Ryan Healy believes there are 10 ways Gen Y will change the workplace for the better.  He even claims that Gen-Y will be more productive than their parents generation. That is a pretty bold statement considering the boomer generation has created some of the most technological advances in human history.   So Gen-Y, how are you going to be more productive than a generation that has  gone from rotatory phone to i phone? How else are you going to change the workforce?

Tags: gen y, i phone, Ryan Healy, Workplace

Community Marketing

6390 commentshttp%3A%2F%2Frypple.com%2Fblog%2Fyoung-vs-old%2FYoung+vs.+Old2009-02-27+21%3A20%3A05Nathaniel+Rottenberghttp%3A%2F%2Fblog.rypple.com%2F%3Fp%3D639

Ok…first off on the personal front, a big congratulations to Austin Tam, one of our star developers, on getting engaged on his cruise vacation last week! Perhaps now that he’s officially taken, the onslaught of fan mail from his female admirers will slow down

Now on to this long overdue post about some of the great features we’ve added to Rypple over the past few weeks, starting with one thing that our users have been asking about for a while. Something we call “personal visibility“!

“What topics are other people asking most about vs what I’m asking about?”

“How does the response rate I’m getting compare to others?

“What do people think of the feedback I give THEM? Is it helpful?”

Well, I’m happy to say that our old friends, “Karma” and “Zen” have officially been shelved in favor of much more “personal” user stats which you can see right from your Home page when you’re logged in. Check ‘em out!

In the coming weeks we’ll be providing even MORE statistics and visibility into how other people just like you are using Rypple to get the feedback they really want!

Until then though, here’s a list of some additional features we recently added based on your feedback:

You Said…	Rypple Responded:
100 characters sometimes isn’t enough when requesting feedback. I want more!	We’ve increased our character limit from 100 to 140 characters for feedback requests. (this is in addition to the personal message you can add to your request to give all the background context you like!)
Oops! I just sent a request for feedback but forgot to add someone to my list of advisers! Can I add them now?	Now you can add additional advisers to a previously submitted request! (click the “Add advisers” action in the Results view)
I want to be able to download my feedback.	Download your results in CSV format right from the Results view.
I’d like to be able to control which notifications and alerts I receive from Rypple	Choose which emails you want to receive from Rypple on your user profile page (click your name in the header)
I’ve had a request for feedback open for a while now, can I close it so I don’t receive any more feedback on it?	Now you can shut off the flow of feedback for a specific request (click the “Close request” action in the Results view)
I’d like to remind the advisers I haven’t heard from to respond to my request	In addition to the reminders that Rypple automatically sends out on your behalf, now you can manually remind your advisers to give you feedback if they haven’t done so (click the “Send reminder” action in the Results view)
I’d like to be able to remove old requests I don’t want to see anymore from my Results view	Now you can archive both requests you’ve made and those you’ve received from others
Do you have any tips for me on how to Get and Give good feedback?	Check out the new Rypple Etiquette guide (accessible from the quick links sections and in the footer)

That’s it for now.  Some awesome new features set to launch in the coming weeks…stay tuned!

P.S. – If you arrived at this post because the title led you to believe you’d be able to:

a) see photos from James Tam’s recent trip to Vegas
b) get access to Daniel Debow’s late night webcam exploits
c) read some excepts from Ryan Dewsbury’s latest works of haiku poetry

…then I’m sorry to have disappointed you

Tags: Features, Rypple

Product & Community

5320 commentshttp%3A%2F%2Frypple.com%2Fblog%2Frypple-gets-personal%2FRypple+Gets+Personal2009-02-26+22%3A28%3A52David+Priemerhttp%3A%2F%2Fblog.rypple.com%2F%3Fp%3D532

It can be intimidating asking for feedback especially if you’re worrying about sounding dumb.  Fortunately Dan Erwin’s white paper offers some helpful advice on  “How to ask questions and not be perceived as a dumb ass.”

Do you have a story about asking a “less intelligent question?”  What did you learn from the experience?

