must be a part of this…we’ve all had those projects in which we knew the design just wasn’t there and hurt over time. I think most people by now have had an experience like this and want to do anything they can to prevent it from happening again.

All of this holds true for us at HubSpot as well…we’re investing heavily in design and front-end engineering for the foreseeable future. We’ve got a ton of projects in the pipeline, and to build the world-class software we want we’re going to need thousands of hours of design work to get there. While our events on the East Coast aren’t quite as big as those in the Valley (yet), our people aren’t lacking in passion for design.

I remember not too many years ago that designers lamented of not having a “seat at the table”. Well, folks, your time has come. Not only do you have a seat at the table…you’ve got a starring role. There is no better time to be a designer than right now.

The goal of the redesign was to increase conversion on the primary call to action of sign-up. We wanted to double or triple (or more) the number of people who were signing up and trying out the product.

I knew the redesign was a vast improvement over the existing one, merely because the page better communicated what was going on. Instead of a vague headline that wasn’t communicating value to readers I used a much more descriptive one that helped orient people immediately to have some idea of what the site does. And the button…well let’s just say that it was so hot it made you want to click it.

So we launched, and then we looked at the data. Uh Oh. No big increase in conversion, certainly not enough to change the business. The conversion rate had improved about 20%, which is OK, but the rate itself was so low to have very little effect on the company’s bottom line.

What was wrong? Why wasn’t there a big improvement in conversion? Why was our click-through so low on what was obviously the primary call-to-action? Didn’t we follow all of the visual design rules here? Make headline big and bold. Check. Make a bullet list of important points. Check. Make a beautiful, sexy button that looks like it was born to be clicked. Check.

Why then, were people not clicking the sexy button?

It’s at this point when you have to step back and ask yourself: what exactly is design? Is design creating something for creation sake? We certainly had done that, and we had already done as much work as is done on most redesign projects. Most projects would have launched and been done…when redesign is the goal the launch is the end.

But that’s not what passes as good design these days. Good design is design that works. So to honestly assess the redesign I did I had to admit…this design was still not working.

Damn was that hard to admit. Really, really hard to admit. I hated admitting it because it was an admission that I failed. I’ve not often admitted that on projects in the past that just didn’t get the usage that I wanted. In so many cases it was easier to say to myself that what I did was better than what was there before and the work of launching was enough. It is so easy to confuse getting stuff done with doing good work.

Yet, this admission also allowed me to see the problem more clearly. Once I accepted that the redesign still wasn’t working, I created the opportunity to find out why not. See that interesting little trick I pulled there? Failure is an opportunity to problem solve! We all love to problem solve, right?

So in hindsight the answer is obvious…people weren’t clicking “Sign Up” because they were not ready to. They saw the button and did not care enough to click it. I could have made it flashing big-ass and red, but still nobody would have clicked on it.

No visual design wizardry at this point would have improved things. No matter how much we tweak the call-to-action, we’re not going to significantly improve click-through on it. We’re not fighting an attention war here…we have people’s attention because they’re on our website. No, we’re fighting an emotional war. We need to convince people of the value of what we’re offering enough so they actually care. They are aware that our big-ass honking button is there…how could they not be? We made it impossible to miss! in fact they’ve read the text on it that says “Sign-up for Free”. They can barely get it out of their peripheral vision…

No, our visitors can see clearly…they’re not failing to notice the button. And they can read…they can see what the button says. They’re also not obstinate…they’re not doing this just to spite you.

The hard fact is that they just don’t care.

Or more precisely, they don’t care yet. They’re interested, but they do not know enough to care. We have not given them enough of a reason to care. They are not ready to take that step.

So the right answer in this situation is not to give our call-to-action a stronger drop shadow, double its text size, make it fire engine red (#CE1620), or make it blink. No amount of visual design on that button will make people click it more. The right answer is to remove the button altogether and replace it with something that people do want to click. Something they do want to do…the appropriate next step in their lifecycle as a customer.

I call this Designing for the Next Step. And in my next post I will explain what I’m talking about in much more detail…

Addendum: The folks at Zurb have published an example of a 350% improvement from simply burying the sign-up button. That’s some serious improvement.

In the conversation below I imagine what it would be like to talk to most home pages…you know the ones…with the giant “Sign Up” button that commands your attention above all else.

(BTW: the following is an excerpt from my upcoming book Make them Care!)

Setting: The beautifully designed lobby entrance to your company’s corporate headquarters.

You: “Hmm…I just found this place by taking a path that looked interesting. You do software or something?”

Him (Salesperson in building lobby): “We offer amazing Software!”

