Here’s the video:

And the accompanying article: Death: There’s an app for that

They began the story talking about Steve Jobs’ funeral which was a rather unexpected connection. Here’s the intro:

“The death of Apple’s Steve Jobs has reminded us how important entrepreneurs are to our daily lives, and how the technology they’ve created really does make our lives better.

A local entrepreneur has created an easy way for people to get help at a time when they can use it the most.”

Then they profiled a friend of mine, Stan Sinclair, who used the app recently when his niece passed away.  It was great to have him as part of the story.

So how did all this happen?

I’d sent out a press release to local news outlets and a few weeks ago 9News contacted me to say there were interested in possibly doing a story. After providing some additional background information the decided they wanted to do it.  Last week I went down to the station and taped an interview with Eric Kahnert for about 30 minutes.  Before going down I was a wee bit stressed about being in front of a camera but God was gracious and it all went great.

It’s hard to guess how a news story will turn out once they’re done editing but overall I think they did a pretty good job.  It’s weird seeing myself on TV but I’m thankful for the opportunity to tell more people about the app.

Hopefully it will lead to more opportunities to spread the word.  We’ll see.

See Part 1: The Plan if you haven’t already.

Part 2: Defining the App

Functionality and requirements

Once we had defined our target audience and basic plan, we began defining the app itself. What will users be able to do with the app? How will the functionality and/or content be organized?  Will the app somehow connect to a website or to another app? Will it work primarily on iPhone or will there be an iPad version as well?  Will the app use functionality built into the device such as the camera, GPS, or accelerometer?  At this point don’t worry about colors, graphics, or the visual appearance. That will come later.  When you start to think through the functionality be sure to document all the ideas you come up with. However, it’s important to narrow the focus of version 1.0 to “minimum valuable functionality” (I just made up that term). In other words, what is the minimum set of features you can deliver and still offer worthwhile value to your audience? Don’t try to do too much in your first release.

Most of your functionality will be described when you create a prototype but it’s important to also have written descriptions of all your requirements because some of them won’t appear in the prototype. Requirements that might not show up in the prototype include sounds, responses to motion or light, or that all screens must function in both portrait and landscape orientation.

Design the app experience

Before really digging into the design of your app I highly recommend reading a book called “Tapworthy: Designing Great iPhone Apps”, by Josh Clark.  It steps you through the design process and explains all the standard interface elements Apple has developed. It also has a lot of great examples and screenshots.

When most people hear “design” they immediately think about what the app will look like – colors, graphics, etc.  But I strongly recommend setting aside the look and feel for now and focusing on how the app will work. When a user first opens the app after installing it, what do they see? A welcome screen? The home screen? What will be on the home screen? Can you display all the options on one screen or do you need to create some categories? Thankfully Apple has already designed many of the components you’ll need to design your app.

Sketch

The best way to start designing is with old-fashioned pencil and paper. Just sketch out some rectangles and start labeling them. (Home Screen, Information about X, Category B, Create Email, etc.) You can then draw arrows indicating where the user can go from where. It’s also helpful to list out everything a user can do on each screen. (Go back to previous screen, add task, edit task, etc.) Below is a sketch (incomplete) showing three screens from Funeral Notebook. (Click for larger view.)

Prototype

Once we had the basic structure and flow of the app worked out we started creating mockups showing the buttons, text, controls, etc. the user would see on each screen. Have no fear, it’s really easy to create these. There are several people who have created iPhone and iPad component libraries to be used with Powerpoint, Keynote, or Photoshop. Keynotopia offers template libraries for several devices (iPhone, iPad, Android, Windows, Blackberry, etc.) that will work with Powerpoint, Keynote, and OpenOffice. They’re not free but they’re definitely worth the $9 cost. (We actually used a different library but it’s no longer supported so we bought the Keynotopia templates.) There are several others available but Keynotopia came highly recommended. Once you have the templates just start assembling all your screens by copying and pasting the components you want. You may also want to make different elements on the screen clickable so you can more accurately represent where users would go when they tap different areas. Below is an initial screen prototype showing the home screen for Funeral Notebook.

