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’.

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

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!

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.

The game started for me in college, my friends and I would pass out cool points to one another for various daring deeds for young men: talking to hot girls, eating food that everyone agreed was disgusting, coming out of a class with a good grade even though we clearly did not deserve it, knocking out a project, or actually helping someone. While in New York I found there were a lot of people that I would award points to – especially on the subway where you see many small acts of kindness. Men giving their seats to elderly ladies because it’s the polite thing to do, ladies giving their seats to men so they could sit by their wives and children, anyone moving for or helping with a stroller.
These acts all make our society as a whole a kind one. Doing these things is often a reward in itself, receiving a ‘thank you’ is nice, and many times the smile of an onlooking stranger feels good.

But what about other things that you personally feel promotes a good society?

In one instance in particular I saw a guy wearing a shirt that was simply kick ass. Now, shirts themselves do not make a society better. Individuality however, does make a society more colorful and tolerant, and that is what I wanted to award. This is when the problem arose –the complexity of the situation on top of the social norms of the subway simply would not allow me to give this guy the props he deserved. So I decided there needed to be a social medium of exchange that could be easily and unobtrusively given to either friends or strangers.

The system should on a base level do the same thing that a simple compliment should do, tell the other person that you respect them in some way for something that they are doing.

This is a relatively easy technical problem to solve for friends – joining a social network that keeps points and finding friends that you can connect with. And then assign points as needed.

But how do I assign those points to users who I do not know – who may not even be on this service?
How can I assign those points to someone who I know digitally, but not IRL? These are the problems that Kayvaa wishes to solve, and are addressed in the technical and players sections of this document and.

Kayvaa provides a means to socially reward others for awesomeness.

The rules:
for the kayvaa system to be successful, there needs to be a set of rules that the users will be technically bound to.
1.A user can give dap, cool points, whatever, in one, five, ten, twenty, fifty or one hundred increments.
2.A user may only give as much dap in 30 days as he or she has at the beginning of thos 30 days
3.points can be given to friends via kayvaa, twitter username, facebook app, or the kayvaa app on iphone or android.
4.Dap is given to strangers via kayvaa keys: with extra points awarded to the giver and the receiver for moving out of their social confort zone and giving props to someone that they do not know.

How you get points:
dap points may be given for:
anything you think is cool or socially positive
predefined dap categories which carry badges (see modifiers)
initial signup (you must be kind of cool if…)
giving dap to someone else (+1)
pointleader
of friends
of a category
overall
of reaching out to strangers
friending other users
new user because of you

the players:
this system provides some interesting ‘puzzles’ for many players. Here I will outline the types of players – the challenges that each one of them face, and how Kayvaa addresses each one of those players’ issues

I.initial players
the initial players face the largest challenge. These early adopters are crucial to the system as a whole – no only for their playing, but for finding issues and providing feedback, and acting as recruiters for the kayvaa system. It is important that Kayvaa provide these individuals with easy methods fo adoption and point transfers so that the system will grow. To handle this Kayvaa will be able to award points via twitter username and via Kayvaa keys as well as the mobile application.
To award points via twitter username the sender simply tweets @recipient @kayvaa personal note +10 for the reason the dap was given. Kayvaa will then pick up this tweet and assign the points in the database to that twitter username. If the recipient chooses to sign up for a kayvaa account – they will be notified that there are already points for the twitter name that they have entered – and once they link their Kayvaa and twitter accounts together they will be able to claim those points. The Kayvaa twitter monitor will also retweet the award and congratulate the recipient for their award – as well as provide some helpful hint for using the kayvaa system.

For the giving of points irl to people who do not use twitter or who the giver does not know – the user may give a kayvaa keys which are explained more in depth in the kayvaa keys section.

II.friends IRL
friends in real life will be able to exchange kayvaa using the same as above – twitter username and kayvaa keys.

III.friends via Kayvaa
friends who are connected on the kayvaa nework will be able to exchange very easily using either the above methods, or by using their mobile applications where they will simply choose the user they wish to send dap to from their list of friends or via an autocompleting To: form field.

