Category Archives: blather

Extremely Rapid Prototyping Tools

Perhaps you’re competing in a hackathon or you’re trying to deliver a minimum viable product in a compressed timeframe. This list of prototyping and development resources might help you crank out wireframes, demos, and even full products quicker and cheaper.

Interface Mockups: Balsamiq

Balsamiq is the first tool I use when trying to design a UI flow for an application. It’s is a simple layout tool that lets you drag sketches of widgets, controls, and other UI elements on a canvas to quickly build mockups of interface screens.

The best thing about Balsamiq is that the end result looks like a hand drawn sketch. This way it’s clear to the UI artist that the design is just for layout and flow, not for the actual look and style. I’ve seen horrible GUI designs delivered as a result of prototyping tools that use actual widget images for mockup layouts. This can confuse artists and clients, making them think the mockup is how the interface is actually supposed to look.

The original Balsamiq mockups for Brick Buddies

Brick Buddies as mocked up in Balsamiq

Icons: iconfinder.com

If you need interface graphics or even a simple app icon for a prototype, just use this search engine. It contains a large amount of royalty-free icons you can use right away or massage in Photoshop to your liking. Iconfinder is invaluable for delivering professional looking interfaces with no graphic designers in a hackathon crunch. I wish I knew about it before doing NTheMiddle!

Sounds: freesound.org

Freesound.org is a great resource for free sounds and much easier to use than professional sound libraries you pay thousands of dollars for. The sounds here vary in quality greatly, but most have pretty loose terms that allow you to use them commercially or otherwise. If I can’t find what I’m looking for here, then I drop a few bucks on Soundsnap for more professional sound effects.

Server Back End: Parse

It seems you end up writing the same back-end code over and over for most mobile apps. In recognition of this pain point, a bunch of cloud APIs for common mobile back-end functions have popped up this year. I’m still evaluating them, but from a cursory glance I think Parse is the best.

Parse has the clearest billing terms, the easiest to use API regardless of platform (including a Unity3D plug-in!), and a solid feature set. If you need to make a user account system, send out push notifications, or store and query geolocation data, Parse is pretty easy to use. For anything real-time, you’ll need another solution.

Conversational Hacks: “No Blocking”

A few years ago I took an improv comedy class at ACME in Hollywood. It was fun, but didn’t end well for me. The teacher kept accusing me of being a stand up comic. Apparently that’s an insult. Improv and stand-ups got beef.

The first thing you learn in improv is “No Blocking.” This means you can’t contradict what anyone says in a scene. If someone says, “There’s a purple alligator on the floor!” and you say, “What are you talking about? I don’t see anything.” rhythm is lost and the entire scene collapses. To maintain the flow you have to say something like, “Yeah, and it looks like it wants a donut!” The scene smoothly rolls along. This is also why improv comedy isn’t funny.

No Blocking isn’t just useful for improv. It works in real conversations. Especially if you are an engineer trying to raise money. A skilled engineer is a master of saying “no.” Say “no” enough and you’ll whittle an idea down to the core functionality that can be polished and perfected.*

This why investors and engineers don’t get along–engineers are generally too practical. They lack the ability to power up the reality distortion field essential for raising a round. This is where the principle of No Blocking comes in handy.

Let’s say a cokehead asks if your software can be used with some esoteric piece of hardware one of his portfolio companies is producing. You know this is a complete waste of time and a distraction to your core business. Also, there are loads of technical issues that would make such an endeavour impossible. However, this extremely rich person can write you a huge check.

You may be tempted to explain why it can’t be done, as you would when planning a schedule or product roadmap. Perhaps you think the investor would appreciate your candor and intelligent analysis in an effort to save him from wasting millions of dollars on a futile task. Not so.

As we’ve discussed before, this sort of “resistance” can sour the entire conversation and turn your investor cold. The most successful pitchers don’t block. They skillfully craft a “yes” and then use the art of conversational jujitsu to throw the conversation’s momentum back into pitching.

The most mesmerizing and successful pitchers I’ve ever encountered never acknowledge any disagreement. They relentlessly stay on message while still somehow making it appear as if you’ve been listened to. It’s almost as if they can disagree with you while leaving you feeling as if you are in agreement. This is a Jedi Mind Trick you might consider practicing at ACME.

* Of course, if you say “no” too much, you’re going to miss out on true innovation. Success belongs to those too stupid to know they can’t do something. You’ve got to learn when to let it go.