You: “Ok, what is it?”

Him: “Sign up Now”

You: “Um…what does it do?”

Him: “Sign up Now!”

You: “How does it work?”

Him: “No obligation or credit card necessary!”

You: “I’m trying to figure out if this thing can work for me.”

Him: ” Did I mention it’s free to sign up?”

You: “Ok, what does it look like?”

Him: “Here’s a tiny screenshot you can’t see any detail on. Sign up Now!”

You: “You’re not answering any of the questions I have.”

Him: “Sign up Now!”

You: “I’m done here.”

Him: “Sign up Now!”

Apple has had a truly remarkable effect on my life. I have used Apple products for 10 years, since the first iPod came out. A Macbook has been the primary tool I’ve used continuously for over 8 years…that’s every day for 8-12 hours a day for 3,000 days.

So when I sat down and thought about what I would write as a tribute to Steve Jobs, who in my mind is the most brilliant innovator of the modern era, I first thought of his amazing 2005 Stanford Commencement Speech in which he lays out his philosophy on living. In this speech Steve’s life comes into focus, his motivations are exposed, and he looks death in the face. What could I possibly say in a blog post that communicates how I feel about the effect he’s had and continues to have?

But then I remembered a picture I took of my two-year-old daughter that captures just how profoundly Steve changed things. It perfectly embodies Steve’s vision of computing and what Apple is trying to do: change the world for every man, woman, and child. And given that the words “iPad” and “iPhone” are now part of my two-year-old’s everyday language, I would say that though he died much too early at the age of 56, Steve fully succeeded in realizing his vision.

So thank you Steve, and all the people at Apple who do such amazing, life-changing work.

We all have interests like that; we all have something we’re passionate about. For some people it’s sports, others politics, others cooking, etc. Everyone has their own thing they love.

So here’s a challenge: If you’re not doing that thing you love for your job, you should quit right now and go figure out a way to make it happen. I’m serious, you should cut the cord and simply go do what you love.

I know that this is easy to say and hard to do, and it is pretty commonplace advice. But here’s the thing that I think is usually forgotten when thinking about actually taking the plunge. When you do what you love, you align your natural interests with your work ethic. You naturally pour all of yourself into it and you don’t resent that you’re working hard. Here are five things I’ve observed as I’ve worked as a designer (doing what I love).

1. When you do what you love, you do much better work.
   Challenges are merely small hurdles to get over instead of huge mountains to climb. You stick with problems much longer, and you work on problems all the time (at least in your head). Once you get in the flow of this, then you start solving problems faster and faster.
2. When you do what you love, people notice.
   They see your energy and they want to include you. You get a reputation of someone who does that thing because you love to do that thing. You don’t even have to be good at it to start. People want to work with others who are passionate about what they do.
3. When you do what you love, work isn’t work.
   This is an interesting phenomenon because you don’t always realize that it’s happening. What used to be 8 hours a day at the office is now a dive into doing fun stuff all day that you’re kinda shocked you get paid for. Work becomes play some of the time.
4. When you do what you love, you’re in constant learning mode.
   I love this part because I love learning. When you are doing what you love then you naturally want to learn as much as you can. You become like a little kid, diving into new things with abandon.
5. When you do what you love, you are happier.
   That’s the bottom line, you’re happier doing work that you enjoy. This is what everyone’s goal should be.

Now you might say “Well, there is no money in baking cakes” or “I can’t paint pictures for a living”. Art is a hard one, of course, but there are three bakeries right here in Newburyport whose cakes could be improved upon. There is always room at the top for passionate people who care about what they’re doing.

You may start off making peanuts compared to what you were making before, and you will probably have to make sacrifices to make this work. But that will change because you’re going to become really good at this.

It might take a year or two to get up to speed, but that’s OK. The pain will be worth it because you’ll be happier. When you do what you love, you’ll do it more often. But you won’t mind. In fact, you’ll find yourself thinking about it when you shouldn’t be. That’s a much better problem to have than to want to completely forget your job when you’re not there!

Now, if you’re in an OK job right now but you have a plan to get to what you love, then stick with it. You may have to stay in a role that’s tough for a while, just make sure that you have a plan to move into something else. Talk to your boss and make sure they’re aware of where you want to go…if they’re any good they’ll help you make it happen because they know that it’s better for everyone anyway.

The people I admire most are the people doing what they love everyday because there is no separation between work and play. Their life is a constant playground. That’s what I’m striving for and I think the path is relatively straight-forward: find what you love and double-down on it.

