Build a Killer Product Faster! The Secret of User Activity Streams and Cohort Metrics
🔗 Build a Killer Product Faster! The Secret of User Activity Streams and Cohort Metrics
Two great ways to track service users. I got to implement this.
Free Ebooks On Creativity And Design
This post was originally written in January 2009.
Continuing the free ebook spree, I’ve found 3 more on creativity and design.The first one is a bit old, from 2004, but I still hadn’t heard about it. It’s How to be creative by Hugh MacLeod, the famous cartoonist behind gapingvoid. It’s a great read, very stright to the point like his cartoons and shares some inspiring experiences. Recently he got a book contract and will be releasing a book on the same subject called Ignore Everybody.
The other two ebooks I still hadn’t time to read properly, but look very promising. I have to thank Amy Hoy for sharing them. The first one is a somewhat short document describing several design concepts: appropriateness, timelessness, responsibility, and so on. It’s The Vignelli Canon by Massimo Vignelli. The second is How do you design? by Hugh Dubberly and contains an overview on all kinds of design processes, even software development models.
Good reading.
Tags: books, design, creativity
Rethinking Education
This post was originally written in September 2008.
Sir Ken Robinson talk at TED is one the top talks of the famous conference. It discusses the developed countries’ education systems and argues that it has several faults when it comes to identifying the true talents in children. It might work well for some cases, but it is mostly headed for advanced academic education (University professors that is). Basically it’s main goal is the uniformity of schools, programs, professors and students, to establish a just evaluation scheme.
However, this has been proved not to have the best results. If you have had the chance to read Freakonomics you already are aware of some of the results of the USA national multiple choice exams and how it motives gaming. Calvin of course had it figured out long ago:
There’s also a more recent talk about uniformed evaluations. Malcom Gladwell, the writer of Blink talked about what he called the mismatch problem. He states that using uniform tests, mixed with old tools and philosophies, to evaluate something has complex and heterogeneous as people is most certain to fail.
Sometimes the problems come from the wrong incentives. Tara Hunt mentions how awarding schools only by students’ results doesn’t pass the right message either:
The incentives trickle down. If a school’s test scores are poor, their funding is in jeopardy. If a school’s test scores are high, they get more funding. If a school has more funding, the teachers get paid more. If a school has a cut in funding, teachers may lose their jobs and classroom sizes go up. And the incentives for students? Not great, really, other than if you don’t pass by your final year, you don’t graduate. Students who fail the test in earlier grades get extra attention, helping them pass the test by their graduating year.
[…]
I would also change the incentives for schools and teachers. Decreasing funding for a school in crisis doesn’t seem to fit the situation. I know it works in business – a department is slacking off…kill the funds – but a learning environment is different. I am only guessing, but I assume that the schools that lose funding are those in areas that need it the most. These are the schools with kids from poor families whose parents aren’t there (or aren’t able to be there) to sit and help their kids with their homework. These schools need more funding, not less.
Tara also mentions one of the solutions I suggest. The involvement of more extra-curricular activities in every student’s academic path. Make it a part of the education program. To evaluate commitment, not only to add more qualitative fields to their grade, but also to aid them on the discovery of their true talent.
I do believe everyone’s got a special talent. Telling them that the only measure of academic success is to go to University and take a degree is something I find very common and, at the same time, sad. It really narrows down their opportunities not only for academic success, but also to financial wealth and personal fulfilment. We need to open students’ minds and not narrow them down to a all-or-none test, while instilling them with an extraordinary fear of failing.
Tags: education
Bundlr wasn’t intended to be a journalism tool but journalists can take advantage of its features for their everyday work. Besides gathering different social media and online contents like photos, videos and tweets to present in a single page, it can be used privately for research and brainstorming to write articles.
— New curation tool Bundlr sets sights on ‘untangling the web’
Tags: bundlr, journalism
Where's The Middleman? - Content Intermediaries On Web2.0
This post was originally written in September 2007.
A post about content providers and intermediaries at innovation playground got me wandering about what role can intermediaries have on the web?In offline media, content providers can’t, by themselves, contact directly with consumers on a regular basis. Intermediaries provide the ability to make distribution possible for a wide audience, using means not available for everyone. It’s like farmers having to sell they’re goods to larger distribution companies. However, the Internet releases the physical restrains. As soon as publishing tools became available and easy-to-use content providers start creating their own platforms and talking directly to network users. And suddenly intermediaries seemed superfluous.
Aggregation and filtering
But old models started appearing in new formats. One that became very popular, special among blogs is aggregation. The best way to achieve broader audiences is still through diversity and so, all kinds of aggregators start appearing, grouping different minds and opinions under a specific subject. From blog planets, to type specific aggregators (reviews-only websites like LouderVoice for example), there are many ways to increase the value of the creators individualism.Filtering also became a common practice, although not the kind we usually see on mainstream media. No content is being censured or controlled online, it’s simply filtered by external platforms. More sources also means more noise and users have came up with several solutions. The most popular nowadays use either crowdsourcing filtering like Digg and Del.icio.us or editorial filtering like Slashdot. These often reach mass audiences, although usually with narrow visions and in detriment of niches and less generic content. There can also be found filters of sources and not content, specially from older media in new platforms like newspaper blogs (New York Times Blogs for example).
Intermediaries influence on content providers and consumers
While the middlemen have always be seen in a negative way, for being responsible of dictating the sources and the content available, sometimes for profit and others due physical restrains, it’s role on the web as gained a new meaning. They’ll eventually give up the control and start embracing distribution only models. They can no longer determine what we’re going to consume, only the way their going to present it to us. And if we don’t like it, we have choice, much more choice.Content providers no longer have to give away their minds for visibility and can now embrace all kinds of content distribution. Value will only be decided between the creators and their audiences and users can now choose who they will give their attention to. This is the path for an Attention Economy where consumers have the last word on the production and content providers only have to listen to them.
Tags: media