Thoughts on Product Development (or My transformative journey in the past few years)

Posted under engineering, Internet, life, Life 101, meditation

*This is a long post*

I have been thinking a lot about Product Development and what makes a product great and here are some thoughts on it. So this is intertwined with Simplicity and my pursuit of it and a transformation that has happened in the past few years. I think that this is something deeply personal and subjective. Lately, people say I am different than I have been before. This attempts to capture my experience and respond to that comment.

Firstly, the more I think about this, the more I observe that the world is full of shit stuff. Things that are ugly, badly made, things that don’t work or are so poorly designed that you need a PhD to work them or just boring and uninspiring. I am beginning to think that this is a symptom of something more deeper and fundamental. Now, product or service development is super hard. It is a balance between form and function. Also rarely anything is developed on your own, the best work and products are built by teams. Building teams is hard, some of the thoughts on teams at some other time. Again teams that build crap stuff are usually crap teams.

Now working with other people is always hard, be it in a team or relationships or anything so there is a lot to be said around picking the right people and in general, the things below are thoughts when you do find the right people.

Most things are a reflection of the people who built it.

I have been thinking about this for a while and when you build something, it is a reflection of who you are, your thought process and its sophistication (or lack of it). The more I think about this, the more I have come to believe that the people with personality build products with personality. Complicated things are made by people who don’t have a nuanced understanding of the problem space. This understanding comes from experiences, thinking about the problem and working with other people who are also thinking about it.

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Be passionate about the product and the people who use it.

This is by far the most important thing in my opinion. People who are passionate about what they do build things with a level of detail that is just not possible otherwise. I was traveling recently on a budget airline and I could tell just by the way the airline staff talked to their customers and even to each other, you could see that there was no sense of team or passion for the work they were doing. It is off-puting and to a trained eye very obvious. I suppose you have to give them some benefit of the doubt having to deal with budget travelers everyday is not exactly what I would call inspiring.

There are couple of things that I would call as tells to figure this out: Passionate people talk about what they are doing all the time. If you are not talking to others or showing them what you are doing, you probably are not passionate about it. I have seen that people who obsess over their users and how they use the tool or product and thinking about them constantly are the people who are most likely to do something great.

This however is a very personal thing, you don’t have to be passionate about solving problems, but being passionate about something gives you personality and depth and in my opinion makes you more interesting.

Stay in the problem space.

It is very easy to get distracted. There is research that says that you need 10,000 hours of practice to master any skill. By staying in the problem space, thinking about it, trying new things, you come to a solution that works. A lot of people just give up after a while

Meditation helps me, so does music. I have developed a self calibrating mechanisms where I tell my self to breathe or focus. Deep Breaths in a middle of a intense meeting or visualizing the tip of a pencil helps me tune out the noise. This has been particularly challenging. More on my experiences with meditation some other time.

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Staying in the problem space requires tremendous focus and mental power and a way to channel your energies into the problem. In some ways zoning out and ignoring all that happens. When you reach the ability to do this at will, that is high level kung fu. I train for Table Tennis (link) and that helps me doing it because you have to keep your attention to a fast moving ball all the time and ignore everything that his happening.

Simplicity comes over time and it is a never ending process.

My explorations in to Simplicity have taken a long time and it is a ongoing process. I am going to write another post on this. The simplest thing is not the most obvious thing. I am beginning to think that it takes around two years to think of the around a simple solution. Personally, though through meditation and other techniques, this has to be a life long process. I recommend reading John Maeda’s Laws of Simplicity to put a context to this.

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If products had feelings, what would they feel. This gives them personality.

This is something right off Jobs and Pixar. Pixar has a way to think about things that I find amazing and is something that has come about to my thought process recently. Pixar has a way to tap into the emotional side of the brain that is quite incredible. The Jobs autobiography (link) talks about this, and by thinking this way they have been able to transform ordinary elements that we encounter (old pickup truck, toys, rats) into epic characters with personality. This kind of thinking really is the magic behind why people love or don’t like something. This is a way to build things that stick beyond the intended use.

This is Art.

One thing that has been a major transformation for me is the fact that this is art. Having being trained as a Engineer, I realize product thinking requires retraining the mind just a bit. Engineers I think are better artists Engineering is just a way to bring your art. Some artists use paint or clay or something else. It has always been this way but in the 21st century engineering skills and technology are the best tools to express art to a broad audience. I have a friend who takes photos and I used to visit his studio every week watch him do it just to understand how he takes his photos. I also enrolled myself in to a photo development course where they taught us how to develop your photos from scratch. Understanding how a photo is developed in a dark room and all the things you can do in the process to express your art was one of the things that I found fascinating. Developing products is much the same.