The website

This is also a good time to think about the website or page that will accompany the app. Apple requires links to the website of the company who created the app as well as a link to a page where a customer can get support. Your site could be anything from a single page with an email address to a full-blown web application. It’s a good idea to think about it now so you have an idea of how the app will relate or tie in to the site. Will there be content displayed in the app that is pulled from the site? If the user wants to contact you will they fill out a form on the site or email you from within the app? In our case we wanted the Funeral Notebook site to provide

1. Marketing information about the app
2. Support and contact information
3. Longer articles about funeral-related topics that wouldn’t display very well within the app

Below is a wireframe showing the layout and structure of the site.

Test for ease of use

After you’ve built most of the screens, save the file as a PDF and download GoodReader for iPhone. GoodReader does a lot of things but one great feature is its ability to display a PDF with none of the GoodReader controls displayed. So if your prototype was created at the same size as an iPhone screen, when you view it in GoodReader it will look like a real app. You can then tap through it and get a sense for how it would work. Try out your app, make changes to the screens, try it again, and repeat.  Be sure to ask others to try it out – especially people who are part of your target market.

Define the brand identity

Like any product, your app should have a unique brand identity. A product’s branding includes it’s name, logo, colors, writing style, and graphics. As I mentioned in my previous post, visual design and branding is not one of my strengths so we decided to work with a graphic designer to help us design the logo, colors, graphics, etc.

(BTW, you do not have to do hire a graphic designer to have a successful app. It can help but it’s not a requirement. There are plenty of great apps that use Apple’s default iPhone look and feel and it’s not impossible to come up with a good icon to represent your app in the app store.)

Name

Naming a product is a science in itself so I’ll just stick to explaining what we did. We wanted the name to do several things.

1. Describe the topic area
   (death of a loved one, funeral)
2. Describe the functionality
   (help you figure out what to do, advice, reference, task management, organization)
3. Be pretty easy to remember
   (nothing too abstract)
4. Be sensitive to the target audience
   (names with “death” in them were crossed off)

There is another requirement I would have added that we didn’t think about: Limit the number of characters and spaces in your name to a total of 10-12 (depending on the width of the letters in the name). This will allow the complete name to be displayed below your app’s icon on the device’s home screen. If you make it longer you’ll have to abbreviate the name or iOS will shorten it for you by cutting out character in the middle and adding ellipses (…).

One trick for testing out your name is to go to any website in Safari, tap the action icon (rectangle with an arrow), select “Add to Home Screen”, then enter your app’s name. The icon on the home screen will now display the name you entered below it. If it doesn’t fit, repeat the process and add another variation.

Logo

A logo can be used within the app, on the website, as (or in) the app icon, and on marketing materials. Remember that a logo will often need to be displayed at a small size so try to design something that will display well at or adapted to) a small size. Some of examples of logo concepts are shown below.

Colors

Color selection is another science within itself. The colors you select should appear consistently across your logo, website, app icon, app interface, and marketing materials. As you explore color options, take a look at competitive apps in the app store to see what colors they’re using. Make sure your colors make your app stand out or at the very least, don’t cause confusion. We wanted something that wasn’t dark and depressing or that looked too much like funeral home colors while also not being too bright or cheery. We actually developed our color pallet by designing the website first and then applying the colors to the app. It worked well for us but I think developing the colors specifically with the app in mind works great too. Some of the color pallets we explored are shown below.

Graphics

In an iPhone app graphics can include icons, buttons, arrows, animations, and more. Yes color is involved but also included are texture, shading, lines, style, and shape. Work in this area can range from just using the standard Apple graphics to creating a completely custom set of screens, buttons, icons, and images. What you decide to do will depend on your budget, your app, and the experience you want to create.

Resources

Book: Tapworthy: Designing Great iPhone Apps, by Josh Clark.
As I mentioned at the beginning for this post, I highly recommend reading this book before you get too far into defining your app.  It steps you through the design process in detail and explains all the standard interface elements Apple has developed. It also has a lot of great examples and screenshots.

Design templates: Keynotopia
On this site you can purchase templates and component libraries for iPhone, iPad, Android, RIM, and several more. The templates can be used with Keynote, PowerPoint, and OpenOffice. These are worth the $9 because they will save a a lot of time.

