Kathy Sierra presented key insights from her 2009 keynote at the NMC Summer conference. She argued companies should focus on helping users feel really good at something rather than focusing on products. She outlined 10 ways to help users get a higher, deeper, and richer experience with tools, including giving them superpowers quickly, making them smarter through challenges, and reflecting their feelings in documentation to make them feel good about themselves. The overall message was that companies should focus on empowering users and helping them gain expertise rather than just marketing products.

1. A summary of Kathy Sierra’s Keynote 2009 at NMC Summer conference faloiiii@gmail.com손민현

2. Which is better? A: How great company is… B: Or How great the product is… Secret answer C is… The users think “I kick ass”

3. Important thing is… A and B are not important Users want to be an expert of something But companies only focus on the products

4. What if? How? What do you want to be really, really good at? What if you helped people feel that they are good at something, how would you help users to do that?

5. Being better is better Being really good at something is very powerful to people The hi-resolution User Experience Become richer & deeper Being better is better Nobody focus on the things that they are not good at

6. The Kick Ass Curve Get that curves more quickly People don’t want to be tool experts. It’s about what our tools let them DO

7. Nikon camera The company show us brochures which have beautiful colors and pictures before we buy it After buy it, it gives us black and white manuals It is about taking pictures! Not about the camera

8. Let’s help people Convince people by all those cool pictures Let’s help them get really good at taking pictures But one problem is your brain is not your friend

9. The brain Your mind and brain are in an epic battle The brain is filtering everything coming out We should work against that What does the brain decide? We should get through that filter It’s not what you decide

10. Chemistry Brains are tuned to pay attention Feelings must be important Feelings of joy, excitement, thrill, laghter Brain does not care about codes, but faces Brain cares about Faces with codes

11. Cheap tricks A better cheap trick is to get people to have an emotional chemical reaction which is really relevant to the topics Conversational book made people remember the same contents better Think of anything that helps people get through the brain, pay attention

12. 10 Ways to help Users 10 ways to help users get higher deeper & richer experience 1. Focus on what the USER does, not what YOU do Don’t build a better [x], build a better [user of x] How do we build a better photographer, not a better camera? 2. Give them superpowers, quickly User must do something cool within 30 minutes

13. 10 Ways to help Users 3. Make them smarter What makes you smarter : brain training, puzzles Improves your brain’s thinking abilities Stand up with one leg -> just got smarter You just improved your balance We should think about how people get smarter

14. 10 Ways to help Users 4. Don’t focus on [x], ask what [x] is a subset of … What is the bigger thing that your topic is part of? How do we find the relevant thing? Focus on the bigger thing

15. 10 Ways to help Users 5. Shrink the 10,000 hours 2 ways to shrink the 10,000 hours : Learn the patterns, Shorten the duration Learn to do knowledge acquisition and representation Always be practicing After 1-2 years, experience is a poor predictor of performance/ expertise How much practice time on Tiger Woods’ strength vsweakness? 80% on his strength

16. 10 Ways to help Users 6. Make your product (or docs) reflect their feelings Reflect the way people are using it What FAQ/HELP think people feel – good How people actually feel – bad “Letting them off the hook” is a killer app How you make them feel about themselves drives how they feel about you

17. 10 Ways to help Users 7. How do you get them to answer and ask questions? No dumb questions, No dumb Answers Just try it, take a chance it’s a part of how you learn We allow them to feel comfortable to answer or ask questions Get higher resolution experience – users become an expert and come back to help newbies

18. 10 Ways to help Users 8. Do NOT insist on ‘inclusivity’ Passionate users “talk different” Mesuring community success Success==more users kicking ass 9. Make the right thing easy, wrong thing difficult It’s not in the corner because you don’t use it, you don’t use it because it’s in the corner Make it easy for users to have a breakthrough than to stay where they are

19. 10 Ways to help Users 10. Total immersion jams Frequency matters 16 hours over two days vs 16 hours over two months Always be closing Less camp, more jams “The surest way to guarantee nothing interesting happens is to assume you know exactly how to do it” Finally… 11. Be brave