Apparently, Facebook does not agree. On Sunday Nic Cubrilovic posted some troubling news: Logging out of Facebook is not Enough. Facebook doesn’t actually log you out when you ask it to. They pretend to, but they don’t. Instead, they simply change the status of your logged in session to fool you into thinking you’re logged out.

You don’t see your friends or profile. You don’t view your feed. Even if you try to access your profile pages, Facebook will send you to the login screen. Except that you’re not actually logged out. Every step of the way Facebook knows that it’s you trying to access those pages.

So, I’ve designed a more appropriate Facebook logout button…instead of saying “Logout” it now says “Logout (not really)”. This is more accurate and better reflects what’s actually going on.

As an interface designer myself, I know that words matter. I believe that a lot of interface design is in fact copywriting. So when I see Facebook knowingly betray their user’s trust like this it goes against the first rule of interface design:

Clarity above all.

At the very least, interfaces should be clear. People should understand what is going on and what effect their actions are having. In this case people when people click “Logout” they think they’re actually logging out of Facebook, and they think that means their actions are not being recorded, and they are trusting the service to do what it says it’s doing.

In case you’re wondering of my Facebook status, I deleted my Facebook account last year because of the continued pattern of bad behavior from the company…and no I’m not 100% certain the account was actually deleted.

So I hope the designers at Facebook might reconsider the design of their logout mechanism. I provide this button design free of charge.

Update: L.A. Times thinks the button is a good idea, too.

Official Make them Care! book site

Regular readers of Bokardo know that it has been over two years since I announced Make them Care!. On August 17, 2009 I even announced that it was “coming soon”.

Well, you could say that I got distracted. Shortly after I wrote that optimistic blog post, I jumped into what would become Performable, a company we sold to HubSpot this past June. (I’m now the Director of UX at HubSpot). This was certainly a good thing to get distracted by, but it stopped any and all momentum I had writing my book. I would grab a couple hours on a weekend here and there, but life is so busy that I just couldn’t get any momentum.

This past spring as I was preparing to speak at SXSW I reconsidered the scope of the book, and I worked on what I hope is a renewed, clearer focus for it. I changed the focus away from “sign up”, which is important but not the real hurdle that businesses face. I got really excited about the book again, and I started dedicating a little time to it here and there.

I’m not done yet, I’m still working on it (mostly on Saturday mornings). I’m not worried about it taking too long. I’m going to make it good, the best thing I’ve ever written. I don’t really care how long it takes…my first priority is quality. So I’m not ready yet to say when the book will be out, but I am telling you that it won’t be another two years. It will be measured in months.

In the meantime, go check out the new page for the book: Make them Care!.

So when a company keeps a really tight focus on their core product they should be applauded. Instagram is one of those companies. If you’re not familiar with the app, Instagram is about as simple as can be: you use it to take pictures, apply filters to them, and share them on social networks. That’s it. That’s all the app does. And it has been a wild success…Instagram is growing like a weed…they’re just about to hit 10 million users in about a year.

Instagram has just released Version 2.0 of their popular photo-sharing application and the release notes show a laser focus on the core features and only their core features. Here is what they’ve improved: speed of filters, added 4 filters, faster tilt-shift, larger images, and optional borders. That’s it. Those are the core features of the product…they’ve essentially taken what they have and sped things up.

In other words, Instagram has not added any new features with this “largest revamp” to the product. They’ve simply improved what they have to make it even easier and faster to share pictures.

So here’s a simple playbook:

1. Focus on improving what you already have. Don’t add new features, improve existing ones.
2. Make what you have faster. It can always be faster. Remove delays (like Instagram did by removing filtering delays…they even now have live filtering)
3. Improve usability Instagram also redesigned their already-successful photo taking screen. It would have been easy to skip this…
4. Resist the urge to add new features. Wait until the market demands it or you have real evidence that your business is hurting as a result.

Here’s the thing: What Instagram has done almost never happens! It is incredibly rare in the world of web applications to have such tight focus on the core functionality like Instagram has done with their V2 release. The vast majority of releases contains new features that add new capabilities to the product.

To wit: there is an entire vocabulary built around the problem of keeping focus: Feature creep, MVP (minimum viable product), lean startup, (release early, release often). And the problem has only gotten harder in the last few years in which development has sped up significantly. Web application frameworks, Amazon’s cloud services, and social coding services like Github have made it extremely easy to build faster than ever before. As a result it can be hard to imagine what it looks like to keep focus over time on a very small feature set.

So when a company like Instagram is able to keep extreme focus on only what is necessary they should be applauded and emulated as much as possible. Your users, who are already using your app, will love you for making it even better.

