Let Go and Haul: My biggest Tik Tok takeaway and Video Night!
Week 33, 2018 – Brooklyn
Journey: where we’re at
This week was another jam packed one. We got accepted into the NVIDIA Inception program (yay GPU discounts!), shipped an update to the alpha, and did a ton of user research. Combined with our own intuition, we came away from it with some pretty deep product insights. Feels like we're on the verge of something different and more interesting from where we started.
Sharing a few quick insights from conversations I had about research over the week:
Journal: what I learned
Running user experiments is critical but you also need to be in touch enough with yourself to have your own intuition. You need both. You can't create in a vacuum and you can't test your way to success. This isn't usability testing I'm talking about (like oh I didn't see that button) that’s for much later on. (Sure the little stuff will come up and you can throw it on the backlog, but that’s not what’s interesting). At the point we’re at, the stuff I’m looking for are the deeper product insights. Often those have more to do with what people don’t say than what they do say. They’re elusive to tease out and you have to stay curious to read between the lines and find them.
I was at an investor dinner on Tuesday night after running user observation all afternoon, and one of the guests was very curious about how we do it and shared a bunch of his past mistakes in this area (mostly not doing enough of it). It made me realize that while there's a million and one blog posts written on this topic, maybe a no baloney fast and scrappy start up guide would be helpful? It's really easy if you know how, and what I can learn from five people in an afternoon is almost always a catalyst for something better than what I've previously designed. Maybe I should do an email about that one week? Y/N?
I had lunch with my friend Daniel today and talked about what I’d been up to this week. Part way through the conversation, he boiled it down to (paraphrasing here): you’re either doing a tech experiment or user experiments to drive up your certainty. Such a simple way of looking at it. Yep, that's pretty much what it comes down to: is it going to work and are they going to like it?
Related to all this, Tik Tok launched in the US on August 1st. Not the Ke$ha song, Tik Tok (Douyin) is the largest short form video platform today. Owned by Toutaio (who previously bought Musical.ly, remember that?) they built what is kinda of like a Musical.ly clone, launched it in Asia as Tik Tok, it became the #1 downloaded app in the app store in Q1 and this month it ‘replaced’ Musical.ly in the American market. I’m curious to see what the point of this rebrand is and what it may (or may not) change about the community. Right now it has a very specific community which is pretty much middle school vibes, or as one college junior I was interviewing put it, “cringe-y”. I’ve been pretending to be a teen on the platform (or something lol) making pole dancing videos in my kitchen (true story), and I gotta say those filters you can see in cam are p sweet (like the beauty brush one? Hello!) They instantly give you more confidence to perform.
Jams: what I’m into
On Friday we had Video Night, which I think is about to become a TRASH tradition. We had some friends join us which was lovelyl, and if you want to come next time to sit around and drink beers, watch YouTube and discuss interesting videos, come join is. Here's what we watched, enjoy!
EBN - Electronic Behavior Control System
GIRL TALK - ALL DAY (MUSIC VIDEO) PART 1 - "Oh No"
Cassius, Pharell Williams - Go Up ft. Cat Power
Kris Kross: Make My Video Demo
A Tribe Called Quest - Scenario
Stranger Things - 8 Bit Cinema
Bounce (ft. Timothy Delaghetto)
The Brothers Cosplay at katsucon 2018 (wizards)
doggo meets water doggo and be frens
Jerk It Out by Caesars but different
Dog Won't Listen To Owner (Funny Subtitle Version)
A$AP Rocky - Praise The Lord (Da Shine) ft. Skepta
A$AP Rocky - A$AP Forever ft. Moby
A$AP Rocky - L$D (LOVE x $EX x DREAMS)
Watsky w/ Invisible Inc- Pink Lemonade [x Infinity]
Dizzee Rascal - Bassline Junkie
Michael Kiwanuka - One More Night
Bonobo- No Reason (ft. Nick Murphy)
Koyaanisqatsi Trailer (Criterion)