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In our series on startup hints & tricks here tips 15 & 16:

15 – Do usability testing

All your mockups (previous post) will not protect you from completely and utterly misrepresent what users really want the application to behave.

There is only one way to get to the point here: Do usability tests. You will have a very bad day that day. Your testers will not find that button you specially designed and argued so much about, they will be utterly lost in the application although you thought that the information architecture is so simple an clean.

Yet that is the way an application is perceived. Better listen early and often and adapt your approach.

Even if it requires a dose of masochism Usability Tests help!

16 – Consider using agile development methods (such as scrum)

The traditional waterfall methods for project management have much for them: Tested for centuries. That’s how big engineering feats have been delivered, or so they make us believe.

The other day the 40th birthday of the ill-fated Apollo 13 mission was commemorated.The mission nearly ended in catastrophe after an explosion cut oxygen supply. Up there and down at mission control in Houston they had to come up with solutions fast. Improvisation was l’ordre du jour.

Both methods have something for them. For any startup it’s probably okay to apply a bit of both. You don’t want to get bogged down with development cycles that last months, neither with the improvisation à la Apollo 13.

In our case we employ Scrum as an agile development method. Other such methods are around. The basic thing it does: It forces you to be honest in short cycles (two weeks in our case). After each two week segment we know where we stand.

This time we settled for a release with a limited public visibility. The reason being our continued work on the next major new feature set. The main highlights of this release: 

Russian version

Thanks to our friends Eugene and Sergey we are now able to offer Memonic in Russian, too. A great thank you to both of them! 

And we keep working on languages. There a number of Memonic language version nearly ready for prime time. Get in contact in us if you want to help us for yet more languages.

Improvements 

• Memonic for Windows got a great new feature: Doing screenshots. Simple do a screenshot of whatever screen section or application window you like and automatically save it to your Memonic account and send it to your colleagues. Test it today!
• Improved wording on some sections plus making the settings of the bookmarklet more persistent

As always all the release notes here plus we greatly appreciate your feedback.

In our series on startup hints & tricks here tips 13 & 14:

13 – Don’t waste time that others do better
(plus it’s free or almost free)

Any company needs a number of basic processes and applications such as Email, calendaring, time tracking, billing, version control, task tracking, etc. And quite a number of startups had in the past first to invest a couple of person weeks in installing your email server and all the rest (We know what we talk off… ;-(

Today that’s a different matter: All these basic applications are yours for free are almost for free. Examples include Google Apps including Email, Calendaring, Office Applications, Paymo and Mite for time tracking, Beanstalk and others for version control, Highrise for CRM, Memonic for online research.

Focus on what really counts – your product or service – and don’t waste time on what others do better.

14 – Get early agreement – do mockups

And off you go. All set up, your product idea clearly spelled out (at least that’s what the founding team thinks), now it’s just a question of execution. Or so you think.

Countless number of times we came across situations where even seasoned teams thought they had spelled it out, only to discover after implementation that there is a notable gap between what different stakeholders thought the product should do and the implemented product actually does.

We suggest a different approach: Do mockups early on.

Put on paper (digital paper is also okay) what you want the application to look like and to work like. You will see that often the initial agreement disintegrates once you start doing mockups only to emerge with a stronger consensus on what the application really is supposed to do.

 Today and tomorrow we’re in Walenstadt next the Walensee. A beautiful spot. 

We’re here doing a Nektoominar. It’s our internal get-together to review what we’ve did in the last months (a lot) and what we are about to do in the upcoming months (a lot). Plus it’s fun to spend some time together outside the office walls. 

(Our Microsoft Picture)

I spent the past weekend in Paris and tried to save money by not relying on data roaming. There are some great application that work completely offline and I tried those during the trip. I worked with OffMaps to have street maps, Métro to know my way around, the Lonely Planet Paris City Guide, Stanza for reading and some helpers that already come with the iPhone.

Additionally of course I used the Memonic iPhone application to access my whole Memonic collection offline. I especially saved the hotel confirmation and tips for places to go to in Memonic and then access that information whenever it was necessary.

You can read more information for each of these apps on my personal blog.