I guess this one should be filed under “Duh”. The use of personas is pretty common while defining user interfaces and is a valuable tool in defining use cases, usage scenarios.

It is a very logical next step as you move from the what to build (through Customer Development) to the actual building (Product Development). The KissMetrics blog has a an interesting post today on how you can use Personas to define your SEO Keywords. When figuring out which keywords to optimize for (and bid), it is especially important to speak the “user’s tongue”. Use of the right terminology is not only important within your product, but it is even more important to get it right, to make sure you get your positioning right. Personas help refine the SEO key terms and I think are also a great way to figure out which segment works well and which ones don’t.

While I have used some of the underlying techniques here, I have never actively thought of extending personas in the context of SEO. Overall, a great read. Check out the the entire blog post at the KissMetrics blog at How User Personas Can Improve Your SEO Strategy

This blog post (and graphic) drives home the how manufacturers are not updating Android frequently (my Top 10 peeve with the platform). A few of the stats really jump out at me: 

• 10 of 18 were at least two major versions behind well within their two year contract period.
• 15 of 18 don’t run Gingerbread, which shipped in December 2010.

Check out Android Orphans blog post to get all the information.

Thank you, Steve for inspiring me to create technology that “just works”

Thank you, Steve for proving to me that technology doesn’t have to be clunky, messy and awkward

Thank you, Steve for helping me appreciate beautiful design

You sure put a ding in the universe. I promise to Stay Hungry and Stay Foolish.

RIP

Knowing your users and the context in which they are using your app is a key aspect of developing useful and user-engaged mobile apps. This is especially important in a fragmented market (and a recurring theme in the frustrations of developers). The Hunch Blog has some interesting stats on broad demographics and patterns of iOS and Android users.

Here are a few that I found especially relevant to me:

• Stat: iOS users also travel frequently. (They are 50% more likely to have visited more than five countries and 55% more likely to have used their frequent flyer miles). 
  Takeaway: Optimize your app for slower data connections and Be sure to test your app in “Airplane mode”.

• Stat: iOS users are 26% more likely to  prefer spending their money and Android users are 29% more likely to prefer saving their money .
  Takeaway: Charge for your iOS apps even if it is just 99 cents

• Stat: iOS Users are early adopters, 50% more likely to first use the Internet before ’92 and 67% more likely to back up their computer constantly. 
  Takeaway: This is further confirmation that iCloud is going to have a lot of potential. You start with a user base that backs up constantly and then give them a very easy way for their data to be available everywhere. If you have iOS apps and weren’t already considering iCloud, you should.

Other Interesting stats:

• Android users are 10% more likely to be men and iOS users are 10% more likely to be women.
• iOS users are 50% more likely to text while driving. (Seriously!)
• Android users are 50% more likely to use Yahoo! Mail. (Maybe this bodes well for Yahoo’s upcoming Android phone)

As with any other broad based demographics, analyze it in the context of your users and be sure not to confuse correlation with causation.

Google just announced that it is acquiring Motorola Mobility (reportedly for $12.5 billion). This could be really good news for the end-to-end user experience in the Android platform. Google is also committing to keep the Android platform open. To quote the blog post :

This acquisition will not change our commitment to run Android as an open platform. Motorola will remain a licensee of Android and Android will remain open. We will run Motorola as a separate business.

I see this as Google taking a cautious step in the right direction in the whole debate on “Open” vs “Integrated”. It’d be great if Google can find the perfect balance, but if it can’t, I’d much rather it move towards Integrated rather than staying open.The mobile (and tablet) industry is converging on a single playbook for succeeding in the post-PC era. It involves hardware and software from the same vendor, providing a rich user experience. This is the third of the marriages of hardware + software vendor, following RIM’s purchase of QNX, HP’s purchase of Palm for WebOS.

This is really good news for users and developers alike. The one recurring theme in the Top 10 things that I hate about Android was fragmentation. Assuming that Google provides a strong baseline implementation, this will force other manufacturers to follow suit otherwise, over time, only Google’s phone will be selling.

This could also mean that Xoom 2 (or 3),  might be a good viable alternative to iPad 2. Right now, it doesn’t even come close, but with a converged OS for mobile and tablet (Ice-cream sandwich), and hardware from the same vendor, and with Android’s reach, we might very well be looking at 2012 as the year of the iPad competitor.

Good luck Google!