In B2B businesses sell to other businesses. In B2C businesses sell directly to consumers. This distinction makes all the difference. When you sell to someone who uses your software, you’re talking to someone who cares about the user experience because it directly affects their future. They might even want to try out your product first. They’ll want to know what others in their situation did. That’s why on consumer oriented sites you see free trials…because someone who is purchasing for their own use wants to know what they’re getting into.

When you sell to someone who does not use your software then you have a very different task in front of you. You’re not talking to someone who cares about user experience because they’re not the ones who will use your product. They care about making the purchase look like a good idea, so they’re naturally concerned about features, pricing, and convincing other people. That’s why on enterprise sites you rarely see free trials and instead see things like whitepapers, webinars, and case studies that someone can use to report to others.

Those two activities are very different: buying and using. When one person does them both, they appear to be one activity and can obscure what’s really going on. When they are separate, when the customer is not the user, then the difference becomes much more clear.

Therefore, we must design accordingly, depending on who we’re selling to. This is part of the age-old maxim to know who your audience is and know what they care about. So take a second look…knowing if your customers are also your users is one of the most important things you can know.

An Explanation and Some Reflections

The DVD delivery service (the original service) will now be called Qwikster. Yes, that’s right, Qwikster. The streaming part of the service will continued to be called Netflix. One explanation suggests this move was made in response to pressure from Hollywood who wants to charge per user access, not per copy. In other words, no ownership, nothing like owning or renting a DVD. Think Cable TV. The more things change…the more they stay the same.

Netflix is taking a huge risk here. They’re changing the user experience of their web apps to model the new company structure, not a structure that is most friendly to people. This is an extremely common problem in user interface design. Netflix is in serious danger of breaking the user experience they are well-known for.

As one commenter complains there will now be two separate movie queues, one on Netflix for streaming and one on Qwikster for DVDs. Hasting’s response is dismissive:

“We already have two queues. The two “sites” are a click between each other, so we think not that much different than two tabs on one site.”

Technically, Hastings is right about there already being two queues. But he’s dead wrong about it being much different. Obviously he’s never watched people use web applications before. Changing websites is not even close to the same thing as changing tabs. When you change websites you go somewhere different, you get a different UI, you’re using a different username, and you probably have to log in. You have a different payment system. Different family members to add. Different recommendations to look at. And that’s just for starters.

When you change tabs you don’t lose any of that context. You stay in the same place, you just get a different list.

This is a fundamental change in the product, and Hastings just dismisses the concern with a wave of his hand. Not only that, but this is a branding issue as well. When you switch sites you’re going from Netflix, a brand people know and love, to Qwikster, which sounds like the latest get rich quick startup without a real business plan.

It may be that the split was inevitable, but why not name the DVD service “Mailflix” and give people a chance to understand what’s actually going on? Give them some semi-logical name that actually makes sense? Mailflix for movies in the mail, Netflix for movies on the Internet?

Also, people don’t think they’re buying two services right now…they’re simply buying Netflix. As another commenter points out:

“You’re continuing to make a classic mistake: thinking you’re something different than what everyone believes you are. You’re not a DVD company and a streaming company: you’re where I go to watch movies. That’s it. The future clearly is streaming, but by separating and charging more for access, you’re wildly less valuable to me. I’ll likely cancel. You haven’t listened to customer feedback. You’re delusional and you’re lost.”

There is one angle where all of this makes sense. Let’s assume for a moment that Netflix is knowingly trying to kill off its DVD rental service. This is the way to do it…separate it out completely, give it a ridiculous name, and keep your brand equity with the newer streaming service. This almost makes sense…except for the fact that the content in Netflix streaming has gotten worse, not better, over time. If they really wanted to focus attention solely on Netflix going forward, they would create a catalog worth watching. Right now the streaming catalog is abysmal, and with movies that can only mean it gets worse over time as you watch the one or two you haven’t seen yet.

So as a Netflix subscriber who doesn’t even use the service anymore (outside of my kids watching educational videos) I’m left wondering…what is Reed Hastings and Netflix thinking?

The first is that words mean everything in the interface. Every single word you choose is important, from the call-to-action button to the headline to the words in an error message. Each word, if carefully chosen, adds to the experience of the user, making them more confident and sure that they’re on the right track. When carelessly chosen, each word erodes confidence and adds confusion to an uneven experience.

Good design is not an accident. It’s not something that just happens by someone getting lucky. Sure, once in a while someone stumbles upon a cool core mechanic that happens to work, but to create a solid interface that many people can use and enjoy takes real attention to the details.

