ZURBlog is where we discuss product design, business and strategy.

Success is the ability to go from failure to failure without losing your enthusiasm.

Winston Churchill said that. He's quoted time and time again when it comes to failure. Churchill certainly knew about failure, having weathered his country through its darkest hours to a hard-earned victory. But Churchill’s quote has always had people thinking about what it means to fail and whether he was talking about complete failure or those smaller failures that help us win in the end. And the concept of failure is something that many startups struggle with.

See there’s a popular perception that once a startup crashes and burns, its founders will quickly raise from the ashes and make a comeback like Elvis from the dead. In other words, as Google Ventures partner Joe Kraus says, entrepreneurs tend to think that they learn more from the failure of their companies than if it they were ultimately successful. But that’s not the case, Joe argues.

Joe doesn’t quote Churchill, but a 2008 HBR study instead. And the numbers are telling. The success rate for first-time, venture-backed entrepreneurs is 18%. If they fail, their rate of success jumps up by only 2% — to 20%. But if entrepreneurs win in their first venture, their chances of success in their next one is 30%.

For Joe, we learn more from our successes than our failures, that those who've won before are likely to win again. In other words, when you win, you’ve learned what it takes to win. When you lose, you’ve only learned that your choices were wrong. OK, that’s probably a little too simplistic, but Joe is onto something when it comes to seeking failure.

We’re Not Seeking Failure, We're Seeking Wins

We shouldn’t be seeking failure, but, at ZURB, we accept that it’s part of what we do. All of us, at some point, are going to fail. Failure, however, is not an excuse to throw up our hands and admit complete defeat, give up and quit entirely.

Sure, there are train wrecks behind every success. Even Steve Jobs had a flop or two. But those flops didn’t cause Jobs to give up on Apple as a whole. When NeXT failed, Steve didn’t give up on the software, which eventually became the basis of the MacOS.

Rovio didn't give up on itself even though it had 52 failures before hitting gold with Angry Birds. All those little failures added up into one big success.

Same with us. When we tried to get into the stock photo business about six years ago, making it a “business within the business,” it didn’t mesh well with our mission — to help people design better products for people and faster. We worked hard for three years to make it work, people were interested, but it wasn’t building any momentum for us. So we made the call to shut it down. However, we didn't call it quits on ZURB and applied what we learned to the larger business.

In so many words, we're in it for the win, not the loses, even if we hit a foul ball every now and then. We want to win and keep winning. That’s what fail fast is all about and that’s what Churchill was really talking about.

Last week, we were excited here at ZURB to distribute new iPads to every member of the ZURB team: design, operations, marketing and engineering — even our interns. There's plenty of companies in Silicon Valley that kit their employees out with nice gear, but this wasn't just about everyone having shiny toys (though it doesn't hurt).

Multi-Device is the Future

You've probably noticed that it's not just laptops and desktops people are using these days. Other classes of device, like smartphones or tablets or eReaders (etc, etc) are beginning to dominate how people access the Web, or talk to each other, or capture and share things in their life.

We believe that, given this inevitable shift toward more disparate devices, it's important to put more of our eggs in that basket. That's why we developed Foundation, our responsive framework for developing sites and apps for any device. That's why when we relaunched ZURB.com we did so in a way that worked across devices, and it's why we develop sites and apps for our clients responsively.

We Need Multi-Device Design Literacy

There's plenty of reasons to have iPads in an office. We use them for QA, we can use them to present work to clients (or each other) ... but the biggest reason we kitted out each and every ZURBian with an iPad was to foster an environment of multi-device design literacy.

It's not just our designers who need to understand how Design works in a multi-device world. Our marketing team needs to be immersed in these devices so they can talk about it. Our engineering team needs to know about them so they can build new apps and services to cater to it. Our operations team needs to understand the multi-device world so they can plan for it, and work with it, and find new talent to drive it. We all have iPads because each and every member of our team needs to intuitively understand the multi-device world (we all have smartphones, too) and understand what it means for our business and our industry.

The Practical Effect

Here's an example of how this is already helping our team. The new iPads, with their retina displays, make for a great reading and browsing experience. We also recently relaunched ZURB.com with a visually rich design. However: we did almost nothing to cater to retina displays (it didn't even exist when we started the redesign). No high-resolution imagery, no consideration for the improved readability when it came to font sizes and the like.