IV.Digital friends
friends who know one another digitally can publish their kayvaa usernames. Other users who wish to send them social dap will be able to go to kayvaa.com/username to see the user’s profile and award the user with social dap there.

V. Strangers
the primary medium for the exchange of social dap in this situation will be the kayvaa key.

modifiers
Kayvaa has several kinds of dap predetermined – kinds of points that we think are base level and necessary for the operation of a decent society. While users can tag the dap that they give with any tag they feel accurately describes the award, tagging dap with these categories will signal kayvaa to give them a badge for the category that the dap was associated with and award extra points (modifiers) for making the system and our society awesome.

These categories are:
environmental
monetary
manners
business
standing up
equality
awareness
mover
kindness
sexy/hot
daring
honesty
bravity
innovation
social intelligence
individuality
technically saavy
spiritual

What kayvaa dap does for the user.
Dap is first and foremost it’s own reward. Since the game is already played in one form or another between friends and colleagues, digitizing it will only make it more enjoyable – giving the players to see in real time how well they are doing and allowing for the publication of the game itself and the results. By offering rewards and incentives amongst friends Kayvaa will only increase the competition. Kayvaa will also tweet out winners daily and at the end of the 30 day spans to keep other users interested and playing.

Secondly, to quote a very intelligent associate of mine – never underestimate the power of numbers on a web page (Jared Klett – blip.tv). People today are always clamoring for more in terms of social networks. Number of friends on facebook, followers on twitter, readers and comments on blogs and tumbalarity on tumblr. Kayvaa will provide a fun and socially rewarding game – but there will have to be more.

Once the service is about a year old there will have to be rewards for users to not only continue playing but competing. This will be the intersection of the kayvaa categories and brands. A brand can sponsor a category for a 30 day span, offering the users awards for the most points nationally. For instance Dell computer could offer up a laptop for the user with the most points in the technology category. Dell would not only receive the exposure for offering the winner a laptop – but each dap given in that category for the duration would be sponsored by dell – offering promotion on all of the social networks that the users have linked to their Kayvaa accounts.

Kayvaa keys.
Kayvaa keys are an integral part of the system – while the system is techniacally simple for people who are members of the kayvaa community and even for those who are not by leveraging other networks such as twitter – the point of the system is to provide a means of propegating awareness and the reward of social awesomeness. This means that all people deserve that reward and the recognition of others regardless of whether or not they are on the Kayvaa network. The kayvaa key is a kechain like medal that can be associated with points to be awarded via an imprinted qr code. Even if the recipient does not know what it is or what it is for – it can be understood very easily by following the instructions on the key.
The sender will scan the code on the key using the kayvaa website or the mobile application and then fill in the details – title, description, tags, points. Location and time will be automatically filled. Then, once the recipient has the key they can find the details that were entered by the sender by visiting the Kayvaa website and entering the key number or scanning the qr code that is printed on the key with their mobile device.

Kayvaa keys can be given and received publicly (with the user’s Kayvaa username associated) or privately (without the username associated). This allows a person to give or accept a compliment without linking to the other user.
This concept is crucial to the users in that it truly links real life with the web. Once Kayvaa users get used to seeing and using qr codes – kayvaa will have paved the way for printable dap – imagine a world where a user can get dap from a brand as the brand will be able to print this code inside their product packaging to reward users for purchases or enter them into product promotions or giveaways. Kayvaa will be the gateway for all of this.
Kayvaa keys will be laser cut and printed on ¾ inch plastic in various colors and potentially sponsored by various brands to offset cost. Users who sign up for the service will be given 10 keys each to start with and will be able to request more by visiting the web site.

taking some notes from this article – here are my thoughts

lots of ideas are cool, but only a few of them will actually fly. By conducting some very simple research it will be easy to separate the wheat from the chaff.