Apple iOS User Interface Guidelines
Everything you could ever want to know (and more) about how the Apple iOS interface should work.

Part 1: The Plan

A Little Background

Just to establish a little context, my skills and experience lie in the area of web strategy, information architecture, and web interaction design. I’m not a developer and while I’ve done some visual design, it’s not my strong suit. Assessing my strengths and weaknesses helped me figure out which pieces of the project I’d do myself and which I’d outsource. On this project I did the business plan, design, project management, and marketing. I hired out the development and brand identity work. (So there won’t be much (ok, any) information here about how to actually code an iPhone App.)

I created a company, Thrive ID, LLC, before starting to work on the app but I won’t go in to much detail here. (See Stepping Out of the Boat for a little more information.) Starting an LLC is not expensive and is pretty painless so I’d definitely recommend doing it.

Financing came from personal resources. No loans, no VCs, etc. (aka. I’m bootstrapping.) God has been good and I’m thankful for the resources to be able to do this. I know not everyone has financial resources from which to draw.

Getting Started

The Idea

Funeral Notebook was originally going to be a web app but the cost of building and maintaining a web app was more than I wanted to take on – at least initially. The idea for building an iPhone App instead actually came from my wife (who is responsible for many of the better ideas related to this project). The development cost and time were much lower and there was a decent size market for iOS apps so going this route made sense.

The inspiration for Funeral Notebook came from a book my sister-in-law wrote called “Between the Phone Call and the Funeral“. In the book she shares dozens of ways to make the time between when a loved on dies and the funeral run a little smoother. Creating an app that provides similar information combined with the ability to build and manage a task list seemed like an idea worth pursuing. Helping people through a really difficult time in life also fit well with the mission of Thrive ID.

Market assessment

It’s impossible to predict which apps will be financially successful but it’s important to at least take a look at the size of your potential market to see if there is a realistic chance of making a profit on your investment.  For example, yes, there may be millions of bird-watchers in the world but how many of them have an iPhone, iPod Touch, or iPad (aka an iOS device)? And if you’re only going to cover North American Birds, how many bird-watchers with an iOS device would need information about North American Birds?  Then you have to consider the competition.  If there are several competitive apps it’s likely you are only going to be able to get a percentage of your total market.

It’s also important to research competitive apps and products. Download and try out apps that look similar to yours. The existence of competitors doesn’t mean you shouldn’t develop your app. It just means you need to define how yours is different and why a customer would buy it instead of a competitor’s. Also think about competing products that are not iPhone apps.  In our case sticky notes, a pad of paper, and a pen are big competitors we had to think about.

It’s important to at least do “back of the napkin” analysis. Your idea may seem like a good one but it doesn’t necessarily mean it will make any money. (Of course there are reasons besides making money to create apps.) The jury is still out on whether Funeral Notebook is just a good idea or a good idea that also has a strong return on our investment. Stay tuned.

Revenue model

There are several ways to make money with iPhone Apps.

Charge money
This is the most obvious option. Apple gives you control over how much you charge for an app. The price can range from $.99 -$999 and you can raise and lower it whenever you’d like. Figuring out pricing of anything is a tricky task and in some ways pricing apps seems even more difficult. The fact that there are so many free apps seems to set the expectation that apps should be no or very low cost. Plus, for some reason the small screen size can make it feel as though you’re buying something really small and so shouldn’t have to pay much for it. But, as I mentioned, pricing of anything can be a tricky thing. I heard one story of someone who had a $.99 app in the store that wasn’t selling very well. When he raised the price a couple of dollars (for the same app), sales started to pick up. Like I said, it’s tricky.

Free “Lite” version + paid full version
As an extension of the “charge money” option, there is the possibility of offering a free “lite” or stripped-down version of your app in addition to a paid version. This lets users try out some of your app functionality for free and then, if interested, “upgrade” to the paid version. It seems as though this could work well but finding the right balance between offering too much or too little value could be a challenge.

We decided to stick with only offering a paid version initially but offering a lite free version could be an option depending on how things go.

Advertising with iAds
Another option is to offer the app for free but display ads within the app. iAds displays small ads at the bottom of the screen which users can tap to expand and get more information. You get 60% of the revenue generated by ads displayed in your app.

