Developing Perspective

00:00:00 ◼   ► Hello and welcome to Developing Perspective.

00:00:02 ◼   ► Developing Perspective is a podcast discussing news of notes in iOS development, Apple, and

00:00:06 ◼   ► the like.

00:00:07 ◼   ► I'm your host, David Smith.

00:00:08 ◼   ► I'm an independent iOS developer based in Herndon, Virginia.

00:00:11 ◼   ► This is show number 215, and your date is Friday, April 17th.

00:00:15 ◼   ► Developing Perspective is never longer than 15 minutes, so let's get started.

00:00:19 ◼   ► All right, so I believe before the last episode, I was talking about preorders and all that

00:00:25 ◼   ► stuff with the Apple Watch, which I'm glad to report was successful for me, you know,

00:00:29 ◼   ► setting up a few minutes before 3am for me and sitting there with my phone trying to

00:00:35 ◼   ► get things ordered in the wee hours.

00:00:37 ◼   ► It worked.

00:00:38 ◼   ► I got two phones, one for myself, one for my wife.

00:00:41 ◼   ► My phone just seems to like to share this and people like to ask so I'm just going to

00:00:46 ◼   ► tell everybody I got both were sports, I got hers in the pink and I got mine in what I'm

00:00:52 ◼   ► going to start referring to as underscore blue because the blue shade that the sport

00:00:57 ◼   ► comes in is almost exactly like the branded color that I use all over the place.

00:01:01 ◼   ► You know, on the title bar for my website, in the teacup for the developing perspective,

00:01:07 ◼   ► it's very much in that same kind of blue. So it's underscore blue, and so that's when

00:01:10 ◼   ► I'm going to start calling it. And I hope it catches on.

00:01:13 ◼   ► But that's not what I'm going to be talking about for most of the day. I'm certainly excited

00:01:16 ◼   ► that in about a week I'll hopefully be having my own Apple Watch and can be starting to

00:01:19 ◼   ► use it and play with it in a more ongoing basis.

00:01:22 ◼   ► Today, what I wanted to talk about is what I'm going to call "insidious features."

00:01:28 ◼   ► And that's kind of a negative name, maybe, but for something that is really, really cool

00:01:33 ◼   ► and something that I've started to notice and put a name to myself and start to think

00:01:37 ◼   ► about how I can incorporate that more into what I do.

00:01:44 ◼   ► And so I'm going to start off by talking about two examples and then just kind of speak about

00:01:48 ◼   ► it more generally.

00:01:49 ◼   ► So when I say an insidious feature, what I'm going to be talking about is a feature of

00:01:54 ◼   ► something in a software application that kind of rewires your brain and creates this, changes

00:02:02 ◼   ► how you expect something to happen in such a fundamental way that anything else just

00:02:09 ◼   ► like feels wrong to you.

00:02:13 ◼   ► And the best example I have of this is smart speed, which is a feature that's most widely

00:02:21 ◼   ► known to exist in Marco Arment's Overcast podcast client.

00:02:26 ◼   ► It exists in a few other applications as well, but it's the concept of when you are playing

00:02:30 ◼   ► a podcast, the silences between words.

00:02:34 ◼   ► So if you're listening to this in Overcast, which the vast majority of you are, I just

00:02:39 ◼   ► paused for a minute.

00:02:40 ◼   ► You probably didn't actually notice as much.

00:02:42 ◼   ► I paused for about three seconds in between those two words and it probably compressed

00:02:46 ◼   ► it down if you have it turned on, which you probably should.

00:02:49 ◼   ► It compressed it down so it was a bit shorter, which is a really, really ingenious way of

00:02:55 ◼   ► compressing the time it takes to listen to a podcast in a way that doesn't have quite

00:03:00 ◼   ► as dramatic an effect on the sound of it.

00:03:07 ◼   ► I listen to podcasts very quickly.

00:03:09 ◼   ► For some reason, my brain is wired

00:03:11 ◼   ► to be able to process audio information extremely fast.

00:03:13 ◼   ► I often listen to full-on 2x plus smart speed kind of thing.

00:03:18 ◼   ► And I'm understanding everything they're saying.

00:03:20 ◼   ► I'm following along.

00:03:21 ◼   ► For some reason, I'm just wired that way.

00:03:22 ◼   ► I can't read very well.

00:03:24 ◼   ► Like, I'm a really, really, really slow reader.

00:03:26 ◼   ► But I can listen to things really quickly.

00:03:28 ◼   ► So that's just who I am.

