Surreal Notions

For the last few months I have worked with an extremely talented team. We have explored numerous potential product concepts and several innovative UI models to make those products both competitive and unique. My part in this process is drawing to a close, but I expect some amazing products in the near future from Autodesk.

I worked closely with Brent Pennock (product designer) and Brian Souder (product manager). Our product designs focus on leveraging existing Autodesk technologies across the emerging software as a service (SaaS) distribution channel.

SaaS, strictly speaking, isn’t exactly new. It started to show up in common vernacular (well, common for techies) as early as 2000/2001. SaaS differs from application service providers (ASPs) in many ways, but most notably their architectures diverge. SaaS applications focus on web interfaces using a multi-tenant architecture (multiple people running the same application with virtually separated data, while ASP applications consider web interfaces an afterthought and create individual user instances of each application. I’m certain there are some great articles available on the ‘Net to describe the nuances between these two systems. I suggest starting at Wikipedia.

During the project, Brent and I created several different design concepts across a couple product concepts. The more promising design concepts were fleshed out into fairly robust wireframes after several weeks of customer interviews and paper testing. The next step will include developing a working or pseudo-working prototype, which will be used in usability testing.

Because the project is still in early stages, I don’t want to go into too much detail. First, there are nondisclosure agreements and business plans to consider. And second, I’m not sure what will happen in the next few months as usability testing uncovers flaws in the current design (hopefully there aren’t many of those). Once a beta of the product is released, I’ll speak about it in more depth. Check out Autodesk Labs for more information over the next few months.

Sorry there haven’t been many updates in the last couple months. Needless to say things have been busy. I did a short contract with Intuit designing a new calculator widget. I’m wrapping up my contract with Autodesk designing Dragonfly. I’m working on several side projects with various friends and colleagues in everything from tax software to independent Irish punk music publication and review.

There will be more updates forthcoming as I get a few of the more tedious things off of my plate (e.g., organizing my accounts and automating my disaster/recovery system). Although boring and time consuming to setup, they should require very little maintenance and open a few hours a week to spend updating this site. I plan on opening a new area soon to publish more formal articles on topics such as information technology, product design, and business.

Designed a calculator for MyCorporation and Intuit partners (e.g., preferred CPAs and related businesses). The calculator will help business owners understand the tax benefits of incorporation, offering one data point in the business entity decision process. I spoke to several friends and colleagues (mostly CPAs, business owners, and lawyers) before deciding on an entity. I hope this calculator will help other startups make the right decision the first time to avoid unnecessary expenses or problems. After all, the last thing a startup needs is unnecessary expenses when the precious capital available could be spent on more important things.

The calculations involved are fairly simple, but (like so many things tax related) require a fair amount of domain knowledge to understand. Unfortunately, accounting tends to be rife with jargon–jargon that is very specific and unforgiving. For example, confusing net revenue (revenue after expenses have been removed) and gross revenue (revenue before expenses have been removed) will generate two very different numbers.

This calculator needed to guide people through the jargon (and avoid it whenever possible), require the minimum information possible, and provide a reasonably useful answer. Of course, it had to do all of this very simply, because the calculator is primarily a marketing piece.

I will include screenshots and a link to the calculator in action as soon as possible. It should be released sometime early Q2 of 2008.

An old friend and colleague from Creighton University, Travis Graham, has decided to try his hand at product design. I am quite confident in his ability to design successful products. Granted, he doesn’t have much experience beyond a few small internal projects and coursework, but we all started in a similar situation.

I plan on helping Travis work through a couple pro bono projects to build up his resume and figure out if he really enjoys the design. If successful, I’d like to bring him on to support some of my projects over the next year. Then, with a little luck, the one-man band will start to become a more diverse organization allowing us to take on more projects and specialize to some extent.