How To Survive A Hackathon

My team came in second at the CityGrid LA Hackathon at CoLoft in Santa Monica this past weekend. We created NTheMiddle, an iPhone app that helps you find a place to meet in between your current location and someone else’s. It’s basic, but I might polish it up over the next weekend or two and toss it in the App Store.

Screenshot of NTheMiddle

Our 2nd place app at the CityGrid hackathon: NTheMiddle

Since this was the first hackathon I ever attended, I figured I’d post some survival tips.

Figure out compensation at the start.

If there are prizes involved, plan out how you’ll cut up the rewards first. Especially if you just met at the event. I’m not sure on what the best method is to split the pie with complete strangers, considering you may find that some do absolutely no work and will still expect their ‘fair’ share. We just divided it based on how much work we thought everyone was going to do.

Check your ego at the door.

It’s more important to complete something than to have your brilliant vision materialize by the end of the weekend. If you see another pitch that you like, ditch your project and join the other team! In my case, I abandoned my idea and became the sole developer on another because I really liked the concept and it seemed possible to do in a weekend.

Stick with it.

The most interesting thing about a hackathon is you go through the entire Paul Graham Startup Curve in 48 hours. Some teams seemed to fall apart during the mini Trough of Sorrow which hits around the second day. Seriously–it’s only 48 hours, get it together. It might not come out the way you wanted, but there’s absolutely no reason to give up on such a short project. Cross the finish line, even if it’s a spectacular failure.

Focus.

I pretty much ignored my other team members and forged ahead developing the project as it was originally envisioned on the first day. This was easy for me to do since I didn’t have another programmer to debate with. There’s no feature creep allowed in a 48 hour cycle. The most valuable skill in life is to know what to work on and what is a distraction. A hackathon can be a good training exercise to develop this ability.

Don’t be selfish.

Although it’s a competition, there’s no reason to not help others out. Offering a quick bug fix, feature suggestions, or even QA on another team’s project is a good way to meet future collaborators.

You don’t have to win to get value out of it.

Winning is nice, but that’s not the only objective of a hackathon. Hackathons are great places to find developers for other projects or seek new opportunities. It’s also a good way to network with the sponsors. They are usually underwriting the event to scout for talent or new uses for their APIs.

You don’t need to be a hacker to attend a hackathon.

I think only one-third of the attendees at this hackathon were programmers. The rest were, uh, “business” people and other mundanes. However, there are a lot of talents necessary for a successful hackathon project. I know I could have used a decent graphic designer on my team. Some developers were great engineers, but desperately needed an additional member to do the final presentation.

Hack!

Hackathons are held all over the world. They usually have themes–some are based on a specific technology, others on a type of app. There are resources out there to find hackathons near you if you’re interested in doing one.

Let’s Keep Dying

Remember when Bill Gates was the enemy? Ahhh the 1990s–It’s almost like they never happened. Yet, Microsoft still carries with it the Evil Empire reputation it gained from 20 some odd years of suspect business practices and ultimately being declared a monopoly by the FTC…sort of.

Since software broke free from boxes in the Web 2.0 era, Microsoft’s power has waned and Bill Gates put himself out to pasture as a philanthropist. I suspect Bill Gates discovered what we all do–he’s going to die. Perhaps even more depressing, he’s not going to be able to spend all his money before he kicks the bucket. So, Bill Gates has admirably chosen to spend the rest of his life giving away his vast wealth to charitable causes of personal interest: malaria, polio, that sort of thing.

This is in direct contrast to the new generation of rich tech elite. Recently I read this article about Peter Thiel–billionaire venture capitalist and one of the earliest investors in Facebook. Many of his new investments are in biotech–in particular, investing in companies that are trying to cure death.

Bill Gates’ sense of his own mortality is so old school. The Silicon Valley investor class has also realized they can’t live long enough to enjoy all of their wealth. However, instead of spending their fortune on bed nets they are trying to become immortal. The cokeheads will live forever. Time enough at last.

In the same interview, Peter Thiel criticizes modern investors for building trivial technologies that don’t move humanity forward. He waxes nostalgic about the 1960s Space Program and contrasts it with today’s meaningless web 2.0 developments (many of which he is personally responsible for).

I think Peter Thiel is trying to eliminate one of the greatest innovators of all time: death. Just imagine if you could become immortal, but it was really expensive. We’d still be living under the yoke of 16th century kings who want to burn you at the stake for believing in heliocentric orbits.

Plus, your unpredictable expiration date is great motivation for getting stuff done. Steve Jobs’ premature death was a wake-up call to a lot of people putting off things they want to do until some nebulous future date.