We decided not to go this route because our users are in the middle of an incredibly difficult time and displaying ads seemed pretty inappropriate. Basically I wouldn’t want to see them so I’m not going to make anyone else see them either.

Sponsorships
This involves placing a sponsor’s logo, name, and/or information somewhere within the app. It’s a “this app is brought to you by” sort of message. To be honest we didn’t look into this much but it could be a something we explore more in the future.

In-app purchases
In-app purchases enable users to make purchases without leaving your app. The classic example of this is someone buying a game for $.99 (or free) and then buying additional levels from within the app. This could be a future route for us as well but we don’t have any plans right now.

Our conclusion
Ultimately, after much debate, we decided to charge $4.99 for Funeral Notebook. Here are our reasons:

• It contains the information of a book being sold for $20
• Included task management functionality
• The average price for books on the app store is around $5.00
• We didn’t think $4.99 was unreasonable for something we thought was truly helpful.

That’s not to say we won’t change it at some point depending on how things go.

The project plan

At a high level our project plan looked like this:

Note: While this is the general process flow we followed, it’s not a strict series of steps. Obviously a plan comes before a launch but in between here is a lot of back-and-forth between focus areas. You will learn a lot in each area (especially building and testing the prototype) and it’s likely you’ll need to go back and update the requirements or redesign part of the app or update something else you’ve previously defined. It’s not just ok, it’s necessary.

Describe end users

The design of any product or experience starts with defining who the app is for and what they’re going to need. For example, Funeral Notebook is for adult iPhone, iPod Touch, and iPad owners who have personally lost a loved one or who are helping someone who has. They’re in shock and beginning to experience the grief that accompanies the death of someone close. As a result they’re also tired and not able to think very clearly. To top it off they now have all kinds of new and unfamiliar tasks to complete and decisions to make such as finding a funeral home, contacting friends and relatives, scheduling appointments, planning the funeral, tending to legal and financial matters, etc. They need a way to figure out what they need to do and keep track of it all.

The Marketing plan

There are over 300,000 apps in the iTunes App Store so it’s highly unlikely that potential customers are going to find your app by browsing through the app store. Defining a basic Marketing plan describing how you’re going to get the word out about your app is important if you want a lot of sales. The bare minimum marketing opportunity for every app is the informational page people will see when they click on your app within iTunes (or the associated web pages). This page allows you to verbally describe your app as well as provide screenshots of the app itself. (Here is our page for Funeral Notebook as an example.) Ultimately this is the last page people will see before they buy your app or look elsewhere so it’s worth spending some time on.

Other Marketing and promotional tools include:

• A blog related to the topic of your app
• Advertising on Google, Facebook, related blogs, other websites, magazines, etc.
• Social media – Twitter, Facebook, etc.
• Conferences or conventions
• Etc., etc., etc.

You don’t need to have everything figured out but an outline of a plan or at least some ideas will help you think through it as you develop the app. Also, keep Return on Investment in mind. If you’re only making a dollar or two per sale of your app, you can’t afford to spend $5 per sale on marketing.

See my post on Marketing a Death-Related iPhone App for an overview of what we’ve been doing.

Resources

• Book: App Savvy: Turning Ideas into iPad and iPhone Apps Customers Really Want, by Ken Yarmosh and John Jantsch
  I started reading this book most of the way through the process and I wish I’d read it before I started. (Although it wasn’t available before I started.) It’s an end-to-end guide walking you through everything from coming up with an idea to getting it into the app store and what to do after it’s released. A definite must-read.
• Understanding Your App’s Target Audience
• App Store Metrics by 148Apps.biz
• About Apple’s iAds program
• Project management web apps from 37Signals
  Their flagship product, Basecamp, provides all the tools you need to manage the project and communicate with your team. They also have several other applications to help you manage all aspects of your business. Free starter plans are available on many of the products.

I should also mention that Marketing and promotion are not skills that come naturally for me. The process of starting a business and designing and building a product in an unfamiliar space has resulted in a lot of learning and some mistakes. This phase has been and will be full of both I’m sure.

So what am I doing to market and promote Funeral Notebook?

