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Starting With Nothing: Solving Early Churn With Empty State Design

I recently stumbled on an article on TechCrunch about empty state designs – “The Most Overlooked Aspect of UX Design Could Be The Most Important”. It’s pretty good, and I won’t rehash the whole thing.
In gist, empty state design refers to the design and experience (UI/ UX) of an application when a new user opens an app or new feature. For example, if you just downloaded a photo sharing app, what would the app say and do to motivate you to use it? Poor empty state designs can lead to confusion, diminished interest, and the like which ultimately yields high churn early on.
Benjamin Brandall, the author, writes empty state designs should tell the user three things:
  1. What is this page/ platform for?
  2. Why are you, the user, seeing this?
  3. How can you fill out this page?

Body Boss was built quite feature heavy without clear call-to-actions upon new registration. We noticed this more apparently when we were signing up coaches on the spot at a trade show early on.

When coaches entered, there was an empty dashboard because no players had done any workouts yet. It was just a great-looking black screen. That’s not useful or sexy.
Our first design was a beautiful black screen. Not helpful, and not actually sexy
Similar to what the article suggests and what is common in successful apps today, we added a Getting Started Wizard walking coaches through setting up their organization.
We added a Getting Started Wizard walking the user through a simple set-up process when a coach first registers

The Getting Started Wizard walked through many different building blocks of Body Boss including adding players individually, or importing en masse
The result was more coaches knowing exactly what they needed to do to get started. We saw engagement rise especially in areas like inviting coaches, setting up groups, etc. The wizard was a great tool to complement our drip onboarding emails, too, to additionally provide structure in the onboarding process.
Check out Brandall’s article, and let me know your thoughts!
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Funding + Contractors = Unrealistic Expectations = Cutting Corners?

Working with several startups over the last couple years, I’ve noticed a recurring theme with well-funded companies using third-party contractors – that is, many sacrifice quality in favor of urgency to deliver a more feature-rich product oftentimes by cutting corners.
That is, startups aim for seemingly arbitrary dates to deliver a product, forgoing things like customer discovery or shifting responsibilities to contractors. In some cases, contractors have not worked in the startup environment or are bought into the business to make the best decisions.
  • I believe the “business” should define what the user flow (experience) should look like with input by a UI/ UX designer. Except in one project, the business shifted user flows to the UI/ UX designer. Being an outside resource without the experience of the business, the designer was left to insert his own vision. So when designs were up for approval, the business owners threw up all over them. Why? Because the designs didn’t match their vision.
  • An early-stage entrepreneur launched a new travel platform without testing the product with customers and gathering feedback for customer acquisition. His previous life in investment banking funded his startup’s six-figure development costs. However, when he launched, he had no answers to how to acquire customers in a highly competitive market. He ended up shutting down almost immediately.
Funding/ money is a funny thing – you want it, but without control, can set unrealistic expectations and take the scrappiness out of startups. You may expect quality to go up, but instead, efforts to ameliorate investors by hitting deadlines motivate the startup to cut corners and sacrifice quality; whereas in bootstrapped, lean startups, quality is tuned to critical elements, and growth occurs more organically.
These aren’t rules… but rather anecdotes of what I’ve seen.
What are your thoughts on how funding has affected startups and expectations? How would you implement some of the lean startup and scrappy methods in a well-funded startup? How else could startups use contractors more effectively?
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We Built an Awesome Feature No One Ever Got Use

I wish we had tracked user engagement better with Body Boss; though, I knew where coaches were getting stuck and why they weren’t experiencing the value of what we built. I have a list of 85 schools who trialed Body Boss within 14 months, but only converted 16%. To boost conversion, we added features… Whoops!
We built several features that did lead to conversions and got us closer to product-market fit. That is, we built critical workout features that coaches needed. However, we also added features that didn’t lead to conversions like Pods – ability to track multiple player workouts with a single device vs. a one player, one device before. Coaches were really impressed with Pods and it led to several trials, but not to conversions.

Body Boss Pods on the tablet and smartphone
Why didn’t Pods or other great features not lead to conversions? Simple – the coaches never got to the point to use Pods.
What we built and why we built, is what entrepreneur Joshua Porter calls the “Next Feature Fallacy” (see: The Next Feature Fallacy).
In retrospect, the major hurdle of user/ coach engagement was building a workout program. We had improved the experience several times since v1.0; however, most fixes were band aids, and didn’t solve the problem.
So to use the new Pods feature, coaches had to build a workout program. Except, if coaches were having issues building a workout program, then they never got to Pods. 
Instead of building new features like Pods (a nice-to-have), we should have focused our efforts on user experience and helping coaches get started with Body Boss. Once we got coaches using the system, we could then track engagement metrics and tested the adoption of features like Pods.
What else could we have done to address the engagement issue? How have you developed features that consistently added value?
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This Bathroom Door: Where User Experience Does NOT Match Design

I don’t have a thought-provoking post today, but instead, I’m going to share a few pictures I took of the door to the men’s bathroom at Atlanta Tech Village back in January. Why? Because in the spirit of entrepreneurship, 1) I think these pictures are great representations of user experience not matching its intended design and 2) lean startup methodology for a short-term resolution.
So the first picture here is of the door leading to the bathroom on the first floor. Looks pretty simple and straight forward, right? Except, it’s not.