We could simply serve up giant images and scale them down for everyone else, but something else the iPad teaches you is that while the resolution might be enormous, often the bandwidth is not. Even on 4G LTE Retina-sized background images are a seriously large file load. We're still working on this problem, but without team-wide exposure to this we might not have even bothered and we have to bother. These devices aren't going away, and they're not going to get less capable.

That's a technical example, but the effect is spreading already. When we evaluate new services to drive operations, we consider whether they work on different devices. We're already planning for TVs with connected AppleTVs in our breakout rooms, because our iPads can present directly on them without messing with cables. And so on.

Consider how immersed you are in a multi-device world. Smartphones, tablets, notebooks, eReaders, glasses (hehe), TVs, cars ... to work on what we all work on we need to understand these things.

Customer service is a core part of ZURB’s day-to-day operations. We spend a lot of hours ensuring that each of our customers can take full advantage of the apps that they invest in.

In the most traditional sense, customer service is actually quite basic. A customer has a question, gets in contact with the company and gets their question answered. Perhaps it’s not always this easy, but at its core, it’s a transactional exchange of information for a time.

When it comes to ZURB (and product design), however, customer service is a completely different animal. No longer is it just a transaction — it has to be a fruitful conversation. A customer service advocate must not just answer the questions of the customer, but understand the bigger picture about how the issue translates to the broader business goals.

Customer inquiries differ greatly, but we gather valuable information from every interaction that helps shape our business. On the most basic level, bug reports turn into bug fixes. Two other key insights include curated feedback that lead to gut reactions on product, as well as feedback that helps shape our long-term business strategy.

How Customer Feedback Helped Us

Let’s look at two examples about how our customer feedback helped contribute to change in one of our products, Notable.

Louis, our customer service advocate, noticed early on in Notable’s lifecycle that several customers were confusing Workspaces with standard Notable posts. The recurring issue was confusion between how posts and Workspaces differed given they were all integrated into a single dashboard.

Understanding this feedback, we separated Workspaces into a new right-hand nav, keeping only Notable posts in the upper navigation bar. While customers continued to have some questions about Workspaces functionality, the design change clarified how users should view posts and Workspaces as separate entities. Take a look on the image below (click for a larger picture):

We integrated CSV export functionality into Notable results because of customer feedback as well. Several customers requested an export option so they could store their Notable data, so we developed a small browser hack to meet their needs. By simply adding .csv to the end of the HTML link of the Notable results, a user could now download results for offline use.

Through identifying CSV exporting requests as a trend in customer interactions, we developed a solution that would fill that common user ask. Collectively, user feedback led to a gut feeling, which resulted in making this change for the users. It’s just another example of how listening can have a positive impact on your product.

It’s important to not just address customer needs, but gather feedback through fruitful conversations with our customers. Through this, we build better products that help people design faster and better than before. Don’t underestimate the value of customer interactions in helping your business meet and exceed business objectives.

How does your organization think about customer service?

Alina highlighted something the other day that caught the attention of a few people — that part of our culture is to encourage our teammates to get crazy and throw out some pretty wild ideas, even if it means failure. She rightfully called it opportunity and outlined three good reasons why we do it:

1. To get bad ideas out of our system
2. To make sure no creative stone is unturned
3. And, occasionally, to gauge the customer’s wild side

But there’s also another reason we do it — to learn and to do so quickly so that we can move on. We call it “fail fast.” When you enable people to take risk, try things and fail, they learn faster and their productivity skyrockets. Think of it as autonomy to fail by not putting up a barrier that inhibits employees. In a way, it pushes them to master their craft.

Truth be told, everyone of us has failed at some point. Recently, I took a chance and pushed the envelope on some copy for our website, taking a more hard news slant. After having a spirited debate over the content with a fellow ZURBIan, I realized that I hadn’t just pushed the envelope — I'd blown it apart. But I learned how to better balance my journalistic instincts with the needs of the business. I learned to find the happy medium. That’s not to say I won’t take another risk again. But I learned from this one.

Productive Failure

Don't get us wrong, it’s not that we’re seeking failure. It’s what Eric Ries calls productive failure, where you learn something really important from it. Take Josh Levy and Ross Cohen, BeenVerified’s co-founders. They burned through $550,000 in 11 months because they failed to figure out who would actually use their product.