Support word-of-mouth-marketing

There will always be a latest and greatest marketing tool or technique but so far none of them have replaced the effectiveness of a customer recommending a product to another person. To support this we did two things.

1. We gave it a name that is easy to remember
   We considered a lot of different names and Funeral Notebook came out on top as the most descriptive and easy to remember (and the URL was available – which is becoming more of a challenge).  The word “Funeral” is heavily associated with a person’s death and “Notebook” describes the functional aspects of the app. The hope is that even a few years after someone uses it they’ll be able to remember the name well enough to tell someone else about it.
2. We focused on the user experience
   If the user experience stinks, who cares about the name or how well you promoted the product. Actually, if the user experience is bad, having a memorable name and effectively promoting it will have a negative effect. We focused on making the app useful (helpful functionality and content), usable (clear and efficient interactions that don’t violate Apple’s standard models), and desirable (strong, simple visual design and a human voice). It’s not perfect (yet) but I think we’ve made a good v1.0.

Online advertising

Given the nature of Funeral Notebook (a mobile app) and the context in which it’s used (an urgent need in a stressful situation) advertising online seems like a worthwhile investment. When someone is suddenly facedwith the death of someone close and they don’t know what to do, many times they’ll go online to find help. As a starting point we’re initially focusing on Google and Facebook simply due to the fact that there are so many people using those two sites. Learning the tools and best-practices for creating and managing online ads has been really interesting. So far the results have been decent considering I’ve kept the daily budget pretty small until I figure out the most effective ads and keywords. (BTW, a book I found extremely helpful is “Ultimate Guide to Google Ad Words” by Perry Marshall and Bryan Todd. I’d definitely recommend it if you’re new to Google ads.)

We’ve also looked at advertising on specific magazine sites and blogs but have found Google and Facebook to be less expensive on a Cost Per Click (CPC) basis.

Using the network

We’ve been working on making use of our offline and online networks.

Offline
Making pastors aware of Funeral Notebook has been one of our goals because they’re often one of the first people contacted when someone has passed away.  Via email I’ve been offering pastors a free download of the app and asking them to spread the word to other pastors they know.

Online
There are a couple of different things we’ve done online. We created a Facebook page for the app (which was a rather convoluted process complicated by a redesign of Facebook’s Pages just after creating the page for Funeral Notebook) and am now looking at ways to engage our personal Friends and those who are now fans of Funeral Notebook.  Again, figuring out topics related to Funeral Notebook that people would be willing to discuss when they’re not currently dealing with a death is challenging. I’ve also been mentioning the app in my personal LinkedIn and Twitter accounts.

Offline promotion

In addition to trying to spread the word online via email, ads, and social media we’re trying to make it easy to share information about the app in the physical world. Our initial means of doing this is pretty revolutionary – business cards. They’re inexpensive, easy to transport, easy to share, and give people something physical to reference when they’re not online.

In a learning curve

As I mentioned, marketing a product is new to me and, to be honest, pretty humbling. I’ve worked with a lot of marketers over the years and have had my ideas as to what they could or should be doing to be more effective. Kind of like how I always used to yell at basketball refs – until I had to ref a junior high scrimmage and learned how hard it is. Marketing and refing seem easy until you have to actually do them.

Let me know if you have any tips, ideas, or good stories to share.

It’s an app that I think will really be helpful for someone who has just experienced the death of someone close or who is trying to help someone in that situation. It was inspired by a book call “Between the Phone Call and Funeral” written by my sister-in-law Carol Enix which has received a lot of positive feedback from those who have used it.

So now the challenge is getting the word out. It’s a tricky product because no one wants to think about death-related topics until it’s forced upon them. Then there is a purchasing window of about 2-5 days and then the app will probably not be used for longer than a month. We’re working on several ideas now so we’ll see how it goes.

I’ll be talking more about the product and what I’ve learned in future posts but wanted to share the big news!

Check it out:

At FuneralNotebook.com
On iTunes
On Facebook

Exhibit A: Groupon

Exhibit B: LivingSocial

You can see clear differences between the two after just a quick glance. The Groupon email is clean, simple, and visually engaging. By contrast the LivingSocial email is dense, overwhelming, and easily dismissable.

