Teamwork: Private Policy

Sunday, July 18, 2010

Teamwork when working on the private policy

So, Crysandrea has been needing a Private Policy revamp for quite a bit now, so some of the team and I decided to go and do a team collaboration document editing process. It was one of the funnest things I’ve done with the team. We all chatted, tweaked, improved our knowledge and best of all we felt productive.


Why I don’t buy the hype

Wednesday, July 14, 2010

I’m beginning to see these new “work in progress” avatar communities just about every where now in day. A rough estimation of about 4 avatar communities have been publicly under development for over 6 months now, and to be honest I find it ridiculous.

Don’t get me wrong, a splash page is great for building a small audience so that when the project is actually released it can have some life to kick-start, but only for so long. Really, anyone who’s been in the basement planning for over 6 months is usually planning wrong things from the get-go. They don’t have a live site or a live audience to really see what the users want, they just kind of guess what the users want by looking at their competitors. Someone who’s been behind the scenes for over 6 months can get away with not working for a week or 2, no one will really notice. On a live site, the story changes. You have real people giving you what they really want, and if they don’t get it they’ll make it clear just how much they really want it. People will notice if your slacking off, they catch on by the lack of updates and activity.

So please, if you have been planning to open an online project. Give it a month or two to really let it sink in. If it doesn’t still seem like a good idea then, don’t put up a splash page saying it’s going to be released soon to then disappoint them with the quality.


They’re doing it better

Sunday, June 20, 2010

When you are getting better at coding, it seems to be a tendency to start building your own things. After all, you know how it works, and it suits your needs just fine, right? After building so many custom engines was when I realized: “This is starting to suck“.

I originally had planned on making this blog a custom blog platform built of the amazing PHP Framework CodeIgniter. It was going to be a small, useful and simple blogging tool. I didn’t have plans to go big and expect more than 20 people to read my blog. So I began building it, and it was going great, simple, quick and built just for me. So I used it, started blogging a bit and fell back out. I posted great the first couple of days but from there on I kind of abandoned the blog posting habit. So I thought, let’s try WordPress for a change? What an incredible difference. No bugs, easy to install, secure, well built and it still did what I wanted to do. From there on, I’m excited to post when I have an insight or tip to share.

This was the experience that made me realize. I can’t out-do the WordPress community. They have thousands of plug-ins and active developers polishing this system all the way down to the link styles.

So a lesson learned: If you are going to make something for yourself, look out there and be open to options. Chances are someone is probably doing it a lot better than you currently are.


“Beating Gaia Online” is a myth


It’s been just about 6 months since I publicly released the avatar community known as Crysandrea, and within those 6 months I’ve heard this quote at least over twenty times: “This site will grow bigger than Gaia!”. The intentions they have are beautiful, they see it as a success comparison. But it struck me odd when I began to see admins agreeing to go head to head with Gaia, and try to out-do them. Are you serious? Gaia has been around the internet for about seven years now, they have “endless resources” and a audience count longer than I’m comfortable pronouncing. Simply put, if you think like that, chances are you’ll never beat them. They will always be two steps ahead, they will always be Gaia and you can’t beat the person who’s making the rules.

That’s why I decided Crysandrea should have a different direction. Instead of going toe to toe with Gaia, making more features, spending more money and advertising more than other competitors, I decided to not do any of that. Crysandrea’s goal is much different from what many people think. Crysandrea isn’t thinking like the “big boys”, we’re thinking like the starters. Our goal is to stay simple, keep a small team and improve our current features as much as we possibly can. It’s the reason why when people were asking for journal system, I decided to not do it yet. Instead of spending energy on a well-done journal system, why not make a faster more reliable avatar system? Why not improve the trade system? Why not simplify the way you buy shop items? Everything can be improved, but when you start thinking of adding features that aren’t really needed, you start spreading your team, resources and energy.

I’m going to leave the fifty thousand features to Gaia, I’ve decided to please the users who like things done the best they can be.


Room for Simplicity

Tuesday, June 15, 2010

I’ve always been the type of person who prefers a few things done well, than a lot of things done like hell. This is reflected a lot on my work, my designs and my current community Crysandrea. People will always continue to request, it’s natural they want more. But what many admins don’t realize is, that’s a one way road. Once you give users something, it’s a lot harder to take it away when you realize almost no one uses it. A great technology we know today as AJAX goes hand to hand with simple things. When you have time to focus, you start thinking differently. You have time to refine your code, speed up your current features, and improve them massively. That’s where you can hook onto for success, one or two features done very well, not 20 features that will get in the way a couple of months later.

So before you add that feature, think about the future. How long will your people really need that feature? Is it a luxury? Is it useful? Don’t mindlessly add features, mindlessly improve them.


