Creating Passionate Users

Somebody save Kathy Sierra’s blog! https://headrush.typepad.com/ I’ll try to archive it. I love her work. But even if I save it, it should live on somewhere else.

Little late to the party, but look up Kathy Sierra. "Upgrade your users" is her thing. Her blog is here: https://headrush.typepad.com/ She has some really great video talks out there: https://vimeo.com/131407754

ME too. She's brilliant. Her blog was some of the most insightful work I've ever read - http://headrush.typepad.com/

I get angry everytime that I think about how a few vile people attacked Kathy and shut down one of the best blogs to grace the internet, Creating Passionate Users (http://headrush.typepad.com/). After she stopped blogging, I wrote a program to scrap her TypePad site and then hand edited down all of her posts into a single, massive book. I printed a single copy on Lulu for myself which I've marked up with highligher and pen calling out all of her incredible points. I don't want to earn any money from her work, so here's a link to download a free PDF copy of the best of her blog: http://www.kevinmconroy.com/pdf/creating_passionate_users.pdf It's print-ready for you to upload to your favorite self publishing book website (e.g. lulu.com) and print your own copy. Thank you for continuing to inspiring me Kathy.

Kathy Sierra's blog is fantastic: http://headrush.typepad.com/ Here are printout versions of her posts: http://enklo.com/passionate/ /Gary

Kathy Sierra's, Creating Passionate Users. http://headrush.typepad.com There you can find a lot of great posts about user experience.

Yeah, see also Kathy Sierra[1], who had an excellent blog[2], and was intimidated and harassed away. If we can't have a safe space for people, we can't enjoy and benefit from their perspectives and the things they create because stunted, immature toxic-faecal-waste people like to shit all over anything that's any good. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kathy_Sierra [2] https://headrush.typepad.com/creating_passionate_users/

Unfortuntely it is no longer updating, but if you haven't read Kathy Sierra's blog this is a great time to go through the archives. It was not a programming blog but rather a blog about user experience, which I'd say is just as important. https://headrush.typepad.com/creating_passionate_users/

This website hasn't been updated since April 2007. It's a blog/blogging platform named "Creating Passionate Users" not about creating them. The most visible[0] entry (April 6th) seems to be lamenting users. The site has been posted to HN numerous times[1], mostly in 2008 and before (when the context was more obvious?) [0]: https://headrush.typepad.com/creating_passionate_users/2007/04/my_favo… [1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/from?site=headrush.typepad.com

This rings true to me. As a trained musician, I know that I hear music differently from most untrained people. I notice the bass line, or the way the melody inverts, or anticipate the end of a phrase. Several years ago Kathy Sierra wrote a great post about how app developers should try to educate users from the first time they use the product and "raise the resolution" on how they think about the problem the app is designed to solve. http://headrush.typepad.com/creating_passionate_users/2005/12/the_hire…

Hey, I was craving for Kathy Sierra writing since Creating Passionate Users: http://headrush.typepad.com/

There are a lot of people who feel like that, me included (at times I kinda expect my parents to tell me that I have been playing grown up long enough and that it is time to come home and go to bed at my old bed time). My best recommendation is to go there anyway, and you will see that you can more than you will ever imagine (useful advice, right? just telling you to do it anyway). Also remember that it is absolutely okay to be scared out of your wits (relevant blog post http://headrush.typepad.com/creating_passionate_users/2007/03/helping_… and do it anyway.

Shelly cloud is an outgrowth of a application development company with extensive Ruby and Rails experience, and probably limited resources. It makes sense for them to focus on what they do best rather than a broader, so-so service. See also http://headrush.typepad.com/creating_passionate_users/2005/01/be_brave… Money quote: "If someone doesn't really hate your product, it's mediocre."