00:03:32 ◼   ► But the funny thing about smart speed

00:03:34 ◼   ► is that if you ever start using it-- and this is, of course,

00:03:38 ◼   ► funny as someone who has a podcast client that I use primarily, you know, I have my

00:03:41 ◼   ► own called Pod Wrangler that I primarily use, but I do use Smart Speed. I'm a good friend

00:03:45 ◼   ► of Mark Armit and I beta tested his overcast for him. And so I started to use it. And the

00:03:51 ◼   ► more you start to use a feature like that, whenever you go back to something that doesn't

00:03:55 ◼   ► have it, it's like you have this weird lingering thing in the back of your mind that's been

00:03:59 ◼   ► like, I'm wasting time, I'm wasting time. I could be listening to this two times faster

00:04:04 ◼   ► or 10% faster, and it would sound just the same.

00:04:09 ◼   ► And it kind of breaks your head in that way.

00:04:11 ◼   ► Like, it has this incredible draw to it

00:04:16 ◼   ► that is really hard to shake.

00:04:18 ◼   ► That's what I mean by an insidious feature.

00:04:20 ◼   ► If you can think of something in your application

00:04:22 ◼   ► that once someone gets used to it,

00:04:25 ◼   ► they really can't-- they don't want to go somewhere else.

00:04:30 ◼   ► Another example of something like this is Tweetbot.

00:04:32 ◼   ► and its mute filters, and specifically its regular

00:04:36 ◼   ► expression-based muting, which is really, really clever

00:04:39 ◼   ► and really, really powerful.

00:04:41 ◼   ► And it's something that, if I ever

00:04:43 ◼   ► use something that isn't Tweetbot at this point--

00:04:46 ◼   ► so if I use like Twitterific or the official Twitter client

00:04:49 ◼   ► or something like that-- Twitter is totally broken for me

00:04:54 ◼   ► in a lot of ways, because a lot of what I do to try and pare

00:04:58 ◼   ► down the signal-- make the signal to noise ratio better

00:05:02 ◼   ► in for Twitter for me is a whole bunch of somewhat complicated and nuanced muting filters

00:05:08 ◼   ► that I try to have a bunch of things that try and prune down what it is I see to be

00:05:12 ◼   ► things that I really want to see and are interested in seeing.

00:05:17 ◼   ► And so now if I go to an application that doesn't have that, it feels like something's

00:05:21 ◼   ► broken.

00:05:22 ◼   ► Like Twitter feels broken to me if I can't do the things that Tweetbot does.

00:05:27 ◼   ► And so I think these are two examples of what I'm going to call insidious features.

00:05:32 ◼   ► that get in your brain and break, make every other application feel that don't have them

00:05:37 ◼   ► feel broken.

00:05:38 ◼   ► And while I know some of you are probably thinking, well, that's just lock-in, right?

00:05:42 ◼   ► That's like the classic thing in business where a lot of what businesses try and do

00:05:46 ◼   ► is lock their customers in to their particular platform, their service, their application,

00:05:51 ◼   ► whatever it is.

00:05:52 ◼   ► You know, it's part of the whole thing where, you know, like Microsoft Word document format

00:05:56 ◼   ► and how compatible that is with other things.

00:05:59 ◼   ► And if you get a lot of people who

00:06:00 ◼   ► are exchanging documents in Microsoft Doc, the .x format,

00:06:09 ◼   ► it becomes tricky if you don't have that software

00:06:11 ◼   ► to interact with those people.

00:06:13 ◼   ► And so it has this lock-in effect.

00:06:14 ◼   ► And if you want to move to something else,

00:06:16 ◼   ► but all your old documents are still in that, it's hard to.

00:06:19 ◼   ► That's like classic lock-in.

00:06:21 ◼   ► Or like a software as a service platform

00:06:23 ◼   ► that kind of holds your data hostage,

00:06:26 ◼   ► that you can't get your data out of it very easily,

00:06:28 ◼   ► So you have to keep paying for it if you want to be able to look at your historical data.

00:06:32 ◼   ► Things like that.

00:06:33 ◼   ► Very classic.

00:06:34 ◼   ► But that type of lock-in, I think, is like a strong-armed lock-in.

00:06:39 ◼   ► It's this thing where you're creating a situation where somebody, perhaps against their own

00:06:46 ◼   ► free will in some ways, has to keep using your product because you've architected things

00:06:51 ◼   ► in such a way that if they don't, something bad happens to them.

00:06:57 ◼   ► kind of slimy, right?