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To understand this better, read the seminal Paul Graham piece, Hackers and Painters. I have also found, hanging out with artists, making friends with them gives you a sense of roundedness and introduces you to a way of doing things that is not taught in Engineering. If you can train your mind to pick and choose between the two thought process, you have reached a level of mastery this hard to reach.

Finally

Creating something is hard. For me, it has been a deep personal journey and it has been a tremendous learning experience with a lot of personal growth for me. I have had to let go of a number of old things (literally I threw out stuff), relationships and find new ways to spend my time, I have made new friends, amazing experiences. This has got nothing to do with money or how people think about me or anything I thought was super important.  Of course these things are important but they are not the be-all or end-all of everything. I do not claim to have mastered it or have any authority over it. However, it is by far the most transformative experiences I have had.

When I was younger, I used to wander around the “self-help” books in a book shop just out of curiosity. I do not go there any more. I have come to understand the best way to help yourself is to start thinking about others and developing skills enable you to see the world through the eyes of others while have your own special lens on it. That is a level of Zen I constantly aspire for.

We break this down a bit more on Escape Velocity, listen to the show or subscribe to the iTunes.

Posted by cygnus2936 on Jan 17, 2012 — Add a Comment

Journey of a thousand miles.

Posted under life, Life 101

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Posted by cygnus2936 on Dec 26, 2011 — Add a Comment

My 2011 in Review

Posted under life, Life 101, work

2011 is coming to a end and as it is a bit of a tradition in this blog, I usually do a wrap up of the year post. It has been a very hectic year for me, with many sleepless nights. In fact, more than I can count. On a personal level, it has been a bit of a roller-coaster but with a lot of learning and improvement: Learning to build products, brands, teams, relationships. It has been transformative.

Earlier, in the year, I used to have a way to break the boundaries: If something makes you nervous do it, push the boundaries in a way that enhances the internal experience. While hard and difficult initially, it has been a skill that I have developed and has led to more self awareness and confidence.

Protip: Surrounding yourself with people who work tremendously hard is a way to success. I have found myself doing that although serendipitously.  Every night at 1, 2, 3 AM, you would find me working or in back and forth emails with people. That has been a breakthrough for me, when you surround yourself with driven, hard working people you work hard and honestly there is no other way in this path.

This year, I also started growing a beard and people say it suits me and make me look serious. I like that. This year, I am in area that plays on my strengths and I enjoy: creating products, teams. Creating something from nothing is tremendously hard but it is one of the most disproportionally rewarding activity. This year has been a great learning experience in both.

Things experienced:

- I was in three countries that I had never been before. And I had a great time. I went diving for the first time this year and it was incredible.

- Escape Velocity Podcast is flying. We built it from scratch into something that is exciting and long term. We conducted thirty interviews this year and had tremendous fun doing it and constantly improving the quality of the interviews and what our listeners get out of it. Do check it out and follow us on iTunes.

- Over the summer, Ben and I started a small meetup for people with projects and while that small project reached its end of life, in typical fashion, Ben has taken it at a new level with Startup Poker, Startup Digest and many others that are coming up.

- I am back to Table Tennis training and trying to do it seriously.

- While not in a way that is said below, one of the things I have learned to master is loneliness, when you are creating something, the journey is lonely and difficult but the rewards are disproportionate. This year, I have more friends, more contacts, better quality of relationships and more experiences. To do this however, I have had to master and be comfortable with my own presence and my work. In almost a Zen like meditation, I have had to go deep down and accept the way I am and be happy with it. Once you reach that state, the world opens up doors. It is by far the most difficult thing I have done and it means breaking off a lot of old baggage, meaningless relationships and stuff that just is not important but this transformation has been rewarding. People have this notion that once you are this way, it is dull and boring and in my experience it is by far the most fun thing I have expereinced.

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Lessons learnt or reinforced:

- Timing is everything. As I look at things, I get the feeling that more than anything, timing matters, being at the right place at the right time is critical, but this has to be backed up by the other stuff: bringing something to the table, hard work, interests.

- Passion is important. If you are going to do something do it with a passion, honesty and integrity, that produces wins in the long term.