The real question is…what are the details that matter? There are many candidates…there is technology and social and gaming and psychology and experience and content and fill in the next buzzword please. Everybody has their hobby horse…in this post I’m sharing mine.

While I’ll be the first to say “Oh…look a shiny new JQuery widget!” I humbly submit that there is no single element more important to your interface than the copywriting. There is nothing that makes or breaks a positive experience more than the simple set of words that you choose to communicate with. In a world in which we have to simplify as much as possible, nothing matters more than the small vocabulary you end up with in your final work.

Traynor resurfaces a great post by Jason Fried in which Fried suggests that Copywriting is Interface Design…I think we should also look at it the other way. Interface Design is Copywriting. Designing an interface is largely an exercise in choosing the right words. When you lay out a page, you’re choosing copy for the headline, subheadline, call-to-action, content area, graphs and analysis areas, error messages. All of these design elements are built out of words. Are you an aspiring wordsmith? I hope so…because you’re choosing some very important words!

The best line in Traynor’s piece is this one:

Nothing says Send Message, like the words “Send Message”.

This simple statement says a lot about the field of Interface Design. So often we don’t think twice about the words we use, and while we want to write like Hemingway we end up writing something that might place 3rd in a regional high school essay contest.

And, by the way, I don’t mean to sit on a soapbox here. This is hard stuff…it’s hard for every designer and developer I know. Choosing words is the hardest part of my job and I get it wrong before I get it right. The first attempt at any design is almost always wrong…it’s only the stubborn people who stick with it, test it, and continually refine who will approach great design.

Here is an example I’ve been using lately at HubSpot because it is so easy to see the importance of words in hindsight. For many years the domain setup screen in HubSpot software used the terminology “Add Domain” as the primary call-to-action. When you get set up with HubSpot you want to point your domain to the HubSpot servers so that your website (now hosted by HubSpot) continues to work.

However, we recently did some user testing and found that the words “Add Domain” stopped people in their tracks. The people using the software in our test said something like “I have to add a domain…where do I add it?” or “I already have a domain…why do I need to add one?”. In their minds they already had a domain…there was no reason to add a new one!

But the software had that CTA for years. Nobody questioned it because the entire team knew what it meant. It is important to note that no amount of introspection would have caught this! But to a user…someone who is transitioning from hosting their website somewhere else to hosting it on HubSpot the words were entirely critical to what was going on.

So…the fix was straight-forward. Change the words from “Add a Domain” to “Connect your Domain”. Note the subtle yet crucial difference that two words make. You’re not adding anything…nothing is new here. Instead, you’re connecting something that already exists…a domain that is YOURS. Easy peasy.

Now, multiply this by 1,000 and you might have an idea of how many places in your web application it is crucial to get your words right. Every single headline, every single call-to-action, every single error message, every single bit of microcopy. All of it. Every word matters.

So if you’re not already, start thinking of yourself as a copywriter. You already are one anyway.

The Process, which gets most of the attention, is the series of steps we go through to do the work. We obsess over the process…should we do wireframes, mockups, prototypes, or code right in HTML? What deliverables do we need to get buy-in? When do we do testing? What kind of testing do we do? Should we do user testing early? Late? When is the best time to get feedback?

We need the process to know what to do next. We need a framework to work with because it helps us get more efficient at what we do. When you’re user testing, for example, you’ll go much farther and get there faster if you have a repeatable process in place. You’ll want a quick way to get users for testing, a quick way to figure out what to test, what tasks to test, and what to do with the results.

While we should constantly tweak our own process, we also discuss it endlessly with others. Are you sure you’re doing user experience design correctly? Are you designing content first? Are you designing in the browser? Are you using lorem ipsum, for the love of Gods? Are you doing A/B testing? Using personas? I’m sure yours aren’t as robust as mine, natch.

And then there is the Point. The problem you’re trying to solve. The thing that isn’t part of a process but is the most important thing you need to focus on as a designer. The thing that, if you happen to solve it, makes the process almost irrelevant. Solve the problem and you’re successful no matter what process you’ve been using.

The point is often what’s different in your project…it’s the thing that you probably don’t have a process for yet (if you did it wouldn’t be a problem!). And you probably can’t talk about the point anyway because you don’t want other people to solve it before you (e.g. your competitors). So we instead talk about the process…

But we should remember not to confuse the two. The process is valuable…it’s a framework for deciding what to do next…and we need that…but it’s merely a means to an end. And whatever you do, don’t let process details distract you from solving your problem in any way possible.

The Process is important…but it’s not the Point.