00:07:00 ◼   ► It might be effective.

00:07:01 ◼   ► There are certainly instances where it just happens naturally.

00:07:04 ◼   ► But those are the things, whenever you see them, that kind of feel shady, that aren't

00:07:08 ◼   ► great for customers, because it's kind of an adversarial situation.

00:07:18 ◼   ► Insidious features-- and this is the distinction that I've been trying to work on as I think

00:07:21 ◼   ► about planning features forward into my applications are things that are hopefully of slightly

00:07:28 ◼   ► more positive view on that, that still have the same kind of positive effects that when

00:07:34 ◼   ► I use Pod Wrangler right now to listen to a podcast, it feels weird to me because I'm

00:07:40 ◼   ► like, "Oh, I could have listened to 10% more."

00:07:43 ◼   ► This morning, I just got back, I went out for an hour-long walk.

00:07:46 ◼   ► I could have listened to six more minutes of podcasts, which maybe isn't that important,

00:07:50 ◼   ► maybe isn't that significant, but it's something that sticks in my head that I was missing

00:07:55 ◼   ► out on. And that feeling is really powerful. It creates a loyalty and an affinity for something

00:08:04 ◼   ► that is hard to beat. And so that's something that I really want to think about as striving

00:08:10 ◼   ► towards in my own products. You know, I think you can easily get trapped though in trying

00:08:16 ◼   ► to think of these same things as power user features.

00:08:21 ◼   ► It's like, well, I'm going to make these really complicated

00:08:23 ◼   ► things that you can arrange and set up that just add complexity

00:08:30 ◼   ► but aren't really actually improving your user's

00:08:32 ◼   ► experience with your application.

00:08:33 ◼   ► And that's the danger.

00:08:34 ◼   ► You don't want to go down that road.

00:08:36 ◼   ► I see this a little bit in something like--

00:08:38 ◼   ► I use OmniFocus as my to-do list manager.

00:08:41 ◼   ► And the reason I use OmniFocus as my to-do list manager

00:08:43 ◼   ► has nothing to do with all of the tremendously complicated

00:08:46 ◼   ► things that it can do. It does everything, and I don't want it to do everything. In fact,

00:08:51 ◼   ► I use it in such a way that I turn off almost all the parts of it. Except the thing that

00:08:56 ◼   ► it does that I love is if you copy/paste a collection of newline delimited sentences.

00:09:05 ◼   ► Someone sends me an email with like three, "Here are the three things that are broken

00:09:09 ◼   ► in this app." I can copy/paste that list, and I can paste it into OmniFocus, and each

00:09:13 ◼   ► new line separated thing gets its own task.

00:09:17 ◼   ► It's really, really simple.

00:09:18 ◼   ► It's a really subtle feature.

00:09:19 ◼   ► But most to-do list apps, when you paste something like that

00:09:21 ◼   ► in, it takes all of the text and puts it into one item.

00:09:25 ◼   ► But that one feature was enough to make it

00:09:27 ◼   ► that every other application feels broken to me,

00:09:30 ◼   ► because OmniFocus does it this way.

00:09:32 ◼   ► And those features are so powerful.

00:09:36 ◼   ► Like, it is something that-- now that I've

00:09:38 ◼   ► seen that OmniFocus can do that as another example,

00:09:41 ◼   ► I can't use anything else because it

00:09:43 ◼   ► would feel broken to me.

00:09:44 ◼   ► It would feel really weird that when I do this,

00:09:47 ◼   ► the unexpected thing happens.

00:09:50 ◼   ► And so I'm trying to think about my other applications.

00:09:54 ◼   ► What are things that I can do to do that?

00:09:57 ◼   ► And I don't have a great answer at this point.

00:09:59 ◼   ► Like, this isn't one of these, here's the problem

00:10:02 ◼   ► and here's my answer.

00:10:03 ◼   ► But it is something that I've started

00:10:04 ◼   ► to try and think more and more about because I think

00:10:08 ◼   ► the more insidious features, the more things

00:10:10 ◼   ► that you can do that kind of rewire your users' brains

00:10:13 ◼   ► to expect something delightful from you

00:10:16 ◼   ► and will notice it overtly when it isn't there

00:10:20 ◼   ► in another product or when they're not using your product.

00:10:23 ◼   ► That's probably the kind of thing

00:10:26 ◼   ► that is a good positive thing for your applications.

