yakshaving

Congratulations to you and all the work that you've done and the impact that you've had. That's pretty cool and something I think many of us aspire to. Cheers Chase!

I like that i can almost 'sketch' out possibilities with the tool. reminds me almost like a vacation planning version of hipmunk in that sense. I like UIs that are flexible like this.

Just my 2 cents!

Understanding the ways in which technical people find answers, and can fully grok and socialize those answers internally with options is invaluable in a technical interview.

Some products are daily/heavy use products which should optimize for the expert user. These products need to be designed such that, once the user has an understanding of how to navigate and understand the product's functionality, they can perform regular actions with ease.

Examples: A Todo list, a weather app, or an app for sports scores and the news on a mobile phone. A POS (Point of Sale) system where the operator has some sufficient time for training [Keep in mind that POS systems are designed for fast transactions to keep lines short and moving smoothly].

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Other products are used many times by different users, infrequently. These interfaces need to be designed such that they're intuitive, require as little handholding as possible, and should offer 80% of the benefit for 20% of the effort. Additionally, that 20% of the effort should be possible by almost all of the people who enter into the experience.

Examples: a photo kiosk at the local drugstore, a fast food ordering counter with an iPad or self-checkout system at a grocery store.

What does this have to do with UI walkthroughs? Because the first class of products are not designed to be intuitive on first usage, they need scaffolds (extreme way of conveying this is a "crutch") for the user to understand their operating protocol. Once the user understands how the system works, then they will be able to use the product quickly and effectively on a repeated basis.

Many of our big wins come from doing something better that Microsoft or Google already might do, but doing it 10x better AND offering great customer support.

All that aside, I'd love to hear your worthwhile project ideas, Moe! contact@deploybutton.com

contact@deploybutton.com

It's also nice for a consultant who manages many clients, which we included in the copy in other places.

I appreciate the support and heads up!

Sorry about this, a fix for this is coming too! From what I understand, we're not allowed to check in or "deploy" until the competition (judging) is complete, but its now on our list.

Thanks so much for your support!

Thanks for the overwhelming response - making the front page of HackerNews unexpectedly. DeployButton was our entry to RailsRumble this year, and it's a solution we created because we wanted something like this for ourselves for our own startup, Lizi.

Over the next few weeks, we'll be updating a few key issues that have been raised in these comments, including the ones about security.

We don't immediately accept that enterprises will jump to use DeployButton, but for a series of smaller consultancies, the security features we will offer will be more than enough.

Thanks again for the support - Sometimes I wish there was a "Whoops, we're not ready for HackerNews yet, don't taze me bro" break-the-glass button that puts us back on after a month's time.

A todo list should definitely get out of your way (for the MOST part), but be intrusive enough that it helps you get the work done to be meaningfully differentiated. (just a personal opinion).

Keep trucking, I think this is a good tool for ad-hoc team task lists, and I'm sure you'll come up with some good use cases for that specific function.

And most importantly, don't let the nay-sayers get you down :-)

In many ways, the work of a critic is easy. We risk very little, yet enjoy a position over those who offer up their work and their selves to our judgment. We thrive on negative criticism, which is fun to write and to read.

But the bitter truth we critics must face, is that in the grand scheme of things, the average piece of junk is probably more meaningful than our criticism designating it so. But there are times when a critic truly risks something, and that is in the discovery and defense of the new.

The world is often unkind to new talents, new creations. The new needs friends.

Last night, I experienced something new; an extraordinary meal from a singularly unexpected source. To say that both the meal and its maker have challenged my preconceptions about fine cooking, is a gross understatement. They have rocked me to my core. In the past, I have made no secret of my disdain for Chef Gusteau's famous motto, 'Anyone can cook.'

But I realize — only now do I truly understand what he meant. Not everyone can become a great artist, but a great artist can come from anywhere. It is difficult to imagine more humble origins than those of the genius now cooking at Gusteau's, who is, in this critic's opinion, nothing less than the finest chef in France. I will be returning to Gusteau's soon, hungry for more."

-- Anton Ego, "Ratatouille"

I wish we could see this level of design work for products that aren't for hipsters and celebrities though.

From a look at Josephmark's webpage, it looks pretttty similar to We Are Hunted (http://wearehunted.com/a/#/emerging/) and The Global Mail, which are their works. I imagine the conversation went something like this:

MySpace exec: "Nice work on WeAreHunted! Can you replicate basically the same site with some venn diagrams?" Josephmark: ::shrugs:: Sure, how much?

All cynicism aside, it doesn't really matter where myspace got the idea, the video actually looks like this is executed pretty well. I hope myspace will resurrect into something cool and useful to people.

Congrats to the design and dev teams!

Today, accelerator programs are largely exclusive. In fact, their popularity has risen in part to their exclusivity and privilege. The exclusivity stems from the fact that after the period of "acceleration" is over, the ability to raise capital is much higher. After the apprenticeship, the apprentice just has a "job", most likely for the master.

Accelerators have done a great job exploiting their "artificial scarcity" to a great extent, making them highly desirable. The "masters" or "mentors" in the accelerator model differ from apprenticeships in that they are multifaceted and have a variety of different backgrounds. In an apprenticeship, usually the masters are focused uniquely on one trade.

According to the article, "apprenticeships are still fighting an image battle. Only 0.3 percent of the American workforce are apprentices, according to a report from American University economist Robert Lerman."

This sounds like the job of a great design and marketing team. A project I worked on as a student in Design School called the New Options Initiative (http://www.newoptionsproject.org/home) sponsored by the WK Kellogg foundation sought to create new alternatives for people who dropped out of school. The project recognizes that school isn't for everyone, and we need alternative career/job paths for people that are similar to the apprenticeship model.

It'd be interesting to see what happened if we just changed the words apprenticeship to accelerator, and provided more means for self-employment and entrepreneurship to the participants. I'm willing to bet that more people would consider it a viable alternative.

Seems a bit overdesigned/overengineered though right? Do you really need the adlib typeahead? Or did you realize that people needed more constraints than just being able to type whatever they wanted into a box?

Seems like you could have an entire conversation between a few famous celebrities (alive or deceased) and then take that conversation page and make it atomic and shareable... and I feel like that would get traction.

Just my 2 cents.