What's about motivation?

    All of us have been strongly motivated by something: a girlfriend, a job, a journey... We must be motivated. The dictionary defines it as “mental rehearsal previous an accion to encourage yourself or someone else to do it with interest and dilligence”. So what can you do if you’re not motivated? Actually, nothing.

    In life, you also need motivation. Logically, there are people who have been less fortunate, and the pursuit of motivation has been an arduous task. Do you know the story of Nick Vujicik? It’s really impressive. There is a short film that we recommend with great pleasure, 20 minutes but it’s worth it:

    At work, as in life, motivation is essential (ask Appters :-) ). And motivation is not always about money; would an employee work harder if you paid him more money? Would an employee work less if you punished him if he doesn’t do his job properly? This situation is analyzed in the book "Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivated Us" .

    According to a study by MIT, when the job requires a mechanical work,  the more you pay the harder work you get. But this rule is distorted when the task requires mental effort, so this rule of thumb can’t be applied in these cases. And do not think that this occurs only in developed countries because the results in underdeveloped countries confirm the theory too. According to the author, the factors that need to be taken into account at work are focus on:

• Autonomy: give the employers enough autonomy to develop their work doing their utmost. The result, higher productivity. 
• Mastery: Why people spent their free time trying to improve  their hobby to the point that they dedicated a lot of hours of their spare time to it? People like to perfect what they like in the way they like. 
• Purpose: Find a reason not based on money to keep the worker motivated. The aim of the company not always must be the money, it can go further. Look at the Skype slogan "No more phone bills" 

    In startups, of course, motivation is key and... what better motivation to work than working on your cool new idea? Perhaps the fear of failure? Maybe your idea doesn’t end successfully in the end  because of different reasons, but it won’t be the last idea you will have and when one door shuts, another opens. For each idea backfired, many others are born that will surely lead you to safe harbor. As Paul Graham says, “historically, the opportunities to start startups have done nothing but increased over time”. So do not hesitate, go ahead and take the chance.

Usability is important, but could it kill me?

 We all remember our first steps as a programmers … who put enthusiasm about usability aspects? Existing technologies didn’t lead to it, and green color fills everything; at least it was green, hopefull green :-)

  I discovered the importance of usability with an university professor whose name I can’t remember, but I do remember the article that made me thought over usability: the one about the ballots for the elections in Florida state (see http://bit.ly/e1SXfq) ,  back in the Presidential race of 2000, and its importance in the final result, that left the world’s largest democracy in the hands of George W. Bush. Can such a country make that mistake? 

  Doubts aside, about the mistake and whether it was really made on purpose, what become clear is the importance ofusability, led perhaps to the largest of its consequences, the control of the first world economy power.

  But let’s go down to other levels, to which me and you, as an ordinary user, could concern the importance of usability; whatis behind an “human error”? facing some disasters, this is the term than is used to attribute to the cause of a specific accident, but, could it be this one due to a design error in some cases? We aren’t talking about a wrong-designed light switch - that of course exists - but for example, a system to close an emergency valve for gas emisions; a bad design can make the user do something wrong and the disaster happens, and this, happens, less and less, but happens. Not everybody comes from the same place, and has the same culture, that’s why all the factors must be taken into account to avoid that kind of situations.

  In technology, especially in software design, most of us won’t get into designs that can lead to some physical problem, but an occasional headache to the user, who eventually will choose another option more “usable”. Professionals are more and more aware of that kind of aspects, but the latest agile methods of sotware development, widely implemented, made in some ocassions  we don’t worry about this aspects at first to be done at last because the lack of time, a situation that might fit at some waterfall developments years ago, and that in the new models, can provoke the full redesign from the first stage of development, something undesireable, or excluding certain aspects, which can be fatal.

  If we merge the agile development model to the development of interfaces for applications with limited screen and hardware capabilities, the problem grows, because the programmer is used to do PC applications and web in devices with different capabilities that what we have now, and a wide range of users that are used to use them, and we have to take the challenge that they can, know and want to take advantage of those technologies.

  In the first week of Tetuan Valley, we saw how the main part of the projects are focused in the mobile devices development, and the methodology to use during the six weeks fits in the agile development. Let’s take into account usability aspects for our prototypes. Maybe we won’t physically die, as it’s said in the headline of this article, but the decision of an investor or bussiness angel about one idea or another might be highly influenced by that aspect, and there, you might be dead as a start-up.