00:10:31 ◼   ► And in some ways, the closest things I have to this--

00:10:34 ◼   ► this is just based on the feedback I get--

00:10:36 ◼   ► is in my pedometer app, Pedometer++,

00:10:40 ◼   ► where I have a thing where when you hit 10,000 steps--

00:10:44 ◼   ► or your goal, actually.

00:10:45 ◼   ► For most, the default goal is 10,000.

00:10:46 ◼   ► But you can set the goal to whatever you want.

00:10:48 ◼   ► But when you hit your goal, and you open the application

00:10:51 ◼   ► for the first time after that, the app

00:10:54 ◼   ► will shower you with confetti.

00:10:56 ◼   ► Like confetti, digital confetti, pours out

00:10:59 ◼   ► of the nav bar of the application and comes down.

00:11:02 ◼   ► And that's really cool.

00:11:03 ◼   ► And I've heard from a lot of people that that silly,

00:11:06 ◼   ► simple thing is what is motivating them to be more active.

00:11:12 ◼   ► That there is this weird, you know, the reinforcement and reward of that little silly, like, kind

00:11:18 ◼   ► of, you know, very whimsical thing that I just decided one day, huh, I wonder what,

00:11:22 ◼   ► you know, if I could code it up so that, you know, these little particle system comes out

00:11:26 ◼   ► of the nav bar and confetti falls down, is enough that to really draw people in.

00:11:31 ◼   ► And so an application that doesn't

00:11:32 ◼   ► have that type of just silly, whimsical reinforcer

00:11:37 ◼   ► may not work for them.

00:11:39 ◼   ► And that's just kind of cool.

00:11:40 ◼   ► I like these types of touches in applications

00:11:43 ◼   ► that are relatively simple, or at least in concept,

00:11:46 ◼   ► not necessarily implementation, but relatively simple details

00:11:49 ◼   ► that just draw your users in and really make them want to use it.

00:11:53 ◼   ► And so I just wanted to mention that.

00:11:55 ◼   ► It was something I've been thinking about a lot this week.

00:11:57 ◼   ► As I'm doing a lot of feature planning,

00:11:59 ◼   ► now that the watch is out, I'm thinking about,

00:12:01 ◼   ► What am I going to do for the next basically two months

00:12:04 ◼   ► between now and WWDC, where I have a couple months to work

00:12:09 ◼   ► on a new project or some updates to old projects

00:12:11 ◼   ► and this kind of thing.

00:12:12 ◼   ► And so I've been thinking about what

00:12:13 ◼   ► are the kind of little insidious touches

00:12:16 ◼   ► that I can add to my applications

00:12:17 ◼   ► to make them really, really sticky,

00:12:19 ◼   ► really get in people's heads and make them want to use it.

00:12:22 ◼   ► And so that's what I'm thinking about.

00:12:26 ◼   ► And actually just mentioning about WWDC,

00:12:28 ◼   ► probably worth saying.

00:12:29 ◼   ► I of course put in my name for the WWDC raffle.

00:12:34 ◼   ► We'll see how that goes.

00:12:35 ◼   ► As I'm recording, I have applications

00:12:37 ◼   ► to be entered into the WWDC lottery.

00:12:40 ◼   ► It closes in a few hours.

00:12:42 ◼   ► So if you haven't and you're listening to this

00:12:44 ◼   ► and you somehow still have time, go for it.

00:12:47 ◼   ► Otherwise, you may be a bit out of time.

00:12:49 ◼   ► I'm really glad how they're doing it.

00:12:50 ◼   ► It seems to be very well thought out.

00:12:52 ◼   ► It's a lottery system again, and they're

00:12:53 ◼   ► charging your credit card right away,

00:12:55 ◼   ► so you can't enter in multiple times, which

00:12:58 ◼   ► It's a much better system than what they had last year where you could have entered as

00:13:02 ◼   ► many times as you wanted and then just choose which one if you happen to win.

00:13:05 ◼   ► I think that's a big thumbs up.

00:13:07 ◼   ► Either way, I'm going to be in San Francisco that week.

00:13:10 ◼   ► I've already booked my travel and everything.

00:13:12 ◼   ► I'll be there one way or the other, whether I have a ticket, if I don't.

00:13:16 ◼   ► And so if you are going to be in town, certainly something to keep in mind.

00:13:20 ◼   ► I'd love to meet you.

00:13:21 ◼   ► I'd love to say hi.

00:13:22 ◼   ► It's always interesting to talk to people who listen to the show.

00:13:25 ◼   ► But otherwise, I hope you have a great week.

00:13:28 ◼   ► and I will talk to you next week. Bye.