Some great free marketing resources: http://headrush.typepad.com/ (highly recommended) http://www.hubspot.com/marketing-resources http://blog.kissmetrics.com/marketing-guides/ http://www.sethgodin.com/sg/free_stuff.asp http://www.fogcreek.com/guide/

I don't think it's a big issue. I agree with this blog post from 2004: > We think "users" is exactly the right word. It makes the USER the important thing. The one who cares about USEability and USEfullness, two words we really like. We don't care if we make fans. We aren't even motivated to create customers. We believe that if you can do things in such a way that you help people become passionate users, the rest takes care of itself. http://headrush.typepad.com/creating_passionate_users/2004/12/why_we_l…

I also found Kathy's blog very insightful and it's a great tragedy that she stopped writing. An eye-opener for me was her "Is Twitter TOO good?" post: http://headrush.typepad.com/creating_passionate_users/2007/03/is_twitt… For me, this opened up how I thought about products, especially in terms of psychology. I can't really remember when I have read that insightful posts from anybody else (and Kathy had a ton of them).

I remember the situation with Kathy Sierra. It was a shame that she was forced to stop blogging. I really enjoyed her posts. Her blog is still accessible from here: http://headrush.typepad.com/

Timing is everything. If you don't get noticed once, post again at a different time. Correlated is an interesting idea. Have you considered hooking into the various social networks' APIs like Hunch, Twitter, FB, 4sq etc? There is a wealth of data to be explored. Make your signup even easier. Get rid of First name, ask me later when you get to know me better :-). For now, just let me in. I think you don't even need to explain why I have to sign up, just ask for email and pwd and click sign up. Reduce clutter. Also, you've got a branding and mission problem with "Help us discover surprising correlations". It's not about you, it's about me me me. Change it to "Discover surprising correlations." See http://headrush.typepad.com/

> Sometimes I look that the O'Reilly Head First or Wiley Dummies books and have trouble keeping track of the actual content I'm not sure I'd be inclined to put both series into the same category. Admittedly I haven't looked at the recent Head First publications and I'm not their target audience but from reading some of the theory behind the style on http://headrush.typepad.com/ (of "Creating Passionate Users" fame) the original motivation was definitely to communicate effectively. But either way, I suspect most non-technical people learn technical things in a very different way to technical people.

imho, you only need one reference : http://headrush.typepad.com/ Kathy Sierra is the goddess of techniques in bringing out user happiness. I would suggest you go back to the archives and read from the first blog post (the last posts are a distraction for your objective) In addition, if you have spare time to read "The Humane Interface" by Jef Raskin is an awesome read. edit: I understand you are looking for technical suggestions. Nevertheless, Kathy does talk about "kick ass" manuals.

I have a strong feeling you are giving things up at the moment when you feel you 'get it'. I guess the best advice will be to follow what Kathy said in her blog: http://headrush.typepad.com/creating_passionate_users/2006/03/how_to_b…

Not sure about books, but read Creating Passionate Users by Kathy Sierra and Dan Russell: http://headrush.typepad.com/

It's a quick summary of her discontinued blog (1), and, even though it's obvious in hindsight, it was fresh when it was first published and these principles are still ignored by a lot of companies. Go read it for a more exhaustive read. The blog was discontinued because of death threats proffered against her, I'm glad she's still preaching the same message :-). 1. Creating Passionate Users (http://headrush.typepad.com/ )

"Until someone spends a good bucket of cash on hiring UI talent to clean up the abortion that is the linux desktop, they'll still be lagging way behind OSX and Windows, both of which offer a superior and consistent experience." I'm not sure it's just a matter of money. As a UI guy myself, I can tell you that participation on OSS is not very conducive to the way I like design. Many/most of the powerful stakeholders in OSS projects tend to be hackers and power users and there's a bit too much of an emphasis on consensus (gotta keep the volunteer army happy). Great article on "the dumbness of crowds" here: http://headrush.typepad.com/creating_passionate_users/2007/01/the_dumb… I don't think they need to HIRE great UI talent. I think they need to put 'em in charge (a la Apple).

It's the effect Kathy Sierra described: http://headrush.typepad.com/photos/uncategorized/loveandhate_7.jpg

I think it's actually not a bad review of us if you filter the anger out. The only part of their post that actually stung was the bit about spellcheck, because it's not done. I wanted to have it finished for launch, but we felt it wasn't worth delaying for. But, we've rolled out two new versions so far today and we're gonna keep iterating fast. The post also reminds me of this classic Kathy Sierra graphic: http://headrush.typepad.com/photos/uncategorized/loveandhate_1.jpg These guys are talking about how much we suck, and around the world a blogger in France said "je dois dire que je suis seduis par la legerete du systeme." My French is poor, but I'm pretty sure that's "I must say I was seduced by the system's simplicity." This beats a collective shrug any day.