When you need to focus

Saturday, June 12, 2010

You can’t seem to get work done, not even when you “force” yourself. Could it be your low on inspiration, chair is uncomfortable, ran out of paper to draw your ideas? While it could be any of those chances are, it’s none of those. The problem is you can’t focus. I’ve been taking concentration, focus and productivity to heart a lot lately, I’m planing on opening some other projects soon but the time seems to never give. Again, I have plenty of time, I’m just not getting anything done while I’m not focusing.

Being the curious person I am, I decided to give it a full go at this “focus” thing. I spent 4 hours logged out of any IM’s, away from my emails, and wearing some soundproof headphones. Within those 4 hours, I got so much done, I was scared to take account on how much I was really slacking off when I wasn’t focusing.

Digging deeper, I found a really great article that lists 6 mac applications that help you focus. So I tried out a couple and must admit, they were great! Between Think and Focus Booster *which I’m using right now to write this article*, I can concentrate a lot more and feel like I get things done. The dimming background of Think forces me to look at the work window, and Focus Booster adds the deadline kind of stress that’s not enough to make you jittery, but enough to remind you to spend your time wisely working, and slacking off isn’t much of an option. Especially if you have set a goal for yourself to actually work the 25 minutes, once your ego and pride are in the line you’ll notice a lot more can get done.

I’m thinking of continuing this challenge for at least a week or two, and let you know how it went then. I deeply suggest you take a look at the Pomodoro Technique if your serious about actually focusing and getting work done.


When things go wrong

Friday, June 11, 2010

When things go wrong, it’s when your people need you most. When one of your users make a mistake on a form, accidentally break a rule or do any other fault, you have a great chance to show them how you handle a situation.

Would you ignore the chance to talk to your users when they need to know something? You shouldn’t, it’s when your users will most likely judge your application the most. When I was modifying some code around Crysandrea, I wrote up this little message:

Notice message

It may not be much, but if something looks off they will most likely remember the notice and know I will be fixing it soon. After all, I promised. This not only creates a sense of comfort for those who are having some minor issues with the page being tweaked, it’s also creates a sense of relief to see something different that the robotic-like message: “Under construction – Please report any glitches you find”.

So how do I personally write my error/notice messages? I use my own work every day, so that could be a great way to start off. You most likely have to experience the actual error yourself to know what you should say and explain. Many people have many different ways of finding the best words for the message, but just be yourself and make it sound natural, not robotic.


Breath in and get it out there!

Thursday, June 10, 2010

How many times have you had a great idea on the tip of your fingers, getting it finished and come to notice… it never got released? You never shared your amazing work and now you don’t have the same inspiration and attitude to work on it. Weeks pass by and it will most likely get lost in the ocean of folders.

Don’t let this happen to you. When you have a good idea, get the darn thing out there as fast as you can. In fact, releasing it sooner than your comfortable with helps you focus on whats really important, your audience. So next time you have an idea, work on the basics, clear out most bugs and get it out there, you’ll be glad you did when you start building a user-base.


Beautiful words

Wednesday, June 9, 2010

It never made any sense to me, I would everyday hear about how important writing for the web was. How writing content was going to be a new great thing in web design. I just didn’t get it, I didn’t see how words can affect a design as much as some people were saying it could.

Only recently, while reading some books about writing for the web, is when my ignorance was being cleared. After reading Neuro web design, How to Write Great Copy for the Web, and overall small chunks of advice from my business idols 37signals it started to become really clear. At that point, I started so see something different about web writing, a point of view of it that I had never even imagined I’d see.

From there on, I’ve been practicing my new witting skills just about everywhere. Error messages, guides, headers, keywords, labels and just about anywhere else I can write on. It’s an amazing feeling, a feeling like I know what I really mean to say when I write. I also noticed my designs were getting better! I’m continuing to realize design goes much deeper than a good color scheme and a pretty logo. It goes all the way to the down to the point-like details that most people wont even notice. And one the most important of these pin-like details is writing.

So take it from me, get passionate about web writing as soon as you can. Any time spent on improving your communication skills with definitely be worth it.


Clutter prevents teaching


To those who don’t know, I run an online community called Crysandrea. In Crysandrea, we have a pretty cool game so users can play when the forums are lonely. While designing the game, I decided to explain to the users how to play the forest, so I built a tour they would be redirected to when they play the game for the first time.

The current tour page looks like this:

Current Crysandrea tour layout.

The idea is nice, but how many users will really read all of that? When I was designing it this seemed like a good idea. I’m giving plenty of information for everyone to understand the game as much as possible, but as it turns out, only around 3% of our users actually read the entire thing.

After realizing I was designing a business-like document, I declared: “This must be re-aligned to be scan-friendly“. After spending 10 minutes drawing some simple wireframes, I was quite happy with this little kindergarten-like sketch.

Crysandrea Wireframe

Once I release the new design, I’ll be sure to post and explain why the page is designed the way it was.