SXSWi: Design Aesthetic of the Indie Developer
Wasn’t sure what to expect from this one, except to hear some ideas from some folks making great products.
Panelists:
- Nick Bradbury, NewsGator Technologies Inc
- John Gruber, Daring Fireball
- Shaun Inman, haveamint.com
- Michael Lopp, Apple (Moderator)
Notes:
- The evolving and blurring relationship between developer and designer (or why I love SXSW)
- The lines are blurring
- Much of the crowd is both designer and developer
- The death of the start-up
- Level playing field for mind share and bits
- It’s a small world
- “Great [design] speaks to you, it has something to say”
- Design: It’s just a pile of interrelated decisions
- “Independent developers are developing for users, not business” – Nick Bradbury
How do you make a decision when it is just you programming in your pajamas:
- Nick: How would I like it to work?
- Makes the tools for him
- Blog about it, comments say if he’s going on right path or not
- John: Anything successful started from a problem that obsessed the developer
- Shaun: It’s the result of a conversation with people of similar interest
- Or once a release of the product has been made
What is the design & development cycle for you?
- John: Always starts on paper with sketches
- Shaun: Starts with learning
- Won’t necessarily have the skills to solve the problem
- Doesn’t let skillset limit what problem he is trying to solve
- Nick: Ends up building things twice
- First time to learn the lessons
- Writes hackish code, throws it away after learning the problems
Is there an inner circle you talk to since it is just you?
- Nick: Blogging has made it an awful lot easier for him
- Blogged about a feature of newsgator for offline use
- 30-40 comments
- John: Buddy list in iChat
- If he needs feedback, looks and sees who can help
- Sometimes it helps, sometimes not
- Shaun: Group of like-minded friends
- Not afraid to shoot down ideas
- Scratch that, hide that, make that default (beta testers)
How do you turn apparent constraints of being solo into an advantage?
- Shaun: Does his own support, so he interacts with those having the problems
- No uninformed center
- Doesn’t feel restrained in any way
- John: Time restrained
- It’s on you. You have to ship.
- In a bigger company, there’s a manager who’s ass is on the line. They feel the pressure.
- There’s nobody else between you and the revenue
- Nick: Nobody else to blame
Who has experience in larger corporations?
- Nick: Was consultant for larger corporations
- Taught him he wanted to be an indie developer
- No contact with those using the software
- Some business requirement gets throw in
- Shaun & John, not much experience with bigger companies
- Shaun: Keeps a lot in his head
How do you gauge the success of a decision? Revenue? Buzz?
- Nick: Buzz is part of it
- But when you add a new feature and nobody says anything, it’s either perfect or nobody’s using it
- John: It’s hindsight. If you regret it or want to change it, it was wrong.
- Shaun: Success is polarizing people, love or hate
- Listens to the haters more
- John: Like a band
- If they’re standing, they’re into it
- If they’re sitting, you’re fucking up
- Studio musicians have no idea through immediate feedback
What is your first hire going to be if you had to hire someone? What is your need?
- John: Someone to send tee shirts out
- Shaun: Support, harder and harder to keep it up
- But hesitant because he needs to educate them and they need to educate the customer
- John: Neatly solved the tech support problem by writing
- Any software is open source, so it’s your problem.
- Shaun: Mint 3 is a static page that tells you you have a crapload of visitors.
How do you work from home? Office? Pajamas?
- Nick: He takes his kids to school, that wakes him up
- He loves what he’s doing
- Has an office that’s away from everything else
- John: Loves working from home with wife and 3 year old son
- Feels blessed to see them as much as he wants to
- You do get more interruptions
- I have to poo, I have to poo
- Can I have lollipop?
- Types of interruptions you wouldn’t expect to get
- If you need to, close the door
- Shaun: He and wife both work from home
- Have separate offices
- She watches tv, he’s a tapper
- John: More tempting to work too long, not to call it a day
- If you’re really on a roll… you should stop but you don’t
What is it like that the decision you are making might affect your paycheck
- John: The paycheck is on his mind
- It helps him focus
- Not good as a salaried employee
- Too easy for him to lose sight of the ultimate goal
- Shaun: Background is in designing sites
- Was going freelance at the time Mint was released
- Doesn’t worry about how Mint can sell, because he can fall back on freelance design
What point did you say you’re self-sufficient?
- Nick: Was finding he was doing tech support in the office for a different company
- Shaun: Developed Mint when he was working for someone else
- Within the first week, he saw it was going to be big
- Had to turn down some of the freelance he signed up for because he wanted to do Mint right
Is there an exit strategy?
- Nick: It’s what he wants to keep doing
- Likes small products
- If he gets bored, take a break
- John: I don’t want to make money for the sake of making money. I want to make money so I can make more pictures. — Walt Disney
- Shaun: Interested in following his tangents
- Doesn’t think he could work for a larger company
- John: If he had millions, he’d still spend all day hunched over a computer.
- He’d just have a 30″ screen instead of a 20″
How do you compete with larger companies with vastly more resources?
- Nick: You don’t have to worry about red tape like violating a trademark.
- You go to market quicker
- I don’t want a million users, I’d have to give up my freedom
- Shaun: More value placed on design (than google analytics)
- John: Mint is far more valuable than Google Analytics
- The difference is… look at it
- Best way to sell Mint is to tell them to look at Google Analytics
- Shaun: Mint is one page
- John: Google Analytics shows you data
- Mint takes your data and formats it into a presentation
Was there a feature you really didn’t want to put in?
- Shaun: Users wanted elimination of whitespace
- To code it, had to have Javascript rewrite if the window is resigned
- Beta testers were relentless (esp Jason Santa Maria)
This was a nice conversation. I sometimes dream of being an indie developer, so if that ever becomes a reality, this will be some nice advice to fall back on.