You see, design-wise, this simple entrance and exit would normally mean you turn this little doodad:
Yes, a door knob. Except, when you go to turn it, it doesn’t turn. So, it’s pretty common to see people walk up to the door, attempt to turn it, find it “locked”, and either wait for someone inside to open (thinking someone’s inside), or leave altogether.
Upon closer inspection, the door jam is stuffed with paper. Instead, this door is meant to be pushed [from the outside]. See, this door knob is really arbitrary, and actually, it’s misleading. Here’s an example where design and engineering aren’t matching.
What this door should have is a simple “push” plate/ handle like you would find in any other push/ pull door. Yeah, like this one:
Or something like this:
You get the point.
Anyways, leave it for someone to implement a really simple solution in a rather lean startup way…
I don’t have a picture of the door since January, but I’ll update this post after Friday when I stop by ATV to see what’s changed. Last I remember, it hasn’t quite changed. Instead, I’ve just gotten used to ignoring the door knob and pushed through.

[EDIT] Here’s a picture of the door today (as of April 24, 2015)…

They implemented a push plate — there you go…
So the point here is really very simple: design simply and ensure user experience matches the design you intended. Sure in this example, users can get upset or worse have a kindergarten accident (hopefully not likely). But in today’s technology world, we as entrepreneurs, designers, and builders sometimes do not get second chances before users dump our app or SaaS in favor of a simpler, accurate, and engaging user experience.
Also, sometimes the most effective solution is really a lean startup-like solution in the short-term. In this case, a simple note taped to the door notifying the user to “Push” is sufficient for now. Most people will overlook the tackiness of this approach before you can actually replace the whole door knob in favor of one of the “Push” handles later.
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U in UX stands for You: The Evolution of Consumer Engagement

Delta’s approach at engaging fliers at LaGuardia airport. Source: http://static1.businessinsider.com/image/512b78736bb3f77f7b00000c/laguardias-delta-terminal-is-packed-with-ipads-as-far-as-the-eye-can-see.jpg
Ah, the world is changing so damned fast, and the plethora of technology and startups is sometimes overwhelming. So what gives? How does one really bring in consumers and cultivate the relationship in such a way that they don’t leave? My answer: user engagement/ experience.
If you’ve been reading my blog for every so often, chances are you’d have read me go on about how technology is, in many ways, fragmented. APIs, large platforms, access and ease to program, etc. has lowered the barriers to entry (acquire) and exit (churn). Refer to “Who’s poised to profit in this fragmented, online dating world of startups?” The key for success for today’s entrepreneurs and is almost becoming the minimum/ common denominator is beautiful design and an engaging, easy user experience.
In fact, I actually once wrote how design was a key lever in success in “Winning Combination = Speed + Design + ???”. In retrospect, I should have chosen my words more wisely and had substituted “Design” with “User Experience”. I read a great Fast Company article about this evolution from design to user experience – “Move Over Product Design, UX Is The Future”. The article has several interesting points about this shift and this “[g]lobal competition and technological diffusion” per FastCo.
Here are a few takeaways and nuggets from the article:
  • “today’s product innovations, and the growth they create, are often incremental, narrow, and fleeting”
  • “Global Innovation 1000, R&D spending rose 5.8% last year, yet revenue for those companies increased less than 1%. Global competition and technological diffusion mean that competitors quickly catch up with most improvements, while the transparency of digital and social media also prompts consumers to quickly switch allegiance with each new alluring offer”
  • Go beyond the product or service you’re building/ selling. Instead, focus on the experience and the interaction of the consumer. Uber “fundamentally changed how you order, meet, and pay for a car”
  • Focus on the consumer, but you’ll have to be the one who leads the experience. Henry Ford famously said, “If I asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses.” Consumers tend to focus on the pain and fixing that pain by “lessening it”. They need you to think more creatively and think more broadly. Delta, for example, brought the lounge experience to the gates in LaGuardia and Minneapolis airports. This way, Delta may not be able to speed up traffic controlling at a whole airport, but they can make the whole experience a lot more appealing (*phew!* that was a long bullet)
  • Your company’s culture is viral and spreads outward. “Before an experience will come across as real to the outside world, dozens, hundreds or thousands of employees need to be educated and empowered to deliver the vision”

I change the word from “customer” to “consumer” in many of the above after sitting down recently with MaxMedia. MaxMedia is a consumer engagement company here in Atlanta. They believe that there’s a much, much larger scope of people who “consume” an experience, a brand, an idea who may not actually be “customers”. I tend to then think consumer is the aggregation of both prospects (target and non-target prospects), and customers. MaxMedia has recently announced a new approach (for marketing but for real) called You&Me. The focus is all about – you guessed it – consumer engagement with the brand.

Consumers = Prospects + Customers

Okay, so let me step back and close this baby out…
Technological innovation isn’t enough these days. It gets you out the door, but by and large, the market catches up, and you’re struggling to hold onto those precious consumers. UX is key to bringing in consumers as well as preventing them from leaving. UX can be the difference between why I switched from Pandora to Spotify. UX is the masterstroke that enabled Airbnb to grow so fast, and made renting someone’s home for a more local experience rather than focus on price. Uber stepped back and reimagined the whole experience of ordering a car, and now, it’s so easy and fun to call your “own personal” black car service. The tech behind it all is cool, sure, but to us as consumers, it’s all just fun and opens our world to much greater.
What are your thoughts on the criticality of user experience in business/ startups? How do you see the interplay between the underlying technologies and user experience in gaining new consumers and keeping existing?

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