Intuit Online Payroll app launched

My team’s iPhone app was released on the App Store yesterday!

Working on this project has been a fantastic experience. We packed an incredible amount of user research, design, iteration, development, and QA into just a few months. It’s exciting to finally get something in front of users– we’re itching to hear & respond to their feedback! We’re also working on several enhancements and new features that will be added over the coming months.

The app allows users to run payroll, view their last payroll run, and look up employee information. Note: you must have an Intuit Online Payroll or Intuit QuickBooks Payroll for Mac account to use it.

Men and Women Entrepreneurs: Not That Different

Male & female entrepreneurs are pretty similar:

Both groups had an equally strong desire to build wealth; wanted to capitalize on business ideas; were attracted to the culture of startups; had long-standing desire to own their own company; and were tired of working for others…

Their average ages when founding their first companies were the same. Likewise, successful men and women entrepreneurs founded their first companies when they had similar numbers of children living at home, though men were more likely than women to be married.

That being said,

Only one percent of high-tech startups have a woman CEO; there are almost no women in the ranks of chief technology officers.

Only one percent. Wow. I knew the ratio of women in technology was pretty low, but not this low.

For more research/news on women in tech, check out the Anita Borg Institute.

Also, see Women2.0, an organization whose mission is to “increase the number of female founders of technology startups”.

Logo design for Frankendeal. A long-overdue update on my Women2.0 Labs experience: three weeks ago, I teamed up with a group of 3 other entrepreneurs. We rallied around the idea of creating a platform for audio-guided walking tours. Many interviews,…

Logo design for Frankendeal.

A long-overdue update on my Women2.0 Labs experience: three weeks ago, I teamed up with a group of 3 other entrepreneurs. We rallied around the idea of creating a platform for audio-guided walking tours. Many interviews, surveys, brainstorms, concept tests, mentoring sessions, and nights at HackerDojo later, we find that our idea has changed quite a bit.

Now we’re hard at work tackling a new problem: how to improve the customer experience of waiting in lines. Our goal is to make it so enjoyable to wait in lines that customers actually look forward to it! We’re exploring the possibility of using location-based mini games to entertain users while providing real-world rewards, such as coupons. Project code name: Frankendeal.

There are still a lot of questions that we need to answer, and problems we’ll need to solve. In the spirit of quick-and-dirty user research, we hung out at a local coffee shop last week, observing & engaging with people as they waited in line. We learned a lot about how people deal with lines– what they do, how they feel, how it affects their overall experience. We also got a lot of great feedback on our idea!

This week, we’re developing a very rough prototype that we can get into users’ hands to gauge actual interest and usage. Our first iteration is very simple and focuses on the following game elements that resonated with users:

  • short duration
  • potential for real-world reward
  • game is somewhat challenging, rather than being “mindless”
  • tied to location (using the foursquare API)

I’ll keep you posted as lightning strikes and brings Frankendeal to life!

Thanks again to all who have helped out by participating in interviews, surveys, usability, and more. You are truly wonderful.

The Average Teenager Sends 3,339 Texts Per Month Also interesting: Texting is also supplanting voice calls — 22% say SMS is easier than a phone call and another 20% say it’s faster. Voice usage has decreased by 14% among teens and is decreasing …

The Average Teenager Sends 3,339 Texts Per Month

Also interesting:

Texting is also supplanting voice calls — 22% say SMS is easier than a phone call and another 20% say it’s faster. Voice usage has decreased by 14% among teens and is decreasing in all age groups under 55. Eighteen- to 24-year-olds use the most minutes, but every age group between 18 and 55 talks on the phone more than the average teenager.

Tumblr vs. WordPress

I finally migrated my old blog entries from WordPress to Tumblr. Entries are backdated and tagged, so feel free to peruse at your leisure.

Some observations of how my usage differs across the 2 platforms:

WordPress Blog - maintained from Nov'08 to Jul'09

  • Post frequency varied greatly, but typically no more than 1 post every few days.
  • Material was often adapted from assignments for other classes, or summaries of notes from talks attended.
  • Blog posts tended to be rather long, containing multiple links to related articles, author’s musings, mix of theory and hypothesizing.
  • Posts often ended with a question encouraging engagement, such as “what do you think?”

Tumblr Microblog - started Jul'10

  • Content is posted quite frequently, often several times a day.
  • The most frequent type of post is sharing an interesting URL, and not always with a comment or explanation attached.
  • Posts are short, sometimes just a line or 2 in length, more to-the-point, and typically do not contain supporting research/articles.
  • Posts rarely make outright attempts to engage readers (by asking a question,etc.)

What caused me to shift from my lengthy musings to brief “reblogs”?

  • The most obvious one: As a user, I’ve changed. I’m no longer a student; I finally have free time, and that means more time to keep up-to-date with industry trends and share them out with others.
  • “Mobile” makes content sharing simple. Now that I have a smartphone, it takes just seconds to snap and upload a picture via the Tumblr app. When I think of something I’d like to share, I can create a note, save it as a draft, and then return to it later on my computer.
  • Social media integration helps me reach my audience. When I was on WP, my only readers were lost souls who stumbled across my portfolio. Now when I post on Tumblr, my Facebook friends see my posts and are able to comment on them through the Facebook UI. Their engagement motivates me to create/share more interesting material.
  • The meaning of blogging has shifted. No longer is it just about contributing content to the web. Now it’s about connecting with others by engaging with content that is of mutual interest. The outcome? A new way to define self-identity via technology, in which content assembled from other sources can help to define who you are.

A Badge That Tells Consumers, 'Trust This App' - NYTimes.com

TRUSTe Badges - another way to increase user confidence in mobile websites & apps. Good to hear that they’ve tailored it towards mobile-specific privacy concerns (location info, accessing contacts/calendars, etc.).

The badges will be big enough to see on a mobile phone and if cellphone owners click on them, they can read more information about how the site or app handles personal information. If they click on it again they can lodge a complaint with TRUSTe.

Latin Text Generator for Mac OS X - LittleIpsum

LittleIpsum is a simple lorem ipsum generator that uses an interesting interaction: When you mouse over the menu item (“Copy 1 word”), the label starts incrementing (“Copy 2 words… Copy 1 sentence… Copy 1 paragraph…”) Selecting the menu item again copies the specified amount of text to your clipboard. You get the right amount of Latin text literally in seconds!

Compare this to my previous method of getting Latin text: Google “lorem ipsum”, select a link, highlight the amount of text I need, copy to my clipboard, returning to the program I want to paste it into. Yuck.

What other apps/widgets have you found that make your life easier and more efficient?