Tags: Dan Erwin, Dumb question, White paper

Community Marketing

6270 commentshttp%3A%2F%2Frypple.com%2Fblog%2Fthere-are-no-dumb-questions%2FThere+are+no+dumb+questions.2009-02-26+21%3A14%3A49Nathaniel+Rottenberghttp%3A%2F%2Fblog.rypple.com%2F%3Fp%3D627

I joined the Rypple team about a month ago to work on all things social media-related, with a particular emphasis on Facebook. It’s been a whirlwind job so far and we’ve done a lot in a really short time, which makes me really proud to announce today’s launch of the Rypple NOW! Facebook Page, timed perfectly with FacebookCamp5 in Toronto!

People Want to Talk about Feedback

You learn something pretty quickly when you start working here: the ideas behind Rypple touch people in a very personal way. Every time I explain what we do or how we do it, people are catalyzed into in-depth conversations, often full of stories from their own lives. We’ve seen the same response online and in the media, with tons of user and blogger buzz, big media interest, and academic discussions sparked all over the world.

It’s become pretty obvious to us that people really want to talk about their experiences with feedback.  We’re really grateful for all the emails us, calls, blog posts, and tweets because they help us better understand you. And we’ve learned a lot from the process! You really want to discuss the implications of a workplace filled with quick, specific, and useful feedback that’s easy to give and get, which is awesome. We want to show you how to do it, so let’s share!

Which led us to the question: what better place to Share than Facebook, a service that “helps you connect and share with the people in your life”?

We were so inspired by all the grassroots feedback you’ve given us that we’ve decided to take these conversation to a more social place and to invite many more people to join in the dialog.

Rypple NOW!

Our Facebook strategy is built around the idea of providing an open, community-driven space for people to discuss feedback, learn how to give and receive it, and to reduce their stress and be more successful by using it as a powerful tool.

The other key element of our Facebook strategy is real people. Our awesome Intern Nat has been busy pre-populating our Page with interesting articles, links, and videos to get the conversation flowing.  And, as it grows, he’s going to stay focused on adding value to the participants and getting the rest of the Rypple Team involved. This is where you come in, of course. Real people talking about real things is what makes this a reality, so join us!

Community Through Tools

The Rypple NOW! Page is about community first and foremost. We’re hoping to spark an ongoing conversation about feedback by incorporating a number of existing Facebook community applications, including Video, Photos, Events, and Discussion Boards. Since we want to foster a vibrant movement full of people participating, we carefully examined each for what it would bring, how easily we could seed it with initial conversation starting content, and how simple it would be to garden as it grew. We picked out the best of the standard apps, then planned out the rest of the strategy on a handful of custom components.

Custom Components

In addition to the more simplistic Movement Buzz box, which displays logos of media sources who have covered the growing movement and provides details in pop-up Facebook dialogs, we decided to build two custom apps: Ask Rypple NOW! and What’s Ryppling NOW!, both based on functionality from the Rypple homepage.

Ask Rypple NOW!

It was very important for us to create an easy entry point into the world of Rypple for members of the movement who wanted to get their feet wet without jumping straight in. Using the same functionality on the Rypple homepage as a model, we built a mini-app that presents a question box with countdown character counter and then uses a series of Facebook Dialogs with FBJS Ajax to prompt for more information and create the Rypple.

One of the best things to come out of this app, beyond giving users a way to try Rypple without leaving Facebook, is the emergence of a Rypple API. The incredibly capable Austin Tam whipped up a basic RESTful API for us to build against, paving the way for third party developers to eventually  add Rypple functionality to their own apps. Leave a comment if you’d like to know more about the API!

What’s Ryppling NOW!

One of the most important observations about feedback is also one of the simplest: ask good questions and you’ll get good feedback.

The questions in the What’s Ryppling NOW! box, as well as on the Rypple homepage, reflect that statement by highlighting some of the best questions people have shared with us and allowed us to share with you. The mini-app uses FBJS Animation to move the bubbles all the way up and back down again, looping until the user clicks to stop (the clicking to start and stop is a requirement for profile boxes, which can’t display any animation or interactivity until activated).

This is, of course, not an exhaustive list. Think we’ve missed a particularly great question? Add it to the comments!

Come on in! The water’s great!

Come and join us in the Rypple NOW! movement! You too deserve better feedback in the workplace, so become a fan of the Rypple NOW! Facebook Page and help us spread the word. As loyal readers of the Rypple blog, we’d be particularly pleased if you’d join the discussion, add a video, or write on our wall. See you on Facebook!