It’s not all bad. I’m sure the advancements biotech companies create while slaving away to discover the fountain of youth for their overlords will trickle down into medicine for the rest of us. After all, we’re just now starting to see the benefits of a few decades of stem cell research.

Still, I can’t help but think the human lifespan is in a sweet spot for innovation. Live too short and you’ll never accomplish enough to evolve (fruit flies)–live too long and you’ll put off accomplishing anything for generations (whales–a bunch of slackers). Let’s keep dying, it’s good for the human race.

The Biggest Gameplay Innovations Come From Outside The Industry

The rise of the indie developer has coincided with the advent of digital downloads and gateless ecosystems. However, it’s always been true that independent and non-professional development has driven major gameplay shifts over at least the past decade. Here’s a brief list of major innovation brought on by efforts from outside the realm of professional game development:

Counter-Strike (1999)

Although the first Rainbow Six game predates Counter-Strike by at least a year, it was this hobbyist mod for Half-Life that sparked the tactical FPS revolution. Counter-Strike started out as a Half-Life mod created by Minh Le and Jess Cliffe while both were attending university in 1999. By 2000, Counter-Strike became so wildly popular that Valve acquired the game and hired its two creators. Minh Le left Valve to work on his own game while Jess still works there.

Since the creation of Counter-Strike, countless games have borrowed its competitive tactical FPS gameplay. One of the weirder cases being Microsoft’s Shadowrun–turning FASA’s beloved RPG into a cyberpunk Counter-Strike clone. Valve has made a few middling attempts to turn Counter-Strike into a full blown retail product, but has redoubled its efforts with the official sequel.

Not that I have details–but considering how influential Counter-Strike is, it seems like Minh and Jess got a raw deal.

Defense of the Ancients (2003)

Defense of the Ancients started out in 2003 as a free fan-created mod for Warcraft 3. Although the mod changed hands several times, in the end the reclusive “IceFrog” became the game’s star creator/maintainer. Once again, Valve attempted to capitalize on an indie mod sensation by hiring IceFrog in 2009.

DotA isn’t just a game, it’s an industry. DotA even spawned a new acronym–Multiplayer Online Battle Arena or MOBA for short. The genre seems to print money. Riot Games’ f2p DotA inspired RTS, League of Legends, grew so successful that Chinese gaming giant Tencent acquired a majority stake in the company for over $350 million in 2011.

The MOBA wars are just beginning. Valve and Blizzard are fighting over their own “Defense of the Ancients” titled online games. Not to mention many attempts to create MOBAs as digital, mobile, social, and console titles.

Tower Defense (2007)

There have been games stretching as far back as the early ‘80s that used what has come to be called Tower Defense gameplay. Korean mobile games publisher Com2us even trademarked the title “Tower Defense” in 2007. Still, it was Paul Preece’s IGF award-winning Flash game, Desktop Tower Defense, that took the gameplay style mainstream that same year. Since the game’s success, Tower Defense games have flooded the App Store, social networks, and console digital storefronts.

Minecraft (2009)

By now you must be sick of hearing the Minecraft story. Swedish game programmer “Notch” quits his day job working on MMOs at King.com and starts building his own Infiniminer-inspired shareware game involving carving out and building structures in an expansive world of randomly generated cubes wrapped in simple 8-bit textures.

Without any fancy f2p economies or elaborate web portals, Minecraft became a viral hit–so far grossing over $40 million for the developer. Minecraft’s success has created an entire genre of block mining games. Including Terraria–a 2D take on the Minecraft style selling over 200,000 copies via Steam during its release week alone. The Minecraft aesthetic is even leaking into other genres with the Ace of Spades FPS on PC and Brick Force on mobile.

Minecraft is often described as being like Legos. In fact, Lego released their own branded MMO during the timeframe of Minecraft’s release. The game was shut down and Lego recently began selling Minecraft licensed toy bricks. Total victory.

I could go on…Portal…even Canabalt if you want to stretch it. There’s probably more I’m missing.

Indies Created It, Publishers Decorated It

Large publishers and AAA titles seem to advance technical features that nudge gameplay along. GTA’s streaming open worlds, World of Warcraft’s massive persistent online universe, Splinter Cell’s dynamic shadow stealth, and Assassin’s Creed’s fluid climbing and crowd dynamics were all outstanding technical developments that created new twists on existing genres which have become commonplace. (Ok, GTA was more than a nudge) Most of the dramatic indie innovations are purely in gameplay–usually built on top of modest technical foundations.

