Presented at How to Build Great Products: Insights on October 1st 2010, in NYC Blog post at http://designnotes.info/?p=3092

1. Scaling Personalities
ADAPTION, WHITE LABELS AND tHE DIGITAL ECOSYSTEM
How to Build Great Products: Insights
@michaelsurtees
OCTOBER 1ST, 2010
@michaelsurtees

2. INTro
Hello
Currently at Behavior
Previously Design Director at Daylife* from
December 2007 to March 2010
Publisher of the blog DesignNotes.info
* it should be noted that the work with Daylife was built with a team of 20+ people @michaelsurtees

3. intro
Breakdown
@michaelsurtees

4. Definitions
white Labels
User has a seamless experience
User doesn’t even realize that parts of the site might have
been designed from a third party
Applying new systems to their own product that they
otherwise couldn’t have created themselves
Automation of systems to save resources to work on
more editorially driven areas
@michaelsurtees

5. Definitions
Digital Ecosystem
Screen agnostic—could be laptop, mobile device, tablet,
TV or anything else that can be viewed and edited today
Data works and acts differently depending on the device
it is being viewed on
Time and location can influence info too
@michaelsurtees

6. Definitions
Adaption
Transferring and shifting behavior
Information moving from traditional streams and
screens to other curated models of settings
Awareness both of the device and the person
using the technology
Creating hooks to be aware of changes and expectations
@michaelsurtees

7. Daylife
The elements
There’s a lot of integrated modules working together
@michaelsurtees

8. Daylife
The Site
@michaelsurtees

9. Daylife
Topic Page
@michaelsurtees

10. Daylife
using the editing tool
Making it easy to create custom verticals based on
chosen sources, topics and custom css.
@michaelsurtees

11. Daylife
Travel Life
@michaelsurtees

12. Daylife
#walkingtoworktoday
@michaelsurtees

13. Daylife
Smart Gallery flow
Starts as a slide show—either as main anchor or
related images on a side rail
Images are hosted
Detail images have related galleries attached to
them that are created automatically
Almost infinite number of new pages can be viewed
@michaelsurtees

14. Daylife
Smart Galleries
@michaelsurtees

15. process
Agile & Iteration
Design and build just enough, test it any
way possible
Observe what works and what doesn’t, keep
building after that
Work in advance, loop back for other things
Keep it open and allow for a lot of feedback
@michaelsurtees

16. Process
Start with 1 atomic unit,
build around it
Look at the elements of the story, decide what’s
the best one and build around it
@michaelsurtees

17. Process
Road map
There’s no direct way from A to B
@michaelsurtees

18. Observations
Brands
Any brand that pushes information like tweets,
photos, news and videos need a place to
display all of it
@michaelsurtees

19. Observations
Structures & Systems
Experiment with how the same info can be
released in different contexts.
Create content buckets for curating & story telling
that are compelling.
Define info like sources, how people will
find it, and how will it be shared
Make it easy for others to build off of
@michaelsurtees

20. Observations
Treating Info like water
Info being pushed online is going to be seen through
a lot of different contexts
Headline and photo—each could be emphasized
differently depending on how someone expects
to see it
As long as every element can flow to another related
element the likelihood of the info being seen and
applied increases
@michaelsurtees

21. Observations
Lessons
1. Use the product yourself
2. Road maps should have a strategy to cannibalize
your own product
3. Imagine a world without you being able to use your
product, what would you use to do the same task and
ask yourself if the experience would be better or worse
4. Release something every three weeks
5. Awareness is important because if you don’t know
when to adjust things you will cease to exist
@michaelsurtees