Tags: facebook, facebook cookbook, facebook page, jay goldman, Rypple, rypple now

Jay has been providing a human side to technology for over ten years, as a technologist, user experience specialist, and visual designer. Jay is the author of The Facebook Cookbook for O’Reilly Media.

4693 commentshttp%3A%2F%2Frypple.com%2Fblog%2Frypple-meets-facebook%2FRypple+Meets+Facebook2009-02-24+17%3A04%3A15Jay+Goldmanhttp%3A%2F%2Fblog.rypple.com%2F%3Fp%3D469

Performance reviews are hotly contested part of big company life.  In a recent Wall Street Journal article Get Rid of the Performance Review, Samuel A. Culbert, a UCLA Professor, even goes as far as to say:  “It destroys morale, kills teamwork, and hurts the bottom line.”

Have you found performance reviews helpful or do they in fact do more harm than good?

Tags: Performance Reviews, Samuel A. Culbert, UCLA, Wall Street Journal

Community Marketing

5171 commenthttp%3A%2F%2Frypple.com%2Fblog%2Fget-rid-of-the-performance-review%2FGet+Rid+of+the+Performance+Review%21%3F%212009-02-20+15%3A35%3A43Nathaniel+Rottenberghttp%3A%2F%2Fblog.rypple.com%2F%3Fp%3D517

In October, I had the pleasure of spending  a few days in Boston attending UI13 and in particular, Agile development guru Jeff Patton’s all day seminar on bringing user centered design practices in to agile projects. I wanted him to enlighten me, show me what I had trouble figuring out on my own while running the UCD practice at a large(ish) software company in the throes of ‘going agile’ -  how do traditional UCD techniques integrate into agile methodologies? How do you do holistic interface design within the constraints of a short sprint focused on microfeatures? How do you squeeze effective user testing into the schedule? Where does user research and analysis fit in? How can I leverage the 1:100 rule and make sure my $1 spent on usability will save $100 in support/qa/bug fix costs?

UI13 was great overall. I got to listen to Luke Wroblewski talk about content page design best practices, Kim Goodwin talk about visual design and I got to hear Jared Spool deliver a very compelling keynote address. But I left the Jeff’s seminar somewhat disappointed. He talked about agile development practices, and he talked about user centered design practices, but kind of glossed over how they integrate. When I asked the above questions outright at the end of the day, the answer seemed to be ‘that stuff is done outside of the sprint – get your design work done, then start the development.” Did this mean that UX and Agile are oil and water?

Since joining Rypple, I’ve developed a much clearer understanding of what it means to be ‘agile’. It helps to work with a team that is exceptionally well versed in the methodology. I’ve also spent much more time learning – spending more time understanding Jeff’s thinking on the subject (and many others) by visiting his blog, watching presentations such as Dave Robertson and John Johnston from Thoughworks‘ talk on Agile Methods and User Centered Design, and listening to various relevant podcasts on my longer-than-neccessary commute.

So what have I learned? UX practices have always embodied the core principles of agile – user driven, iterative, and reliant on constant refactoring to drive up quality. But in traditional waterfall processes (as well as in large(ish)-now-in-the-throes-of-going-agile software shops), UX work precedes development because the cost of change further down the line is too great – the old $1:$100 rule. You’ve got to get it right up front if you want to avoid costly and lengthy changes down the line.

But it was this dogma that was at the center of my confusion.  In a truly agile process, change is expected and embraced and the cost of refinement is not prohibitive.  Furthermore, the latency – the time it takes for necessary fixes to be implemented and available to a user faced with a usability gaffe that slipped through the cracks – is minimal. The rationale for upfront UX begins to break down. Believe me, as a guy who wrote a Ph.D. thesis that formalized a ‘traditional’ UCD approach to software design, that is a tough one to swallow.

So, how do you do UX in an agile shop? To be honest, I’m still figuring that out. Here’s what I’ve learned so far: in a truly agile shop, refactoring happens so frequently and so fast that you can afford to (in many cases have no choice but to) treat your production interface as your testing prototype. This means get over the conceit that you can figure it all out beforehand through thorough and thoughtful design, or identify and fix the issues in the privacy of your usability lab. You do not have the luxury. Do your best in the time you’ve got, kick something out, then pay attention. You’ll need the means to learn about real usage – analytics and instrumentation to gather usage data, and a process to identify and reach out to ‘power users’ and newbies alike to gather their thoughts along the way.  Then lick your wounds, go back and fix the mistakes you made and get on with making new ones. Fail faster. Learn faster.