Sure that’s a hard lesson to learn and they could’ve prevented it by doing some user testing and getting feedback as early as possible. But hindsight is 20/20. The important thing is that Levy and Ross learned to not waste time developing a product without a customer. Now that’s a productive failure and the duo were able to eventually turn BeenVerified into a success (it made $11 million last year).

Rewarding Failure or Fostering Success

To go back for a second to Eric. He was recently asked at the Wired Business Conference if startups were being rewarded too much for failure. His answer:

We’re rewarding failure not enough.

Eric’s got a point, but we’d add that it’s not that we’re only rewarding failure. We’re actually fostering success. Failure is the means by which we get there and get there at breakneck speeds.

There’s a lot of talk about applying the scientific method to entrepreneurism. It’s at the heart of Eric Ries’ Lean Startup, which he talks about recently at the Wired Business Conference. But exactly how do you exactly apply it to a product?

First, let's take a look at what Eric is really talking about. He's really advocating learning. To learn as much about your products as possible, to learn whether or not there is, in fact, a customer at the other end willing to pay for it. After all, he learned the hard way the damage not figuring out who your users are can cause. His early startup crashed and burned because he didn't figure out who would use and pay for his product. He says building a robust product and having a splashy launch could sink your startup if there isn't a customer to pay for it. Which is why he urges startups to apply the scientific method and view learning as a measure of progress.

Like a scientist, he suggests, you’ve got to test your ideas and continue to test them through hypothesis and experimentation, gathering feedback along the way.

The Scientific Method Break Down

While it’s not something we use all the time here at ZURB, we have applied the scientific method in our approach to product design. Let’s delve a bit deeper, looking at how we applied it when it came to eliminating a feature from Notable:

1. Make an Observation — Notable once had four features that allowed user to provide annotations for not only captures of websites, but code, copy and SEO content as well. The SEO tool let managers or SEO experts provide feedback on SEO data of a website, breaking out the metadata. However, we had observed that not many people were actually using the feature and preferred leaving notes on screen captures. Which lead us to ...
2. Ask a Question — We asked how many people were actually using the feature, along with the coding and copy annotation feature.
3. Form a Hypothesis — Our hypothesis was: "No one was using the SEO feature. Now we had to test it."
4. Test Our Hypothesis — To test our hypothesis, we looked through the database of users, separating those from paid accounts and free accounts. We found that a small percentage of users were using the SEO notes with 98% of users preferring to leave notes on screen captures.
5. Prove or Disprove Hypothesis — The data proved our hypothesis that no one was really using the SEO feature. It also showed that more people preferred annotating screen captures. So we decided to drop the SEO, copy and code features and focus on the visual feature of Notable. We decided it was more important to make one really good feature that everyone would use rather than four features, of which only one was really used.

As you can see, the scientific method was helpful in solving a particular problem. While it is really useful for testing out theories and hypothesis, the one thing we hope that you remember the most is that you have to test out your ideas. The scientific method isn’t the only way, but it’s one of the tools at your disposal to learn if your ideas will work out in the wild.

Over the years, we have seen many businesses adopt a per-project or per-user pricing structure, which pushes customers to re-evaluate the value of the products they are using. Not only does this run the risk of losing customers, but it goes as far as punishing them for their loyalty. Why would any company chose to lose customers? More than that, why would they punish them for using their products?

Take for example, GitHub. We love their service. We use their private project repository. But then we hit our limit and it had us think twice about the service because we would've had to pay for more space. Instead, we just deleted older projects to make room.

The problem with volume-pricing is that it's stressful. It leaves the customer wondering what they'll have to pay in the future, and often punishes usage. Many companies use a volume-discount approach. As companies scale, they are forced to pay more for the apps they already use even though they end up paying less per user. This puts customers in a bind, forcing them to choose who receives access to the tools or what projects to use the tools for. Only giving 10% of your company access to a tool rather than 50% to 100% will negatively affect the value of using the tool.

Customers shouldn’t need to think about pricing.

Take Netflix. How many of us have a "watch instantly" account, which withdraws about $8 bucks a month from our bank accounts? And that's if we use the service or not. We don't even have to think about it. We aren’t allotted a set amount of hours we are allowed to watch programing without paying more.