The primary differentiator in their design is actually the copy.  The Groupon copy is efficient; succinctly communicating only what needs to be communicated and nothing more.  The LivingSocial email is all text and rather verbose.  A simple word count shows that the Groupon email uses 79 words.  LivingSocial uses 146.  With almost double the word count you’d think the LivingSocial email might communicate twice as much information.  When I highlight the different types of information communicated I find that the Groupon email displays about 9 unique pieces of information while LivingSocial displays 5.  See marked-up emails below.

Groupon

LivingSocial

So Groupon communicates roughly twice as much information using about half as many words. That’s good, strong, disciplined writing.  And that lets the designer design an email that is simple, visually engaging, and clearly communicates the desired messages. (And I’d note that there is a big difference between displaying text and communicating information.  But that’s another topic.)

Many times we design the page or email and then “drop in” the copy. This is a great example of the impact of well-written copy coupled with good design. The writer made the Groupon email’s more effective design possible.

This story made the rounds about a year ago but it’s such a great example of the power of delivering a remarkable customer experience I had to post it.  The benefits this cab driver gained from understanding his customers and designing a great experience that exceeds their expectations is tangible.

Enjoy…

Harvey MacKay, tells a wonderful story about a cab driver that proved this point.

He was waiting in line for a ride at the airport. When a cab pulled up, the first thing Harvey noticed was that the taxi was polished to a bright shine. Smartly dressed in a white shirt, black tie, and freshly pressed black slacks, the cab driver jumped out and rounded the car to open the back passenger door for Harvey .

He handed my friend a laminated card and said: ‘I’m Wally, your driver. While I’m loading your bags in the trunk I’d like you to read my mission statement.’

Taken aback, Harvey read the card. It said:

Wally’s Mission Statement:

To get my customers to their destination in the quickest, safest and cheapest way possible in a friendly environment.

This blew Harvey away. Especially when he noticed that the inside of the cab matched the outside. Spotlessly clean!

As he slid behind the wheel, Wally said, ‘Would you like a cup of coffee? I have a thermos of regular and one of decaf.’

My friend said jokingly, ‘No, I’d prefer a soft drink.’

Wally smiled and said, ‘No problem. I have a cooler up front with regular and Diet Coke, water and orange juice.’

Almost stuttering, Harvey said, ‘I’ll take a Diet Coke.’

Handing him his drink, Wally said, ‘If you’d like something to read, I have The Wall Street Journal, Time, Sports Illustrated and USA Today.’

As they were pulling away, Wally handed my friend another laminated card, ‘These are the stations I get and the music they play, if you’d  like to listen to the radio.’

And as if that weren’t enough, Wally told Harvey that he had the air conditioning on and asked if the temperature was comfortable for him.

Then he advised Harvey of the best route to his destination for that time of day. He also let him know that he’d be happy to chat and tell him about some of the sights or, if Harvey preferred, to leave him with his own thoughts.

‘Tell me, Wally,’ my amazed friend asked the driver, ‘have you always served customers like this?’

Wally smiled into the rear view mirror. ‘No, not always. In fact, it’s only been in the last two years. My first five years driving, I spent most of my time complaining like all the rest of the cabbies do. Then I heard the personal growth guru, Wayne Dyer, on the radio one day.

He had just written a book called You’ll See It When You Believe It . Dyer said that if you get up in the morning expecting to have a bad day, you’ll rarely disappoint yourself. He said, ‘Stop complaining!  Differentiate yourself from your competition. Don’t be a duck. Be an eagle. Ducks quack and complain. Eagles soar above the crowd.”

‘That hit me right between the eyes,’ said Wally. ‘Dyer was really talking about me. I was always quacking and complaining, so I decided to change my attitude and become an eagle. I looked around at the other cabs and their drivers. The cabs were dirty, the drivers were unfriendly, and the customers were unhappy. So I decided to make some changes. I put in a few at a time. When my customers responded well, I did more.’

‘I take it that has paid off for you,’ Harvey said.

‘It sure has,’ Wally replied. ‘My first year as an eagle, I doubled my income from the previous year. This year I’ll probably quadruple it.