Improve faster.

What are your thoughts? I’ll be iterating on mine over the next few weeks, and posting any new revelations here. So stay tuned. Think I’ve got it wrong? Let me know, and (maybe) I’ll refactor. I know I’ll be OK with that.

Tags: agile, Development, process, reflection, ux

User Experience & Usability

2560 commentshttp%3A%2F%2Frypple.com%2Fblog%2Fux-in-an-agile-shop%2FUX+in+an+Agile+shop2009-02-19+15%3A32%3A47James+Wuhttp%3A%2F%2Fblog.rypple.com%2F%3Fp%3D256

Hello everybody, I’m Nathaniel – and I’m new to the Rypple team.  I recently graduated from Queens University in Kingston, Ontario, and I’m here to help the growing Rypple community.

This means a few things.  First, I’m going to be talking with our users and fans on all sorts of social media.  I’ll spend my time listening carefully to what you – the community – want to get out of Rypple and how we can improve.  And, I’ll be facilitating some useful online discussion about topics near to our hearts: feedback.  We’ll bring in experts, of course, but we really want to engage you – our users – in a dialog about feedback.  One of my first projects is working with Jay Goldman on Rypple Facebook community.  We’ll be launching this soon – and I’ll blog more about it later.

For now, I’m really excited to learn from everyone here at Rypple.  The people are super-smart and its seems they all have something to teach me.  I’m eager to help out everywhere and anywhere I can.  This is a whole new experience for me, so I’ve named this week:  My Week O’ Firsts!  For example:

• I started my first post-university job,
• I moved to a new city (Toronto),
• This is, in fact, my first blog.

With the Week O’ Firsts in mind – where better to start than at Rypple, a company dedicated to helping people to get the useful and specific feedback?  At the end of my first week I plan to Rypple the team to find out how I’m doing and what I can improve on.  After all, a little feedback goes a long way!  I’ll blog a bit about my first experiences – and hopefully you can let me know if yours was similar.

If you’d like to get in touch with me about any subject, feel free to leave a comment on this post and I’ll get back to you!

Tags: community, facebook, Feedback, jay goldman

Community Marketing

4770 commentshttp%3A%2F%2Frypple.com%2Fblog%2Fmy-week-ofirsts%2FMy+Week+O%27Firsts+2009-02-10+16%3A47%3A49Nathaniel+Rottenberghttp%3A%2F%2Fblog.rypple.com%2F%3Fp%3D477

We engage in a conversation with our users as we bring Rypple to more workplaces. This is extremely rewarding. Talking to users lets us know how we can improve. People say some nice things about Rypple. But sometimes they encounter obstacles. Here’s what a manager at a large company told me:

I did check out Rypple. Personally, I do think it’s useful but only if people take the time to fill it out. Everybody is too busy to let you know until it comes to bonus/reviews.

I’ve decided to share my response publicly:

1) Setting time aside to provide or ask for feedback is difficult even when we know of potentials benefits it can have.

Similarly, some people know that exercise and eating right are good but continue do the opposite. Healthy living takes time and an honest commitment to self-improvement. And although it is unlikely everyone can be a toned and chiseled Matthew McConaughey, we know that not supersizing fast food takeouts and even light exercise go a long way. And why don’t we do that (more often)? Because it’s much easier to do the opposite – procrastinate and engage in activities that require less thought and effort. We’ve designed Rypple with this premise in mind because obtaining specific and actionable feedback quickly on a regular basis goes a long way.

2) Not providing feedback to your colleagues stumps learning.

Highly productive and efficient teams evolve through constant feedback – remember the Borg? True, we are not the Borg; mindless drones organized in a single-minded collective. But this also means we don’t hear what others think. That is why it’s important to ask them about their thoughts. As Feral Jundi points out,

learning organizations is the theme for any company and its culture … if they want to be successful.

This refers to Peter Senge’s five centrals disciplines of learning organizations: systems thinking, personal mastery, mental models, building shared vision, and team learning. Rypple can be used easily with all five disciplines to obtained timely, specific, and actionable feedback that will lead to continuous learning and improvement (both personal and company-wide).