But what if we were? If after watching 10 hours of television you were required to pay more, you might have to think twice about subscribing to the service entirely.

Charging For Features, Not Users

Recently, we re-launched Verify with not only new features, but a new pricing structure. Though we never charged on a per-user basis, we added value for all of our users with mobile testing. We also created a new tier of service with a new premium feature.

We understood, that depending on the size of our customers’ companies, this feature may not be the perfect fit so the new tier and premium pricing is an option, not a requirement. However, we also realize that regardless of a company’s specific product needs their operational needs will vary as they gain and lose staff and clients. Why inconvenience your customers because of uncontrollable variables instead of a change in product need?

With Notable, we determine value based on the features a company needed to effectively collect and organize the feedback they need for their designs. We often find that larger companies with several users and multiple simultaneous projects may find use for the freedom to organize within sets and workspaces available on our upper tiered plans. While freelancers or small businesses might not have a need for these organizational features, but still may have a variable amount of hands in the bucket.

Think of it this way. What is the use of product design applications if you are limited by the amount of feedback you can receive? Why would we charge people to involve more influencers from their own business or client list? It just doesn’t make any sense and causes unnecessary stress for growing companies unable to predict the expense of using these products.

Per-user pricing simply does not put the customer first. That's because they'll constantly need to reevaluate the your product's benefits each time the price goes up. This will drastically affect the adoption of your product. Let your users have flexibility and decide what features are best for them instead of who is best to use these features. Don’t let your customers outgrow your product, instead allow your product to grow and become an integral part of their daily workflow.

What are your thoughts on per-user pricing? Does it work for you or would you prefer a simply subscription that is flexible to your needs? Let us know in the comments below.

Going up for seed funding can be like going out on a first date. You’re nervous. Your palms may be a little sweaty. Then there’s tons of getting to know you questions. It’s something tons of hopefuls are undergoing right now at Y Combinator.

Today, we ran across a list of questions asked at a Y Combinator interview. Seems the guys over at Stackblaze even put together an app where you have 15 seconds to answer each question. Think fast, or else you’ll see:

Going through the actually list of questions, we found that there was a common theme of not just getting to know you, but challenging startups about who their customers are. The questions seek to get to the root of why a startup is doing what it is doing. Let’s take a closer look.

Why I’m I Doing This At All?

On the list of questions, you’ll encounter “why” questions such as these:

• Why did you pick this idea to work on?
• Why did you choose this idea?
• Why did your team get together?
• Why will you succeed?

We’ve talked before about the importance of asking "why" before you do anything. We’re big fans of Simon Sinek and his book "The Power of Why." He talks about how every inspiring leader, including Apple, starts with asking "why." Here’s how Sinek explains it:

Here is how Apple actually communicates: Why? Everything we do we believe in challenging the status quo. We believe in thinking differently. How? The way we challenge status quo is by making our products beautifully designed simple to use, and user friendly. What? We just happen to make great computers. Want to buy one?

Asking "why" first allows you to better answer other questions, such as "how" and "what." More importantly, it let’s you better define what it is you want to accomplish, better understand how your product helps solve a customer’s problem. It gives purpose. Basically, you’re answering, "Why I’m I doing this at all?"

Who Is Going to Use Your Product?

When it comes to who your potential customers are, these are the questions you might encounter:

• Who needs what you’re making?
• Who would use your product?
• Who is go to be your first paying customer?
• What do you understand about your users?
• How are you meeting customers?
• How you know people want this?

Remember Eric Ries? His first startup crashed and burned because he spent six months building a product nobody wanted to use. Then there’s Josh Levy and Ross Cohen, BeenVerified’s co-founders, who burned through $550,000 in funding without getting a single customer. All because they spent years developing a product that didn’t have a market.

It’s not a good idea to develop a product in silence for six months without feedback or doing a single user test to see if your idea actually solves a customer’s problems. It’s crucial you solicit feedback from the start or risk failure. More than that, delving deep into who your customers exactly are, learning their habits and culture is the first step in seeing if someone would actually use your products.

Getting to Know You, Getting to Know All About You

Of course, there are the interview questions that try to ferret out who you really are, how you work and how you think. Questions such as:

• What’s the biggest mistake you’ve made?
• Who is "the boss"?
• What problems/hurdles are you anticipating?