We’ve decided to start with a small website redesign. Travis has contacted the site owner, who seems very receptive to having a free redesign. In fact, the owner seems interested in changing the business focus and image a bit, so it’s a good thing Travis and I both have MBAs as well. I suppose being slightly over-educated does have its benefits on occasion.

I believe everybody should have a few ‘secret’ talents. Talents that aren’t necessarily obvious and have no clear relationship to work or hobbies. One of my secret talents is carving pumpkins. Here is the gallery of pumpkins Matt and I have created over the last few years.

I’ve always enjoyed halloween. The activity of exploring new areas of your personality via costume fascinates me. Probably one of the things that drew me to role playing games such as Dungeons and Dragons® when I was a kid… okay, so I continued playing DnD and similar games through college, too. Anyway, carving pumpkins offered a way for my creative side to come out for a few hours a year without much investment of time or effort.

A few years ago I suggested I could carve a pumpkin better than a friend of mine. This turned into an annual challenge. After I carved Yoda a couple years ago (the picture above), we started to get more serious. Last year involved a Lord of the Rings theme. My Balrog fighting Gandalf tribute failed miserably. It turns out that carving a creature described as “shadow and flame” is rather difficult. This year we went for a Star Trek theme. Unfortunately, Matt’s pumpkin was rotten when we started carving, so I was the only one able to finish. I have only one word to describe it, “KHAAAAAN!”

We’ll probably go for a fantasy theme again next year. Possibly Harry Potter, Chronicles of Narnia, or Marvel comics. Then again, we might just as easily go for a Monty Python theme, because “Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition!”

Thanks to Philip, I started a new project at Autodesk today.  Hurrah!

As I’m sure you’re aware, Autodesk is the company behind numerous CAD and 3D rendering applications.  They started with AutoCAD a couple decades ago and have since expanded into specialized CAD programs, BIM programs (like Revit), and general 3D rendering (they acquired 3D Studio MAX and Maya in the last few years).  In fact, AutoCAD is a de-facto standard in most engineering fields.  ProEngineer, TurobCAD, and other competitors basically follow the Autodesk lead when it comes to CAD.  So at least I’m in the right place to make a difference

We’re still in the very early stages of the project and I can’t really talk about it much anyway.  However, it’s a great group of people, so I should at least have fun and learn a few interesting things.

Despite my short stay at Northern Natural, I was able to help point them in the right direction.  Philip once mentioned that internal projects tend to be less profitable and less likely to have a lasting impact than commercial projects.  He is, no doubt, absolutely correct.  However, I enjoyed working with the team at Northern Natural… and a good team will go a long way no matter what challenges they might face.

I was pulled in to offer advice and help make some of the bigger UI decisions.  More than anything, I tried to give the main architect and developers a crash-course in interaction design.  I gave them lots of thoughts, but I also tried to help them understand the thought process in UI.  How to approach problems from a user perspective rather than a business or technical perspective.  It’s not as easy as you’d think.  In fact, I believe it’s one of the keystone skills a good interaction designer brings to the table.  Furthermore, I’m not certain this is the kind of skill that can be taught in a book or a series of reproducible steps.

Both Jennifer (architect) and Loren (developer) have excellent instincts concerning interaction and usability.  My fear is they get too much push back from the customers and try to please the end users by adding features rather than solving problems.  A subtle distinction I try to emphasize, but I don’t think it is very obvious sometimes.  It’s very easy to add a widget, change a color, move a button, or create a report because a customer asks for it.  It’s not as easy to fully understand the reasoning for the request and solving the root problem, which frequently has little or nothing to do with the requested feature.  But, I am confident Jennifer and Loren are on the right track for now.  I’ll check in every now and then just to make sure they don’t run into any trouble.

I’ve officially started working with Sojern.  We’re still ironing out a few of the contract details, but things should be finalized shortly.  This should be an interesting experience, to say the least.

