Web iWays - Chronicles of the making of a software start-up » Chronicle

Looking for bloggers’ input

J-G — Tue, 06 Oct 2009 19:10:51 +0000

After a few cycles of “features development –> user testing –> features update” with friends and family, I’m excited to announce the tool mock-up is now ready for testing with a wider audience.
If you are an active blogger interested in debating topics through your blog, this tool is for you and now is your chance to influence its design. Let’s talk!

Send me an email at input@webiways.com with the URL of your blog and a few dates and times that would work for you. Or better yet, let’s meet at BlogWorld in Las Vegas next week if you’re there.

Typical sessions consist of:
- Showing you an introductory video of the tool
- Getting your reactions in real time

Talk to you soon!

J-G

Getting to the core

J-G — Sat, 05 Sep 2009 03:26:45 +0000

Looking for patentable features led me to pinpoint the core of the difference between what I wanted to build and what had been done before. And then, writing the patent application encouraged me to look at alternate ways it could be done or used.

In the process, I found new ways of looking at the problem.

So I ended up with two very different paper prototypes, on the two extremes: one very visual relying on 3D, and one minimalist.

At that point, I showed the prototypes to many of my friends and got a lot of useful feedback. Thank you all!

The reaction to the 3D approach was black or white and directly related to the viewer’s way of thinking: architects and visual artists loved it, and other people felt uncomfortable with it.

But everybody understood the minimalist approach in a flash and could relate to it.

Concerned about my limited resources and the human interaction complexity of a new kind of 3D workspace, I chose to start with the minimalist approach.

i-Storm: a visual brainstorming environment and more

J-G — Tue, 01 Sep 2009 06:40:37 +0000

I let ideas build upon one another, finding many different paths to explore. The only constraint I imposed was that of a certain design unity, to keep things pretty and as intuitive as possible.

After a while, I reached the end of the definition (on paper) of a feature set that I thought was powerful and pretty.

Then, I immersed myself in the incredible resources of the University of Berkeley library system (freely accessible to the community) to see what the scientific community had to say about the topic. Well, it is a huge topic with lots of interesting research, but I didn’t see anything providing the features and benefits of what I had come up with.

I looked at all the creativity tools I could find and did not see anything close there either. So I made a list of all the things I thought I should patent and came up with a few.

I read David Pressman’s “Patent It Yourself” book and sent two preliminary patent applications to the US patent office. David’s book was very clear and complete, but the process took several months and lots of work!

House repairs, putting ideas on paper

J-G — Sun, 30 Aug 2009 06:03:46 +0000

The good news is: we got a good price on the house, relatively speaking. The bad news is: it had more than $20,000 worth of dry rot and termite damage repair. And the house was a little small for the 5 of us.

So we spent our first few months doing major house repairs and home improvement projects. Luckily, the weather cooperated nicely.

In parallel, I started putting on paper and developing various ideas about a visual tool to help people think, based on my use of creativity tools, systems modeling, object oriented programming, and a 3D computer environment I had been involved with at Intel:

The Miramar workspace environment

Selecting a place of residence

J-G — Sun, 16 Aug 2009 05:38:59 +0000

Our criteria were:

Nurturing start-up environment
Great public schools and university system for the kids
Proximity of a university for continued education

We preselected Boston, the Washington DC area and the Bay area. We spent 3 to 5 days in each location. The choice was difficult, each place having its advantages.

My wife fell in love with a Victorian house full of character in Newton, Mas. Washington had the best public schools, but I felt much more comfortable starting a computer business in the Bay area. I had 5 times more LinkedIn contacts in the Bay area than in DC or Boston. Also (and surprisingly!) we were able to find housing we could afford and great public schools near the university of Berkeley.

Consequently, we relocated to the charming town of Albany, next to Berkeley, CA.