Then again, all the questions could be considered getting to know you and your leadership abilities. Which is important for the man who has placed more bets on Internet startups than anyone else in Silicon Valley — Ron Conway. Along with Yuri Milner, Ron offers every new YC startup $150K. Ron told us what he looked for in a startup at his soapbox talk last year:

We invest in people first, idea second, market size third. It’s our belief that the idea that we’re seeing is going to morph so much that we should not get wedded to the idea, we should get wed to the individuals. The traits we look for: Can this person be a leader? Can this person lead a team?

90% of the time it’s a group of three founders. We always looks for the dynamic between the three people. Will there be any problems along the way? Will they realize that their idea is not working and have a solution to fix it?

Hopefully, you’ve got a clearer idea of what you might face when your startup goes up for seed funding whether it’s with YC or someone else. But remember, before you start knocking on doors with money, ask "why" first and figure out who will exactly benefit from your product. After all, a product without a user is nothing.

It’s not uncommon to hear the phrase, “Do what you love and the money will follow.” Upon first glance, it seems like good advice. What kind of risk is there in doing something you love?

Well, it seems there may be more of a risk than many of us are led to believe. This story from JD Roth highlights the nightmare that we often overlook:

I realized that the job I loved so much was actually destroying me.

Let’s take a step back and examine the reasons why people get into jobs they love. Some people love getting up in the morning and feeling good about their workplace. Some people love having the feeling that they are making a difference. Obvious reasons aside, the fact that we spend a significant chunk of our time at work is enough to encourage anyone to pursue a career they actually enjoy.

In this reader's case, pursuing his life dream of becoming a high-school math teacher ended up being a great short term decision, but over time, it wore on him so much — emotionally and financially — that he gave it up and went back to school to eventually become an accountant.

His advice: Get out there and grab what affords you the most opportunities to be the best overall person you can be. It’s advice that goes directly against the advice of “doing something you love.”

Says the reader:

But consider that if there’s some kind of work you’re so emotionally vested in, even if it satisfies you, getting into it may come at a cost that you cannot anticipate. I for one will never encourage anyone to “do what they love” ever again.

The Leap From Desire To Passion

What the reader is really talking about here isn't passion, even though he calls it that. He's really talking about desire. People who follow their desires aren't always able to turn that desire into passion. People who follow their desires may not necessarily like what they get. This is one case of that mantra playing out — and while we hate to see it, there's no question that his decision to follow his desire ended up greatly inhibiting his happiness.

The initial desire to teach ended up withering away with the challenges the job presented. He could no longer deal day in and day out with students who had problems, such as drug addiction and gang affiliation. Nor could he deal with the administration. In other words, he had the desire to be a teacher, but he wasn't completely invested in all that went into being one. He didn't have the passion to carry him through.

Here at ZURB, we’re all about following our passions and chasing after our goals at the highest level. While his story does elicit some caution, personal passion does not necessarily need to wane when you pursue what you want to accomplish. Here are three points you should consider for keeping your passion intact:

1. It’s important to find the deeper meaning in any task you do. If you approach your tasks like a robot — focusing on execution without fully understanding the long-term impact of your work — you’ll burn out fairly fast.
2. Take challenges head-on when you run into them. With any career, challenges will rise along the way, so take this to heart and be ready to address them when they arise.
3. If you’re considering pivoting your career path, consider all options that could be a good fit for where your skills lie. Let’s say a web developer wants to get into a marketing position. Through emphasizing key skills that translate directly to the new position, such as analytical ability and attention to detail, a developer could position him/herself well for a new career path.

Keeping these things in mind, you could find that yourself completely invested in what you do. And have the passion to carry you through. How do you keep your passion intact?

When I used to teach freshman comp to first-year art school students, the most often asked question I’d get is:

Why do I have to learn critical thinking and writing?

I’d go on to explain that everyone, didn’t matter if they’re writers or artists or designers, had to learn how to critical think through problems. They have to learn to define the problem and articulate their solutions. Even if its in a five-paragraph essay.

Critical thinking plays a crucial role in design and entrepreneurism. It can define the pace of a project, keep the team on schedule. Critical thinking shouldn’t be overlooked. So when we recently came across Design Strategies Founder Paul Schoemaker’s secrets of critical thinkers, we immediately saw several real-life examples that we wanted to share with you.

