Product Thursday: Designing with Emotion

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I just finished reading Designing for Emotion, which contains a number of interesting examples about how design can be used to evoke emotion. There are a few cool examples in the book, but the one that stood out to me most was Apple’s implementation of their blinking sleep status indicator. This has been documented before (and patented back in 2002), but if anyone has wondered why their Macbook’s sleep indicator was strangely comforting it’s because the pulsating rhythm is based on the respiratory rate of a human (12-20 cycles per minute).

At Shelby, one of our core values is “be human” - this applies in the way we carry ourselves in the larger startup community, internally with our team and also in the way we approach building product.  This is a product philosophy that I’m increasingly taking to heart and one that I think has to be at the center of transformative technology products in slower-moving, low-tech industries.  

Take healthcare, for example. There are a ton of technology companies building solutions for the healthcare enterprise (I used to work at one), but most are just focused on performing a specific task and not providing enjoyable UX. As Aaron Walter says in Designing for Emotion, “certainly we all want to eat edible foods with nutritional value, but we also crave flavor.” Based on my experience, design of healthcare IT systems has been focused on making products that are “edible” - they get the job done but they’re pretty crappy in terms of creating an experience that physicians feel they can’t live without.  It’s no surprise to see that adoption of healthcare tech is slow. I believe there’s a huge opportunity for better, more human design to help speed the adoption of healthcare tech among a physician population that is short on time and patience.

Anyone else have other examples of industries waiting to be transformed by designing with emotion?

#Sandy Coverage and Relief

shelbytv:

To all of our Shelby viewers and fans

What a week it was in NYC. We hope you are safe and well. For those affected by the hurricane, we send you our best wishes towards a speedy recovery.

This past week, Shelby viewers shared some incredible video of the storm, the aftermath, and the inspiring relief efforts. It’s pretty eye-opening to see.

So, we created a Hashtag Roll of video for #Sandy. It aggregates all the videos about Sandy that have been shared by viewers this past week. It also offers an easy way to help - we include a link to donate to Red Cross disaster relief right within Shelby.

We’re donating and we hope you do, too. 

Sincerely, 

Team Shelby

I can’t think of any place on earth that I’d rather be in than NYC. There’s some really inspiring and powerful video on this roll we created - check it out and please donate to help relief efforts in and around areas affected by the hurricane.  

Here are a few really powerful videos if you’re interested (there are a ton more on the roll):

Wishing everyone affected by the hurricane a speedy recovery.

<3 you, NYC.

A Second Round of Funding

shelbytv:

“Your people are your most important asset.”

“Business is about people.”

“Invest in people.”

We’ve all heard it 1000 times. With that in mind, we only want to work with great people, be it our team, our partners, or our investors.

At Shelby, our investors — Rich Levandov and Brady Bohrmann of Avalon Ventures, along with a great group of angels — have been exactly the right guys to have on our side, which is why we are very happy to announce that we have closed a second round of funding with them totaling $2.2M.

While much of what we have accomplished is not yet public-facing, we have made a ton of technical progress in the past year and this round allows us to stay focused and continue to build upon our vision for video discovery.

We could not be more excited about the team we have put together, the product we are developing, and the opportunity ahead of us. For now, we will still expect nothing, earn everything, and get back to building… 

Thanks to our friends, family, and investors who have supported us over the past year and a half. Most of all, thanks to Reece and Dan for leading the kind of company that I’m proud to be associated with.  Excited to keep building with such a fantastic group of people.  

First Comes The Dream

Last Thursday night I had the incredible opportunity to see Neil DeGrasse Tyson speak at the Hayden planetarium here in New York about brining STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering & Math) to more people and making it a deeper part of our culture. The theme of the event was “First Comes the Dream.” 


One of my favorite comments of the night was when Neil remarked:

“the extent to which entertainment reaches for the lowest mental acuity is an indication we are not reaching high enough.”  

I agree completely.

Neil went on to advocate for pop culture as an effective tool to bring people into real education and I got to thinking about how this dovetails pretty nicely with some of our goals at Shelby.  

We strongly believe in the power of the internet to surface content that does reach high enough (in part because discovery driven by the user). While a video of a wolf playing with a bear might just be written off as cute to some, it can also act as inspiration for those that want to understand more than they see in the video. When such a video is presented in a collection of video about nature and science, it acts as an entry point that then engages the viewer in something more meaningful for the rest of their viewing session.  In addition, the experience of Internet video is not just about the content itself - it’s also about the community and discussion that happens around this video and engages people even more (I’m looking at you, Reddit).

Though the team at Shelby is not (yet) building a spacecraft that will take us on manned missions to Mars, we are really focused on helping everyone (not just the tech enabled) find and engage with the video that tickles the brain more than the average bit of network TV.  I’m excited to keep after that vision with Reece and Dan and I’m looking forward to seeing the new Shelby unleashed upon the world.

For a full video of Neil’s talk, check out the embed at the top of this post. Thanks to the awesome crew at Brew PR and Gizmodo for helping put this event together!

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