1. Davide ‘Folletto’ Casali
TEAMWORK
AT THE EXTREMES
WORDPRESS·COM & UX FOR GOOD

2. Manifesto Ibridi
F E L L O W
UX REDIRECTOR
NIGHT.EU
ADVISOR

3. @Folletto

4. THE REMOTENESS CONTINUUM
Distributed
100%
Local
100%
Remote
in between

5. AUTOMATTIC
PART I

6. 2015

7. 468
People
worldwide
~160k
Messages
per week
~1,000
Deployments
per week

9. WHAT IS CALYPSO?
Modern foundation for WordPress.com
NODE.JS · REACT · REST API
OPEN SOURCE SINCE NOVEMBER 2015

10. 127
Contributors
26,030
Commits
6,915
Reviews
March 2014 → November 2015 (20 months)
20
Months to v1

11. …how did you do that?
You’re fully distributed…

12. Story
of a
Showcase

14. HYPERION

15. THE PROBLEM

16. Themes

17. v2.0

18. THX

19. v4.0v4.0

20. 3 codebases
DIFFICULT
TO MAINTAIN
3 designs
PAINFUL
FOR USERS

21. Create one single
Theme Showcase
for WordPress.com

22. STEP 1:
PLANNING

23. Meetups:
face time is important
Know your people

24. VIENNA MEETUP
14 April 2015

25. Epic Milestone Model
Only user-facing
features
One
major feature
Many smaller
details & fixes

27. “
”
Steve Seear, Hyperion
I found this session really valuable.
It was intense, challenging,
and led on to a lot more discussions.

28. “
”
Miguel Fonseca, Hyperion
+1000 on the value and ROI
of our meetup exercises.

29. STEP 2:
FIRST MILESTONE

30. Clear
Communication Spaces
Communication is Oxygen

31. Slack
Realtime
P2 Theme
Async
Wiki Theme
Stable
P2 W

32. If it’s not communicated
transparently, it doesn’t exist
Everything is treated as remote

33. INITIAL ROADMAP
POSTED ON TEAM P2

34. MASTER THREAD
POSTED ON TEAM P2

36. DESIGNITERATION1

37. DESIGNITERATION2

38. DESIGNITERATION3

39. DESIGNITERATION4

40. DESIGNITERATION5

41. ITERATIONS POSTED ON P2

42. FEEDBACK TRANSPARENT
25
11
15
10
28
9
1
16

43. Horizon
External Testing
JULY 21JULY 15
Automattic
Internal Testing

44. M1 LAUNCHED
3 August 2015

45. THEME SHOWCASE M1
IN NUMBERS
5
Design
Iterations
11
Horizon
Testers
6
Automattic
Testers
100+
Feedbacks &
Comments
124
GitHub
Tickets
85
GitHub
Pull Requests

46. THEME SHOWCASE M1
TIMELINE
LIVE
~3.5 months
Meetup
4 days

47. THEME SHOWCASE M1
SALES CHECK

48. UX FOR GOOD
PART II

49. “Apply UX design to the most important
problems in the world”
Jason
Ulaszek
Jeff
Leitner

50. Focus
on one thing
Communicate it well

51. ONE NO·PROFIT PARTNER
TO SPONSOR THE CAUSE

52. Highly independent
individuals
Initiative and motivation

53. 10 DESIGNERS
FROM ALL AROUND THE WORLD

54. Discovery
Synthesis
Creation
Validation

55. +
FULL
IMMERSION
2-3 DAYS 2-3 DAYS
GROUP
SYNTHESIS
4 5 61 2 3

56. Zero
waste
No bureaucracy, everything useful

57. “
”
Jason Kunesh, Obama For America
We came together as a team
in a way that I haven’t experienced
anywhere else.

58. “
”
Marianne Prins, Van Horne Elementary School
I just witnessed
an absolute explosion of ideas.

59. CAN WE DESIGN
THE COMMON GOOD?
2011
Chicago
StreetWise · Adler School · The Third Teacher · Cease Fire · Global Lives Project

60. CAN WE ENRICH LIVES
OF WORKING MUSICIANS?
2012
New Orleans
Grammy Foundation · New Orleans Jazz Heritage F. & F. · Clinton Global Initiative · MusiCares

61. CAN WE GROW
MINDFULNESS IN SCHOOLS?
2013
Vancouver
The Dalai Lama Center for Peace + Education

62. CAN WE HARNESS FEELINGS
TO END GENOCIDE?
2014
Kigali & London
Aegis Trust

63. 2014 Kigali

64. 500,000–1,000,000 RWANDANS KILLED
70% TUTSI
20% OF POPULATION
100 DAYS
1994

65. “In my family, we never talked about the genocide
It was too fresh in my parents’ mind”

66. And you saved the life
of the people I was planning on killing”
“You saved my life.
- Child of victims to teacher of mobile education

67. “I came back and my grandmother says,
I hope you got that Africa out of your system.
But at that moment,
I realized it was there and growing.
So I moved my family here and opened a school”
- KGM Visitor

68. “Users go through the hard part,
but then also the uplifting part
realizing some of the possibilities that are there”
- Morley Hanson, Aegis Trust

69. UX FOR GOOD 2014
IN NUMBERS
40+
Interviews
with staff and locals
90
Flights
worldwide
15
People forever
changed
3,124
Post-its
and flip-charts
500+
Hours
of research
96
Servings of
french fries

70. INZOVU
CURVE

71. HopeReflectionPain Action

72. Pain

73. Reflection

74. Hope

75. Action

76. “
”
Prof. Dr. Tania Singer
People with a lot of empathy
want to change that to compassion
so they don't get overwhelmed when
confronted with suffering.

77. EMPATHETIC
Feeling
COMPASSIONATE
Action

78. The Inzovu Curve maps a
prototypical journey of a
person going through a
transformative experience
reaching a state of
motivation and action.

79. The word Inzovu
means Elephant in
Kinyarwanda, the native
language of Rwanda.

81. EPIPHANY
WILL
CONNECT
WITH YOUR LIFE
MOTIVATION
TO ACT

83. AWARE
TOURIST
EMPATHIC
TOURIST
ADVOCATE
CATALYST
GENOCIDE
CHILDRENFIRST
GEN
AFFECTED
RWANDANS
UNAWARE
TOURIST

84. inzovucurve.org

85. PRINCIPLES
PART III

86. Remote Local
Months of Work Days of Work
Know each other First time meeting
Smaller group Larger group
No client Has client

87. BOTH WORK.

88. THE REMOTENESS CONTINUUM
Distributed
100%
Local
100%
Remote
in between

89. A separate floor, office, city, country…
MAKES THE COMPANY
ALREADY REMOTE

90. Meet in person
Communication spaces
Transparency

91. Focus on one thing
Independent individuals
Zero waste

92. Pick whatever works… then improve it.

93. automattic.com/jobs
Happiness Engineer
JavaScript Engineer
Mobile Developer
Product Designer
Code Wrangler
Theme Wrangler
Enterprise Growth Engineer
Technical Account Engineer
Performance Marketing
Marketing Designer
Events Wrangler

94. Thanks.
@Folletto
INTENSEMINIMALISM.COM