Break From the Pack, Be A Maverick

Scheomaker warns that incremental thinking can plague a business. He suggests breaking from the pack, bucking conventional wisdom. He also suggests seeking out mavericks, those folks who think outside the box, even if you disagree with them. They’ll reframe your thinking, he says.

While Shoeomaker doesn’t say it, entrepreneurs should be mavericks themselves. Think outside the box and don’t hesitate to grab at opportunities. Or as Robert Scoble recently put it, “Entrepreneurs have to be crazy.”

Consider Steve Jobs. It goes without saying that he truly an innovator. He took on opportunities that others failed to take. Consider what Jobs did when he encountered Xerox’s mouse and personal computer. Jobs saw what Xerox had developed and couldn’t believe that the company wasn’t doing anything with the technology. He snatched up an opportunity they missed, thinking through the concept and improving upon it. He did what Xerox hadn’t. He was inspired by what had come before and innovated upon it.

Agree to Disagree

Scheomaker sees nothing wrong with a good debate, saying it can lead to even greater insights. We agree. There’s no need to put away the boxing gloves. Be willing to fight for your ideas if it’s something you believe in, something you’re passionate about. Don’t be afraid to stand your ground. After all, argument is a sign of passion and sound ideas will survive the fight.

Take for instance Box.com’s Aaron Levie. He disagreed with investor Mark Cuban over offering a free gigabyte of space online as way to combat the Google Drive scare in 2005. But Cuban didn’t like the idea, thinking it was risky because the company would need more VC funding to subsidize it. But Aaron stood his ground, leading to both men to go their separate ways. In the end, Aaron’s then-novel idea is now the standard for cloud services, even the recently launched Google Drive.

Catch Your Breath and Ask “Why?”

Sometimes solving a problem takes slowing down, catching your breath. Talking a step back, as Schoemaker suggests, and asking how else can the problem be defined. But we’d also add that you start with asking why. Simon Sinek tackles this issue in his book "The Power of Why." Why does the problem exist?

Asking why from the start can also help prevent problems. Most designers and entrepreneurs tell others the ins and outs of their products then expect people to pay for it. It doesn’t work this way. Simon says every inspiring leader, from Martin Luther King Jr. to Apple, start with asking "why" first before doing anything.

Next time you come across a problem, fight it out, look at it from many different angles, go outside the box and take a step back every now and then. By doing so, you’ll be looking critically at the problem, acting to solve it rather than reacting to it.

Our friends over at Human Factors International recently posted a great video on the six steps to persuasive product design. Take a look at the video below and notice how those steps can get your users to act on your call to action and take that next step:

What Eric Schaffer is taking about it is a more holistic approach to product design. Let’s take a closer look at Eric’s six steps:

1. Understand our users’ emotional battles. We need to understand our users’ drives, blocks, emotions and beliefs at key conversion points. Interviewing allows us to delve deep into our customers, learning if they are elephants, deers or rabbits. Even a quick conversation can help us understand the blocks that prevent users from taking those next steps.
2. User insights. Collecting insights from a bunch of customers can reveal the stronger issues at work, such as fear or guilt. That’s where thorough user research can be immensely helpful. Nate Bolt gave an amazing soapbox talk on the importance of user research in product design. Check out the transcript and slides of his soapbox here.
3. Pick an emotional strategy likely to work. Product design shouldn't ignore the power of emotion to drive engagement. Designers can even use the seven deadly sins to generate momentum among users.
4. Create a frame for the theme. Focus on a theme, creating a framework or meme for it. This can be central to your product or products. For instance, our apps are centered around the idea that you can design great products faster. In other words, we need to understand the what, why, who and how of our products.
5. Methods of influence. Along with creating a framework, the method of influence, such as testimonial or scarcity, is crucial to communicating the theme. What is the method that’s going to best evoke a user’s emotions? After all, numerous studies have highlighted how emotions drive our decisions.
6. Study the flow of interactions. We have to study how users move through all the interactions through to the very point of conversion. Think of it this way: What grabs a user's attention? What sustains a user through the interactions? Is your call to action clear? Does it give the user that emotional push to take the next step?

These six steps, however, aren't a one-time thing. This is an ongoing process and doesn’t end once a product is launched. Keeping in touch with regular users can key you in on when there is a breakdown of any of these steps and where you might need to reevaluate your approach.