Companies such as Valve have acquired and successfully worked with the developers of these innovative games. What about a company that can be as influential and disruptive as these independent efforts to start with? Is it even possible?

My Podcast Debut

Just a quick note, My friend Peter Katz had me as a guest on his Hollywood 2.0 podcast today. You can listen to the episode here.

On this episode, I’m rambling for a about a half hour about games, development strategies, the realities of the business, and a bunch of other stuff. Hey, I talk fast so it’s over quick.

By the way, I used the Samson Meteor Mic with Skype to record this. What a great sounding mic–and super cheap! If anyone else has a podcast they are desperate to get guests for, my Meteor Mic and I are ready.

Amazon Mechanical Turk Survey Strategies

I recently crafted a survey to collect data on the consumption habits of gamers. I wanted to identify different types of gamers and drill down further with future surveys targeted at specific categories of game players. To do this, I used a combination of SurveyMonkey and Amazon Mechanical Turk.

Making the Survey

The first step was creating the survey. For this, I paid for an account at SurveyMonkey. I find SurveyMonkey not only has the easiest survey creation tools but great features for analyzing the data. Alternatively, you can create surveys in Google Docs for free or inside Mechanical Turk itself using HTML.

There’s a science to creating a survey. I never took a class in demography, so I relied on some books discussing proper survey technique.

A few quick tips:

  • Always ask about what the person has done, not what they will do. For instance, instead of asking how much money they would spend on a car, ask what they spent on their last car. You will get a more accurate answer.

  • Make sure they are paying attention. Especially if your survey is long, you may be vulnerable to users clicking randomly just to get through it. This Scientific American article has a neat technique for checking if the user is taking an online survey seriously. Just ask ridiculous questions at random points. If the user answers something like “Have you ever eaten a dinosaur?” positively, throw his data out. He’s obviously not giving you valid answers.

    • Amazon Mechanical Turk

    Mechanical Turk is Amazon’s micro task site they launched in 2006. You can create tasks (called HITs) of any sort and pay workers to complete them. For instance, give someone a nickel to tell you whether a username is profane or not. In my case, I paid users 25 cents to fill out my survey.

    I used this blog as a guide on how to do it. Except instead of making the survey as a web form inside the HIT’s HTML code, I embedded my SurveyMonkey survey.

    Some tips:

  • Don’t be cheap. At first, I was trying to get away with paying 10 cents per survey. At that rate, I only got 5 or so filled out a day. When I upped the price to 25 cents, I got 30-50 a day. If you look at this confidence interval calculator, you can see it takes about 400 responses to have a decent degree of accuracy. So at 25 cents you can probably get yourself 400 responses in a week. Up your payment to a dollar and you’ll get 400 in a day.

  • Don’t get excited by your first day numbers. For workers, HITs are primarily sorted by when they were created. On the first day you create your HIT it will be at the top of the list. You’ll see a significant drop off in activity after the first day. Instead of collecting results all week it might pay off to break it up into 2 day HITs. (SurveyMonkey tracks IPs to prevent users from filling your survey out twice)

  • Give workers enough time. When designing a HIT you specify a duration. Even if your survey takes 5 minutes to complete, make the HIT last at least 30 minutes. When I shortened the window to 10 minutes I started getting complaints about it expiring before workers could complete it. Yes, you will get emails from dissatisfied workers–even over a 10 cent task.

  • Amazon’s demographics are surprisingly close for the US. I had almost an even ratio of male to female responders. Racial demographics were a little off, but not enough for me to correct them. This article provides some good insight on who is using Mechanical Turk.

    • Sign up as a Mechanical Turk worker yourself to see how it’s being used. You’ll see a lot of surveys as well as tasks like transcribing audio clips or even calling customer service phone lines and rating the operator’s performance.

    You can use MTurk surveys to collect all sorts of important data on your product or service before you even start writing code. See if you are solving a real problem for paying customers with your start-up. I’ve even heard of people surveying to test how likely users are to click on different app icon designs. The possibilities are endless and the information invaluable.

    2011 Year in Review

    Location isn’t dead. It’s just everywhere.

    When Facebook announced they were killing Places, it was kind of a shock. Several months later it makes total sense. Location isn’t a feature people use apps for. Location is now part of the social web’s fabric.

    Instead of a separate Facebook feature, you can now tag a location on to anything: posts, photos, and (yes!) check-ins. It seems like location apps such as Loopt, Brightkite, and SCVNGR have faded as they all ‘pivot’ to Groupon clones or whatever.