Gather:

marketing research is about determining who will use the product or service that you are building, determining how many of those people are out there, and figuring out a way to get in front of them. Ultimately, what we are trying to do is determine if there are enough people in the world that you can reach who will pay you for your product or service. To find that number we need to define them very carefully and cross section all of that data to put together an estimate for a potential market.
right here the article goes a bit blurry, and says that your should research based on what your product or service is. For my type of work I want to form some general assumptions about my customer and then find the number of people who fit that assumption. For instance, the last business idea i wrote out was for the digital business card link (Jiminie, i need a new name for that). After familiarizing yourself with the idea we can come to some general conclusions about the people who might use that. I would assume that they use business cards to make contacts (owners, marketers, salespeople, freelancers to start), want to be reached in multiple ways (digital – chat, url, email, blog  and IRL- phone, fax, mail), have additional information to share (links of interest, resume’s, business reviews, portfolios/samples),  and are too pressed for time,  not technically competent enough or do not have the authority to set up some form of this on their own (brand blog, company blog, whatever). so i need to find out the number of salesmen and women, business owners, marketers, and freelancers who do not have an easy to find public page on a public facing website or who want to present some additional information that is important for a new contact. Now i need to determine how many of those people are early adopters and would be willing to use the service – and how many of those are willing to add something onto their cards instead of the information they currently present. As you can see while i think the idea is cool, it’s going to be a few special people that would use it. Is that set of people large enough for me to make a profit? if the answer is yes, move on to:

Analyze:

There are 4 major vantage points that you should see your product from:

1. company: think of how the product/service will be presented to the end user. this includes features/promises, the ‘personality’ of your brand, and the promises that you intend to fulfill.
2. customer: there are three different customers that you will have to think about, if they are all the same person – you are really lucky OR you’re not doing it right.
   • purchaser – the one writing the check for your product/service
   • influencer – the one who will influence the decision to purchase
   • end user – the actual person who will be using the product or service.
3. competition: again, three types.
   • direct- these people are doing the same thing that you are doing, sign up for their service and see what they do. particularly what they are doing better, write that down and top it. as for what they are doing worse, improve on that immediately. For their marketing, look at any public data they have provided: public talks the ceo has given, associations they belong to, data about their intended customer base that they list on their site, and public postings (blog or whatever) that could lead you to understand who they think their market is – and therefore help you understand who your market is.
   • secondary – these people are doing something similar or could take customers away, take notes as to what they would have to do to compete directly with you and reevaluate that every week/month/quarter, whatever. also watch your customers and see if they are using the product or service as well as yours. if so, ask why and consider incorporating that into your offering.
   • tertiary – they slightly resemble your offering – just keep an eye on them and move them into a secondary position if you start seeing a trend in marketing or customer base that resembles yours
4. collaborators: associations, media and other organizations that do not compete with you or make a profit when you do, but are going after the same customers. Watch what they do and how they market and take cues from the more successful ones. Often you may be able to purchase lists of data about their customers. In the least – look at who they are marketing to and how to determine whether or not there are techniques that seem more successful or data that can help you better estimate your market.

found it – check out my chi.mp profile.

UPDATE:

Rethinking this it seems that the need for a qr code and new cards are actually in the way of the end result, which is to present a lot of contact information that needs to go in a small space. perhaps the best way to think of this is as a protocol, not necessarily a service – with a vanity name or number that will deliver all of the information that was to be presented to the user’s database of choice. if i had a card that had name, number, company url and a digitalcontact id of 5546 – entering 5546 into the website or mobile app would just import all of that information, additional links, and an image of the contact and the card into my preferred dB. So like a vCard: this is just an expanded version. removing the qr code removes technical hurdles (how do i use this?) and physical hurdles (if have to go through another company to get my cards made now) and allows the end user to provide one simple line of text that will connect the card holder to lots of importable and useful information.

Business cards are not going anywhere for a long time. there has been many attempts to try and replace them with digital alternatives such as beaming a vCard from phone to phone. But honestly have you ever had someone offer you a digital business card alternative of any kind and then been able to retrieve or reuse it? Did it feel the same as the exchange of an actual business card? Handing someone your card has always been a very personal gesture – one that solidifies a meeting and possibly  a prospective relationship. It is somewhat an institution in and of it’s own.