- Experiences over things, this comes up every time. I would highly recommend Delivering Happiness by Tony Hsieh. (link)

- The Complete guide to not giving a F*ck. While not 100% applicable, I think that this is a great read and this is for the 5% of the people who create products and things, it is more of a manifesto.

2012 promises to be exciting already and I have a couple of personal goals to accomplish in addition to goals around work and otherwise.

Finally, it is a bit of a tradition on this site to publish yearly stats of pageviews etc. In all the 14 years that I have had this site the pageviews etc. get old, so this year I am just going to show you the areas from where people came. I see a lot of people from the East Coast of the US, Europe and India.

Seasons Greetings and Happy Holidays. Onwards!

Posted by cygnus2936 on Dec 17, 2011 — 2 Comments

Sword of Doom: Movie Review.

Posted under life, movies

I watched Sword of Doom over the weekend and here are some thoughts about it. I am a big Samurai Movie fan and particularly of Toshiro Mifune and Tatsuya Nakadai. Mifune more so than Nakadai but Nakadai almost always plays the bad ass bad guy.

Sword of Doom is unlike any other Samurai movie and it is hard to verbalize the way it ends and the gist of the story. Samurai movies are of course violent (duh!) but they contain elements of bravery, warrior spirit, politicians and warrior struggles and a over arching theme of loyalty towards someone. All of this is set in feudal Japan that gives the context in terms of society and hierarchy.

Sword of Doom is different for a number of reasons. While not giving away the key elements of the plot, it starts with a fighter (Nakadai) murdering a old man in cold blood with no provocation that triggers a series of events that are interconnected and loosely link the story.

Nakadai is portrayed as someone who lives by the sword is someone who has no compassion towards anyone including the near and dear ones. He is a very dark character and if one would know him personally, one would probably hate him. He plays it so well that I never felt compassion for him, he is ruthless sociopath who gets what he wants through the sword. A reviewer on IMDB says it better:

…he responds to it by continuing on in his chosen path with a sullen, steely gaze. Sword of doom, indeed. Doom for all others around him but even more so for himself. Although he brings suffering to others in the hopes of attaining his ambitions, he is denied the one thing, due to his skill and mindset, that would probably be best for him: his own destruction. Nakadai plays the character as knowing deep down in his heart that he is the cause of his own suffering, but refuses to fully accept it.

Fights wise, the last scene is a epic orgy of mayhem where Nakadai goes crazy which is kind of hard to forget. There is a scene in the snow with Mifune that was really nice and of course the famous one below where Nakadai ploughs through about 10-15 warriors who want to fight him.

The ending is also interesting and the viewer is left with a lot of questions about the characters and the way it is handled. A very different and I thought entertaining movie that explores what happens when a person loses compassion. This theme is amplified 100x because he happens to be a samurai who is built to fight.

Loved it! Highly recommended. But you need to be in the right mindset for this. This is not your popcorn entertainment. It is much deeper and thats why I love this genre.

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Posted by cygnus2936 on Nov 28, 2011 — Add a Comment

If it ain’t broke, dont fix it. Please.

Posted under Internet, Life 101

 

I saw this little gem from Facebook in the timeline today. I dont understand the thinking and logic behind this. The way it is setup, Facebook reads the RSS form this site (www.hrishikeshballal.net) and creates a note automatically that is published on the timeline there. As someone who has used  lot of blogging and publishing tools, Notes is terrible and what they do with HTML is almost crazy. I would never use notes to write a post.

This website can be syndicated using RSS like every other open standard, RSS works, lets stick to it or iterate on it. Already I use Twitter so much more than Facebook. As a early adopter of Facebook, I have almost given up on it, I dont like it anymore and I try to stay away from it as much as possible. The only thing I use it for is the Escape Velocity Page.

Watch Nelson on YouTube. (Oh BTW, the reason I have to put this in there is because Facebook notes does not like the “object” tag ;) . If you were out of Facebook, you would see a embedded YouTube video below. )

 

 

PS: Since I am ranting about terrible implementations:  I *hate* messages on Facebook, it is unusable and crap. It must be made for teenagers. I never take any message on Facebook seriously. If you need to talk to me, email me, my email address is published on my website, also get in touch with me on Twitter, we will have a nice , intelligent, fun conversation in person over coffee or Skype, maybe talk about some interesting and meaningful projects and do stuff in person. Together.

 

Posted by cygnus2936 on Nov 9, 2011 — Add a Comment