You were lucky to get me today. I don’t sit at cabstands anymore. My customers call me for appointments on my cell phone or leave a message on my answering machine. If I can’t pick them up myself, I get a reliable cabbie friend to do it and I take a piece of the action.’

Wally was phenomenal. He was running a limo service out of a Yellow Cab. I’ve probably told that story to more than fifty cab drivers over the years, and only two took the idea and ran with it. Whenever I go to their cities, I give them a call. The rest of the drivers quacked like ducks and told me all the reasons they couldn’t do any of what I was suggesting.

I started the year as a 10 year veteran of a large tech company and am finishing it the owner of a tiny new company about to launch it’s first mobile product.

If someone had asked me for predictions for 2010 I’m pretty certain this wouldn’t have crossed my mind.  But I’m so excited to be on this new journey (or adventure as my wife calls it).

For anyone who is or has been working in the world of big business and has had that nagging sense that there has to be more, I encourage you to pay attention to that sense.  Take some time to think about it, pray about it, and talk about what’s stirring in your heart.

In CS Lewis’ “The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe”, Mr Beaver answers Lucy’s question about whether Aslan is “safe” by saying, “‘Course he isn’t safe. But he’s good.” (One of my favorite quotes.)  Ultimately CS Lewis is referring to Jesus there but the quote also comes to mind when I think about leaving the steady (ahem) paycheck of the corporate world to pursue your passions and use your gifts.  Of course it’s not safe.  But it’s good.

Whether the business itself will succeed or fail, I don’t know.  What I do know is that I will grow professionally and personally no matter what the outcome – and that’s a good thing.

For those sitting on the edge, I encourage you to jump in and join the adventure.  It’ll be good.

After observing my own work habits for a while, I’ve concluded that distractions tend to fall in one of two categories.

Curiosity

When I’m doing research for a project I often go and look at other sites to see how they handle design problems I’m working on. Inevitably a headline or an ad or something catches my eye and I end up reading the content rather than analyzing the design. Or at random times my brain suddenly has a need to make sure I’m not missing out on some earth-shattering news on CNN or the New York Times – and oh yeah, I haven’t watched David Pogue’s latest video – and oh yeah, I was going to check out Apple‘s new product – and… You know how it goes.

Interruptions

If my curiosity isn’t pulling me off-track there is always something or someone else doing it for me. Phone calls, IMs, text messages, reminders, people stopping by. Then there are those random times when your brain suddenly remembers something you need to do.

I’m starting to believe that having the ability to focus on a given task for an extended period of time is going to be a competitive advantage for workers in the 21st century.

Whether I’m working for someone else or working on my own projects, I need to stay focused in order to be productive and to figure out creative solutions.  So how do you do that?

Here are some ideas I’m experimenting with:

How to Manage your Curiosity

A lot of this is just self-discipline but there are a couple of techniques that can be helpful.

• If you’re out on the web for a work-related task and something (not work-related) catches your interest, “bookmark” it for later.  Bookmarking it can mean tagging it with “to-read” in Delicious, open the page in a browser window and minimize it, or pasting the link into your to-do manager and save it as a to-do item.
• Give yourself a couple of time-bound (15 minutes?) “smoke breaks” during the day devoted to visiting those pages you bookmarked earlier or checking out the latest news, scores, and stock activity.  Having a designated time can make it easier to tell yourself no and avoid getting side-tracked and also give your brain a little breather and input.