    Now location is merely an expected feature. I’m willing to bet most people don’t use Instagram primarily because of location. Still, tagging locations on photos is popular. Instagram is outpacing Foursquare for growth. Probably because it’s actually useful beyond announcing “I’m here!” to complete strangers.

    Peak Soccer Mom.

    Zynga is a monster of a company and congrats on their IPO. I remember seeing Mark Pincus at Cassie Phillips’ very first social gaming conference 5 or so years ago as a relative nobody. This was back when SGN had more funding.

    Today, SGN is nothing but a memory. Zynga managed to upend the entire game industry, plunging the old guard into panic and chaos while blazing a trail to a 7 billion dollar valuation. Bravo!

    A lot of analysts are disappointed with the IPO. And yeah, Zynga desperately needs new customers. For this reason the company seems like it’s not a growth stock.

    Is it a risky investment? Perhaps not. Zynga is the first public company whose performance you can watch in real-time. Instead of looking at guidance and waiting for quarterly reports, just go to AppData and watch their DAUs. If only there was a way to automatically sell a stock once their user retention dropped across the board…

    Unity 3.5

    The Unity 3.5 beta is now public. The GUI is nowhere to be found–my #1 problem with Unity. Still, it has file locking for SVN and P4V support, multi-select, and a bunch of other small fixes that I’m happy with. Oh, and the Flash exporter really works. Plus, there are some promising new GUI add-ons in the Asset Store.

    Console Disruption

    The 3DS has been able to pull itself back from the brink with quality software this holiday season. This effort may prove futile as tablets and mobile devices are still pounding the handheld market into submission.

    I’m big on the Sony Vita. I even paid extra to reserve the First Edition bundle early. I am fully aboard this kamikaze mission to stuff every conceivable feature in a massively powerful device directly aimed at a market that wants nothing to do with it. A glorious death on the battlefield! I want to see how this turns out–even though a brutal, bloody loss for the axis is seemingly inevitable. Operation DOWNFALL.

    Folks I know that got a Japanese Vita say it’s a glorious piece of gaming hardware. However, the 3DS outsold the Vita during launch week in Japan. Not a good sign.

    Action Bronson Has The Best Album of the Year

    Action Bronson’s Well Done is the best album of the year. The first rapper to rhyme about how to properly cook and serve puffin. Real talk.

    Mackerel Management

    The only time I’ve ever been fishing is one trip in my early teens to fish for mackerel. Apparently this is the perfect beginner fishing trip because mackerel are really easy to catch. I remember staring in amazement as dangling a shiny lure above the water caused hordes of fish to leap into the boat. You didn’t need to hook them! I went from a total novice to catching 20 pounds of fish in one afternoon. Unfortunately, that meant eating mackerel out of my mom’s freezer for two months that Summer.

    In the software world, it’s not uncommon to be dealing with management that behaves much like mackerel. Let’s say you’ve been charged with coming up with some grand plan for a new product or changes to an existing one. (Yes, I know this is very anti lean startup, but mackerel haven’t caught up with that yet) You might come up with a ‘road map’ having all sorts of features to be deployed upon some imaginary timeline.

    The thing is, if you are working for mackerel, you have to understand that each option or feature is a shiny lure. When presented with a number of options, mackerel will jump on every single one. They are all sparkling, attractive, and worth risking a slow, gasping death aboard the deck of a fishing vessel for.

    The good thing is, mackerel are easily distracted. When managing mackerel, your job is to keep them hopping on lures and thinking they are making real decisions while you enable the people who actually do stuff to build and launch the product the right way. I’ve seen products ship using this technique. Producers convince the project leader he is in charge, but secretly direct the team to do otherwise. Once the project ships, nobody can really complain. It’s the whole “ask forgiveness later than permission before” thing.

    Mackerel management requires two things. The first one is not caring about your employment status. After all, you are directly defying the mackerel and might get canned for such brazen action. Mackerel travel in schools and don’t like to think as individuals. Also, you need the rest of the people on the project to have such disregard for mackerel that they’ll agree to silently ignore management’s requests. If you have this perfect storm of “I don’t give a shit” philosophy you may be able to upwardly manage mackerel.

    Of course, if you find yourself in this situation, you might reconsider even trying this and either start up your own thing or get a better job where such absurdity is not necessary. Still, it can be a fun sociological experiment–especially if you don’t care about getting fired.