> Something always bothered me: why using "sketch-like hand-drawn pencil" like style for that kind of tools ? https://napkinlaf.sourceforge.net (one of my favorites from back in the day) > The Napkin Look & Feel is a pluggable Java look and feel that looks like it was scrawled on a napkin. You can use it to make provisional work actually look provisional, or just for fun. It is released under a BSD-style license > The idea is to try to develop a look and feel that can be used in Java applications that looks informal and provisional, yet be fully functional for development. Often when people see a GUI mock-up, or a complete GUI without full functionality, they assume that the code behind it is working. While this can be used to sleazy advantage, it can also convince people who ought to know better (like your managers) that you are already done when you have just barely begun, or when only parts are complete. No matter how much you speak to their rational side, the emotional response still says "Done!". Which after a while leads to a later question: "That was done months ago! What are they doing? Playing Quake?" A good article on this is Joel on Software's “The Iceberg Secret, Revealed”. ... and that's the place that I remember where to find this blog post: Don't make the Demo look Done - https://headrush.typepad.com/creating_passionate_users/2006/12/dont_ma… > When we show a work-in-progress (like an alpha release) to the public, press, a client, or boss...…

Yeah, agreed. But sharing the answers is exactly what is needed in companies/organisations. I've worked in companies where people hoard data and solutions to problems because it gives them power/influence/job-security. As for tracking commits, if the metric becomes a goal it becomes useless. People will game the system to have more commits, or worse, write a bot to break up their contributions into as many commits as they can get away with. One line can indeed be worth more than 100 if the line fixes helps fix some production bug. The biggest issue I have is people fixing things and not documenting the fix. Our metric of "success" for our shared knowledge is how many people outside of our company/org find our stuff useful. But this is not always possible in secretive or highly competitive industries. Kathy Sierra said "out teach your competitors". https://youtu.be/Dsryx3Ra5pU I totally agree with this mindset. https://headrush.typepad.com/creating_passionate_users/2005/09/you_can…

There’s a lot to like here. It reminds me of this great article I read about someone learning French by reading Harry Potter many years ago. I can’t find the first reference to it, but it seems a lot of people take this approach now and numerous articles have been written about this method. https://www.google.com/search?q=harry+potter+language+learning I was delighted to see that you even wrote about it yourselves on your blog. http://blog.readlang.com/2014/03/08/learn-languages-with-harry-potter.… Your content marketing is great, but you don’t do it enough. Good startups ship both code and marketing efforts on a regular basis…ideally, you should shoot for something going out weekly. It’s great that you shared your numbers, but snapshots are less helpful than data or information that shows momentum. When I’m trying to figure out if a company is doing well, numbers at a fixed point in time usually isn’t enough data to help me determine what the company looks like in the future. Early stage startups should try for at least 10%/weekly growth on your core metric. If you’re not hitting that, make sure you’re only spending time/energy on tasks to hit those numbers. Onboarding experience can use some work. There’s not enough guidance in the app to make me feel confident that I can use your site to learn a language on my own. For instance, when I first login, I had no idea what I was supposed to do first. http://cl.ly/image/253K373i1M2Y Even though I saw Upload Text…

I have users that spend nearly all of their free time on my site. One recently asked me to ban them so they could kick the habit. I asked him what part of the site was addictive and he said, "Basically everything." One of the key things, I think, is having lots of little things to do that you can get immediate feedback from. e.g. Check the forum for new replies, rate new content, see what kind of response their content is getting, etc. Kathy Sierra has a great article on this kind of thing: http://headrush.typepad.com/creating_passionate_users/2005/05/finegrai… Having strict moderation keeps the general quality high, which means it's usually worth checking back to see what's new. There are also multiple tracks of achievement, like hitting 500 comments, etc. so there is always a new badge within striking distance. You don't even need to have permanent badges. I have a list on the front page of the people who have submitted the most ratings that day. You don't get anything from being on the list, but people try to get to the top anyway. People like seeing their own names. Having a friendly community is also a big help, since it means that other users are a direct source of positive feedback. That's a bit harder to develop, though.