3) Tying compensation discussion (which is mostly not controlled by an employee) to the employee’s performance (which is mostly controlled by an employee) just does not make sense. Period!

Severely cutting someone’s bonus due to Wall Street meltdown or the big three bailout and then asking for improved performance will not set that person off on a path of success. Such practices destroy team morale and seed animosity. Robert Bacak puts it plainly in his book Manager’s Guide to Performance Reviews:

As soon as you tie review to pay or rewards, you create a situation where it’s apparently not in the best interest of the employee or the manager to work together. Couple that conflict with the lack of good objective measures and the review process changes. A review process tied to rewards tends to pit manager vs. employee…

If you think that Rypple may be inappropriate at your work place, I challenge you to think again. Rypple is not a wondrous topical cream to apply mindlessly and effortlessly to get rid of unwanted fat. To use Rypple properly, you need to be honest with yourself and apply it because you feel you could benefit from honest, timely, frequent, and confidential feedback. This feedback will show you what things you’re doing well and what should be improved.

Tags: learning organization, self-improvement, using Rypple

Development, author of onebookaweek.com

2210 commentshttp%3A%2F%2Frypple.com%2Fblog%2Fwhen-you-know-you-could-use-rypple%2FWhen+you+know+you+could+use+Rypple2009-02-09+21%3A08%3A29Tihomir+Bajichttp%3A%2F%2Fblog.rypple.com%2F%3Fp%3D221

Giving constructive performance reviews can be difficult.  Here are eight helpful tips on giving performance reviews from the Open-Source Career Blog that will make giving performance reviews easier and more effective.  Do you have a tip to add?

Tags: Open-Source Career Blog, Performance Reviews, Tips

Community Marketing

4741 commenthttp%3A%2F%2Frypple.com%2Fblog%2Fhelpful-tips-for-giving-performance-reviews%2FHelpful+Tips+on+Giving+Performance+Reviews2009-02-09+19%3A54%3A27Nathaniel+Rottenberghttp%3A%2F%2Fblog.rypple.com%2F%3Fp%3D474

Whoo hoo! We’ve created a quicker way to Rypple using Ubiquity. Just what is Ubiquity? Read on dear reader…

The web has greatly simplified our lives. All the world’s information is a Google search away, our friends’ lives are nicely aggregated for us on Facebook, and you get quick, frequent and insightful feedback on Rypple. But have you ever sat down and thought about the steps involved in setting up dinner with some friends using email? Most people have to:

1. search for a restaurant and copy the address
2. paste the address into an email
3. paste the address into a map site and copy the link
4. paste the map link into the email
5. search for the restaurant review and copy the rating
6. paste the rating into the email

Whew! That was a lot of work… and the email still isn’t all that useful because it’s only a bunch of text and links!

What if I told you that you could do all this from your browser without having to actually visit all these sites, paste all those links *and* you’ll get a nice email with a pretty map and restaurant review ratings? That’s crazy-talk, right? … right?

Enter Ubiquity. It’s an awesome experimental technology for Firefox which integrates your online experience. From a single interface, you can leverage the power of all the web services you commonly use, including Rypple! With some help from Atul Varma from Mozilla Labs, lead developer of Ubiquity, I put together a Ubiquity command which allows you to quickly ask a question on Rypple without being on Rypple.

So, if you were searching for ways to improve your communication skills and suddenly remembered “Hey, I just had a client call today. Why don’t I ask Bob how I did?”, you can quickly ask using Rypple, without having to visit our website.  All you’d have to do is invoke Ubiquity (Ctrl-Space) and type ‘rypple-ask’ followed by the question, at least one recipient and at least one attribute.

How to try the new Rypple Ubiquity command:

Welcome to the world of complete and total integration!

Happy Ryppling!

P.S. Please let me know what you think of the Rypple Ubiquity command. Does it mean your needs? If not, what could be improved?

P.P.S If you’re having trouble with Ubiquity (it’s a prototype) you can try the following workaround:

Tags: API, Development, Features, product, Rypple, ubiquity, usability, User Experience

Development

4244 commentshttp%3A%2F%2Frypple.com%2Fblog%2Fubiquitous-rypples%2FUbiquitous+Rypples2009-02-05+02%3A14%3A20Austin+Tamhttp%3A%2F%2Fblog.rypple.com%2F%3Fp%3D424