Elegantly presenting all of the information that we like to present in this digital age however, is a bit of a task – but since i have seen the introduction and funding of stickyBits has given me the idea of connecting the traditional business card with the rest of our digital identities, using the same sort of technology (qrCode possibly).

Applying a generic sticker to a stack of cards is not only impersonal but a quite a hassle. If one could order new cards with a digital stamp already added that would link the card holder (either via some sort of recognition built into card scanning software, via mobile device with mobile image recognition software, or with a number/shortcode of some sort in case you do not have the ability to use either of the above).

the link would be to a digital representation of the user who presented the card with whatever social connection information they choose to share (even imagine setting preferences for individual users, based on their email address or some other identifying information).  the site itself is an index, but not necessarily an open one – the key to the connection is the card, and you can only browse basic information until the user has presented you with a card. Access to this would allow you to add all of the users contact information (whatever they have chosen to share with you) to whatever info database they keep.

All this seems complex, but there is already scanning software and libraries built for iphone, android and i am sure windows and mac. The cards themselves would be printed by a third party (white label and drop shipping done for me) and the site would start as a simple frontend (photo, links, about me, about my business) with a simple backend to setup these links and information.

There is an argument to be made that several websites already serve this purpose. Facebook, myspace, my personal blog. All of these spaces are places where we open up portions of our lives to our friends and people who know me. Linked in has this possibility but i do not feel that they are taking their position to the fullest and are expecting people to connect with their website and with others on their site.

The key to this would be offering a professional look and feel, and not be cheesy. The brand should be one that is prestigious and that the user should be proud to be affiliated with. Ordering the cards should be as easy as ordering professional quality business cards or sending us a card to recreate with the (insert the brandname here) digital mark added to it. Introductory cards and services should be free just to get users in.

Comments and suggestions always appreciated.

all of these things together define my daily routine and then turn into: why is this situation happening?

now if i had a small app that asked me these questions every day, and i could respond with a yes/no, or a number indicate if the response applied to today or yesterday – i start to gain some quantitative data about how my life is going. why was i having a bad week? well, i had 5 cups of coffee every day and went to sleep after 12 most days. at the end of the week I can assume that I have to cut back on coffee and go to bed earlier – or my week will be bad.

I could keep a diary – but that is another thing to do.

if there was an app that allowed me to set some basic questions – and the app asked me daily, then i am keeping a diary of statistical data without the hassle.

the interface would be simple – question and answer, day that it pertains to (today or yesterday), room for a small note to explain further if needed, and a way to dismiss the question all together: something like ‘i am done tracking this’ which would remove the question from the que.
A review, which should be sent weekly, should look at all of the data i am tracking in a calendar and quantitative view. with that data i could hopefully gain some insight into my habits and make some changes for the positive.

so this would be sort of a daily diary twitter style – not a bunch of thoughts written out that i have to go back an re- read, but conscise data in a graph that shows instances per day and their outcome. simple really – a quantitative overview of my habits and their results.

I want to get to the end of the week/month/year whatever and say (with coffee for instance) – i had an average of 3 cups per day, and i was OK – but in sept i moved to 5 per day and started having bad weeks. the 3rd week of sept i started smoking 6 cigarettes per day, probably because i was having bad weeks due to the extra coffee.

if twitter is a concise insight into my thoughts, then this would be a concise insight into my habits.

The Deets:

the app should naturally start on the web, with an xml output that could be used for mobile and desktop versions.

users could sign up – set their initial questions (public/private) and possible responses, and set their question delivery method and time. (cakePHP)
links to livst.at/nathan would see my public questions and graphs
desktop app in air gathers questions from web api and has ability to display at a set time
mobile versions (android,iphone) should be quickly following
widget to embed on my blog/facebook for a particular question or set of questions
api ()
all answer methods should be aware if the daily set has been answered – i.e. my android phone would not ask me if it checked the db and saw that i already answered (by desktop or email). so i don’t get a bajillion popups all asking me the same thing.
public questions and responses could be autoposted to twitter

how will it make money: ads, silly. then sell to yahoo. Profit!