nothing to see here. please move along.

this is a test for groupM

Skype frequently fails for those of us who use it on shoddy internet connections like the neighbors wifi or free public access. it’s promise is that it happily connects loved ones from miles away, and when it works it is magical.
@spamandynyc recently discovered it’s joys with here best friend in New Orleans, and for her first experience i told her to establish the callback protocol – who is calling who back if the connection drops. Of course she thought this was geeky and weird, shusshing me as she started her first call – but quickly soon after discovered taht it is in fact very useful.

In reading a book on game theory this morning – I read this very conundrum, only with wire phones and not Skype and that’s when it hit me:
Skype should implement a callback setting for every session – asking the initiating user if they would like to be in charge of callbacks if and when the call drops.
this sets the immediate standard and lets everyone know what is going on from the get-go. In the case of ‘I am calling you and you are not answering and i don’t know what is wrong’ – cause the other user is calling you at the same time and they are being cancelled out – skype will win out in customer understanding.

I know this because on the first drop, I saw @spamandynyc dialing back frantically, and skype responding with an ‘unknown error’ of some sort.

if the girls had known what to expect and what was going on from the beginning – then the whole experience would have been better. @spamandy’s friend would have been notified that her friend was going to be calling back in a matter of seconds – and @spamandynyc would have been told that the call had dropped and asked if she wanted to retry or send a message (something like: I would be calling back, but the dog really needs to go out – i’ll call you later).

I know that for many of the companies that I work for, the fear of a bad user experience leads us to pretend the experience does not exist at all or over complicate. I think that if [realistic] expectations are set in the beginning, and all parties know what could happen, how to identify what did happen, and how to best deal with what happened; the experience as a whole is much better. Even if there was (gasp) a failure.

instead – so many of our applications give us errors like: ‘unknown error #21′ and the average user then blames the tech that they are currently using, and promptly facebooks ’stupid technology x, never again’.

I am making a list of the qualities/categories of qualities that we as a society reward people for. This is for a new social app/game I am building called Kayvaa that lets people give social dap, props, kudos, etc…

Here is what I have so far, can you think of more?

• environmental
• financial
• manners
• business
• standing up
• equality
• awareness
• mover
• kindness – nice guy
• sexy/hot
• fashionable
• daring
• honesty
• bravity
• innovation
• social intelligence
• individuality
• technically saavy
• spiritual

what is kayvaa?
Kayvaa in short is a social high-five, exchanged digitally amongst friends and strangers alike for simply being awesome in one way or another.

Kayvaa is a game that is played by both friends and strangers via the web and mobile networks. The game itself is distributed in that you do not have to come to the site to use it. It should be used in your daily life via mobile and text and on the web. The idea is that in your daily routine or out with friends, you often give each other props, dap, cred, cool points or some variant thereof. Kayvaa is the system that sets rules and keeps the points digitally for this social game that we all play – and allows everyone to play. Kayvaa dap, points, what have you are given to friends that you have made and acquired through the site or it may be given to strangers who have done something that deserves recognition. The underlying principal is to allow people to be recognized for their actions, if the actions benefit the society as a whole.

DESIGN:

version 2 is up, it will get more colour (mandy…) and some more nav in the coming days.

GOT COMMENTS ON THE DESIGN (of kayvaa, I know the blog is tacky) ? LET ME KNOW IN THE COMMENTS BELOW!

what is kayvaa?
Kayvaa in short is a social high-five, exchanged digitally amongst friends and strangers alike for simply being awesome in one way or another.

Kayvaa is a game that is played by both friends and strangers via the web and mobile networks. The game itself is distributed in that you do not have to come to the site to use it. It should be used in your daily life via mobile and text and on the web. The idea is that in your daily routine or out with friends, you often give each other props, dap, cred, cool points or some variant thereof. Kayvaa is the system that sets rules and keeps the points digitally for this social game that we all play – and allows everyone to play. Kayvaa dap, points, what have you are given to friends that you have made and acquired through the site or it may be given to strangers who have done something that deserves recognition. The underlying principal is to allow people to be recognized for their actions, if the actions benefit the society as a whole.

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