My observations on the pain points of developing for the Android platform, and suggested workarounds for those pain points are published today in TechRepublic. To summarize a few key points :

• Fragmentation is a nightmare and makes Android development a lot more complicated than it should be.
• There should be broad based agreements on what manufacturers and carriers can and cannot do to the platform, and the ecosystem should work together to provide a good, solid baseline that all developers can take or granted. It is in the best interest of the platform
• Google should act as a “good cop” in helping the platform as it matures.
• Patent related issues (aka “The Pink Elephant in the room”) need to be addressed sooner than later.

You can read the entire blog post at TechRepublic

And finally, I’d like to leave you with an image (From Engadget) that I think captures the gist of all things wrong about the platform. Think about it!

It is fun to watch a real life case-study of sorts playing out in the battle of the tablets. There is the iPad 2, selling users on the experience, the emotional tug of Facetime, about how doctors and teachers and kids love the iPad.

And then there are the Android tablets selling specs, processors, gigahertz, dual-core, Adobe Flash and a good dose of WTF!

Seth Clifford (thanks to Daring Fireball) notes how a Staples manager says that a lot of people are returning Galaxy Tabs. To quote from the blog.

“Oh, ok, because we’re selling a lot of these things, and we get a LOT of them back. People buy them thinking they’re getting rid of a laptop, and they all come back returning them.”

This is what happens when you sell on features and not on benefits. This is what happens if you muddy the positioning of your product. Looks like we are all going to have start thinking about 2012 as the year of the iPad competitor.

It has been a hectic past few months. We launched our mobile apps for the iPhone and the Android, and also launched our partnership with Nuance Communications to launch PaperPort Anywhere, the cloud-powered version of PaperPort software.

Rolling out the two mobile apps, a tablet app was exciting, to say the least. You can expect a lot more of my thoughts on those in the coming days (and fanboys always have an opinion, don’t they?!). Meanwhile, you are welcome to catch up on my guest blog posts :

• At KissMetrics blog, I write about how we increased conversion in OfficeDrop by listening to our customers, leads and effectively using those tools.
• My chat with Morgan Friberg of Atlassian about how we do Product Development at OfficeDrop and how Jira helps us develop markets that people love and use!

Stay tuned, and happy to be writing again!

A great way to be friendly to your customers is to project some personality in your apps (and hopefully it reflects your company’s true personality). 

Google Doodles are pretty popular and it is a pretty good proof that you can show off stuff, even though there isn’t much in your “home page”.

I found a couple of nice examples this week that I thought I would share.

The first is from MailChimp. On May 4th, their login page had been updated to reflect “Star wars day”, aka, May the 4th be with you.

The other example I found was for the release notes for the Yelp iPhone App (And yes, you can judge me by the fact that I read release notes of the apps I use)

Both are nice examples that bring a smile to your customer’s face when they come across them. Well done. How do you make your apps have a personality?

A couple of weeks back my trusted (rusted?) 3 year old MacBook pro wouldn’t boot. By the sounds of it, it was pretty obvious that it wasn’t something I could fix / hack, so I took it to the local Apple store. I had put on my “I am a Mac” T-shirt hoping to score some brownie points at the genius bar.

A quick diagnosis at the genius bar showed that the motherboard had likely conked. So it had to shipped to their depot to have it replaced. The extended apple care warranty had just expired, but the “genius” at the genius bar was gracious enough to “let it slide” and told me he would take care of it without charging anything. Wow!! That’s probably a good $300 worth of repairs.

I was supposed to have received my machine back in 5 to 7 business days, but lo and behold, I got a call in just 2 days saying my machine was ready. Woot. Awesome Apple. But wait, there is more. Not only was the logic board replaced, Apple had also replaced the optical drive and two fans, since they were not in “good condition”. What a nice gesture. But wait, there is even more!

One of the rubber pads at the bottom of the MacBook had fallen off. I was curious what they had done about it and sure enough all four of them were replaced. I mean, who cares about the rubber pads at the bottom, except of course the user. You don’t even have to be a fanboy like me, to be impressed by such attention to detail.

I was happy enough when Apple fixed my machine for free, even though it was out of warranty. But such attention to detail truly delights your customers. It demonstrates empathy, and it shows your customer that you care about them.

Fixing something with a bunch of goodies makes your customers happy. Going above and beyond what is needed and paying attention to detail delights them enough to write a blog post about it and tell the story to everyone in their inner circle of friends and colleagues.

Are you delighting your customers?