How to Manage Interruptions

• Email
  Turn off any visual or audio reminders that tell you when you have a new mail. They’re a constant interruption and distraction.  Do you really need to know every time an email has landed in your inbox?  (See curiosity.)  Set aside times to check email periodically throughout the day.   Some people go as far as only checking it once or twice per day.  I’m not quite there yet but I’m trying to get away from the every-10-minutes check.
• Phone
  If you’re in the middle of something, let it go to voicemail.  It’s ok. If you have a good chunk of time to really focus on a large task, turn your phone off completely so you don’t even hear the ring or feel the buzz.
• IM and texting
  Both of these tools have their place in the communication toolbox but they are both high on the serious interruption list.  For some reason it’s harder to ignore someone trying to contact you via IM or text than it is to ignore a voicemail.  If you need to focus on a task, turn them off or at least indicate you’re unavailable in IM and put your cell phone in your bag.
• People stopping by
  People stopping by at the wrong time is an age-old problem.  When I worked at Sun Microsystems I had an office with a door but even when I closed it and put on my best “I’m busy” face, people always knocked and talked.  Working at home is better in some ways but if other family members are at home during the day, they also have a tendency to stop by and say hi.  Removing yourself from highly visible areas is helpful.  If that’s not possible, talking about your need for uninterrupted work time with peers or family members can help.  A “don’t interrupt me right now signal” is a good way to communicate without too much distraction (if you can remember the signal fast enough).
• Random to-dos
  Remembering to-dos can happen at any time without warning no matter what you’re doing.  The best tool I’ve found for minimizing the distraction without forgetting the to-do is the Quick Add feature in a task management application called Things.  Every time I think of something I hit Control + Space Bar and a little window pops up where I can type my to-do and hit return.  I never leave the application I’m working in and my hands never leave the keyboard.  Nice.

A couple of months ago I became acquainted with a web app development company called Pivotal Labs who has designed a work environment with the specific goal of promoting focus, creativity, and productivity.  You can learn all the nitty gritty details in a video on their site but here are a couple of highlights.

• All programming is done by pairs of developers working on one computer.  They come up with better solutions, solve problems faster, and keep each other on-task.
• Developers are not able to check email or Facebook at their workstation.  Pivotal has set up separate stations within the office dedicated to email and web browsing.  Employees have to leave their desk in order to find out what’s going on.
• No phone conversations can happen at the workstation.  If they need to make a phone call they use a phone booth/room in the office.

They may have taken it farther than most companies but their results seem to be very positive.

If we don’t take steps to maintain our focus and productivity I think our competitiveness will begin to suffer at personal, corporate, and national levels.  The Internet, phones, our curiosity, and distractions are not going away so it’s up to us to figure out how to deal with them.

Now get back to work.

Thoughts?  How do you stay focused?

At this point Thrive ID is still pretty small – just one full-time employee to be exact (me).  But I think defining the business culture now is important.  I guess, like customer experiences, a business culture is created whether you plan it or not. Thinking about what you want to end up with and working toward it almost always ends in better results than just letting it happen on it’s own.

So what principles do I want Thrive ID to be guided by?

1. Create offerings that help people in a meaningful way
   I’m not motivated by helping people buy more stuff or waste time more enjoyably.  Thrive ID products should help people live a better and more meaningful life.  Thrive, I guess.
2. Charge a fair price for something of value
   Businesses that give everything away free don’t stay in business long and I really do not like advertising.  So my goal is to build something people are willing to pay for and feel as though they got more than their money’s worth.
3. Stay small
   So often the mark of a successful company is how big they get. Unless God has other ideas, I’m more interested in keeping the number of employees small.  Beyond a certain size, I don’t think things get better when you add more people.
4. Think big
   The combination of the web and mobile is resulting in things being accomplished that no one thought possible.  And, as someone who believes God is very much at work in and through people, his knack for making unbelievable things happen makes an awful lot possible.
5. Create remark-able experiences
   These days getting attention is difficult.  Even before the invention of social media, word-of-mouth has always been the most effective way of getting the word out about your product.  So offering a product, service, and experience worthy of recommendation is crucial.  Along with making it remark-worthy comes the need to make it easy for customers to tell others about your offering.  The two sides of remarkable:  (1) Make your product worth remarking about and (2) make it easy to spread the word.
6. Simplify
   It’s easier to design a complex product that does complex things than to design a simple product that does complex things.  Same goes for services, experiences and the business itself.  In the overly-complex world we find ourselves in today, simple stands out.
7. Love your neighbor as yourself
   Yes, for a business to function it needs to make money.  But in the end no one (including you) is going to care or even remember how much money you made.  What matters is how you treated the people you came in contact with.  Did you help them or hurt them? I hope I help everyone I cross paths with.  This one is simple in concept but hard to do.

Seven seems like a good number.  It’s hard to actually write down a short list of principles but it’s well worth the effort.  Sure, they’ll probably change as I learn, but the spirit should stay the same.  Actually, I’d like to condense it down to three at some point (Simplify) but I need to live with these a while first.

Thoughts?