And people say I’m ambitious.  Sojern has set out with a defined goal of creating $1 billion of shareholder value over the next 3-4 years.  Don’t get me wrong, it’s a great group of people with lots of talent.  They’ve got the resources and management with enough business acumen and sales experience to probably pull it off.  However, that’s one hell of a goal to start out with!

If nothing else, Sojern should be an interesting ride.  I’m not convinced the business is ready (maybe in six months) for my skill-set yet; however, I’ll do everything I can in the meantime.  Hopefully, I’m wrong and they will need to develop all of the components currently being discussed in parallel.  I suspect quite a few components and concepts will fall into v3, v4, and v5 discussions, because this project strikes me as substantially larger than most people involved want to admit.  I have been accused of biting too much off at the same time, but I’ve never seen an entire office do it at the same time.  I hope I’m wrong, but it’s hard to not notice some of the signs.

Despite all of this, the monstrous goals, the gargantuan challenges, the short time-line, I still think Sojern will probably succeed.  It is just a matter of time.  Given the collection of experience already in the room and the several million dollars in angel investment already acquired, I doubt it’ll take very long for success to find Sojern.

“Struggle is good.”  Or so my high school English teacher quipped on a regular basis.  I suppose part of me, a big part perhaps, agrees.  It’s a bitter sweet thing when Intuit closed the Omaha office.  On the one hand, there is much I left unfinished.  On the other hand, it forced me to find something different, which might be better in the long run.

I enjoyed my brief time at Intuit; however, with rising prospects elsewhere leaving opens up innumerable opportunities I would have either overlooked or bypassed while at Intuit.  There is something to be said for constantly throwing oneself into the raptures of change and chaos.  It might be crazy… or it might be brilliant.  Haven’t decided which just yet

Maybe I’ll still have a chance to work on some of those lingering projects as a contractor in a few months.  And, if nothing else, I learned a few things, made some improvements in a few products, and met some really great people.  Any experience with all of that must have been worth it.

On the plus side, a majority of the people from the office are joining a new startup called Sojern.  I’m not a big fan of the misspelling of sojourn (to have a safe and successful trip or journey); however, the business plan is interesting.  I’m negotiating a part-time contract with Sojern along with a couple other possible clients.

Of course, I have every confidence that the entire group will land on their respective feet without any trouble.  The whole office was comprised of experienced professionals with more than a bit of entrepreneurial spirit.

Intuit initially hired me as a staff UI Designer to support TurboTax® Estimated Taxes.  Although I designed interaction for numerous projects while at Intuit, this project represents the majority of my time and effort.  I worked closely with a talented team of engineering, QA, support, domain experts, and product management personnel.

We conducted several usability and marketing studies from late 2006 to early 2007.  Each study focussed on different aspects of the user experience ranging from SEO to help the user find the application to specific tasks a returning user wants to accomplish.  Among the many learnings from this research, we found the majority of our users were elderly retirees.  In fact, the initial offering had substantial negative feedback around navigation and confidence.  Basically, users had trouble finding where the tasks lived and weren’t sure when they were done with the task.  We also saw high rates of abandonment during setup.

To mitigate these concerns, I started by redesigning the setup user experience from a 14 step process to 3 steps.  This reduced the abandonment rate and initial confusion.  It also allowed users to get into the product and use it before deciding if the product solves for their specific needs.

Once in the product, the home page redesign used a checklist metaphor to help guide the users to the tasks necessary for their specific needs.  The checklist or action list guided users to next steps required by the IRS, errors that must be corrected, and points of concern within their account.  Several variants and metaphors were tested during usability, but the checklist metaphor clearly rang with the majority of subjects.

I went on to simplify the filing process to a single screen from a 4 step process; simplified the account management and reports sections; and improved navigation and confidence within the estimated taxes calculator.

Although these improvements were met with resounding positive feedback, technical changes with a third-party component has forced Intuit to temporarily deactivate the product.  Plans are moving forward to work around the third-party component and open TurboTax Estimated Taxes up to the public again or imbed the functionality within TurboTax desktop products.