Mental Space at Launch: The Bigelow Window

A quick chat w/ the Sharatoga Tech Talk community regarding attention, psychology and supporting new products.

1. Mental Space and Product Launch ! The Bigelow Window
2. Simon Ouderkirk @saouderkirk ouderkirk.co Intro self Work @ Automattic Work physically @ Sharatoga
3. Let’s Chat - More of a workshop, want to chaw on an idea, not here to preach to you. - Going to chat, talk about Time a little, try to define the Bigelow Window, then talk about it afterwards. - Icebreak? - How many devs? How many managers (product or project?) Other? What other? - What are your dev cycles? How long do you focus on a product? - Chat a bit, get to know folks. Next Slide: Cleaning Example
4. - Cleaning House Example - Everyone know what I mean? - OK, let’s talk about software :)
5. 0 1 2 3 4 -4 weeks -3 weeks -2 weeks -1 Week Launch! +1 Week +2 Weeks+3 Weeks+4 Weeks - Let’s talk about a roughly 4 week development cycle - Here’s a launch for one product or feature, and we can see the next launch on the horizon - As someone building software, at what point do you want to identify bugs? - Early, right? Before the launch anyway
6. 0 2.5 5 7.5 10 -4 weeks -3 weeks -2 weeks -1 Week Launch! +1 Week +2 Weeks+3 Weeks+4 Weeks - blue = dev eyes, green = management eyes (maybe one project & one product) - they don’t begin at the top, coming off of the last product - We can use this to more precisely ID where we’d want bug reports (next slide)
7. 0 2.5 5 7.5 10 -4 weeks -3 weeks -2 weeks -1 Week Launch! +1 Week +2 Weeks+3 Weeks+4 Weeks Bug Reports Ideal - blue = dev eyes, green = management eyes (maybe one project & one product) - they don’t begin at the top, coming off of the last product - roughly here, just ahead of the most dedicated attention - So we are missing a piece here. (next slide)
8. 0 2.5 5 7.5 10 -4 weeks -3 weeks -2 weeks -1 Week Launch! +1 Week +2 Weeks+3 Weeks+4 Weeks Bug Reports Ideal Bug Reports Ideal - blue = dev eyes, green = management eyes (maybe one project & one product) - they don’t begin at the top, coming off of the last product - What does this new line represent? - Right! Customers. Since we’re building world-changing products, it would actually be a much larger number, but I didn’t want to wreck the graph. - With all of these new eyes on our product, using it and breaking it, when are we actually likely to start accumulating a heap of bug reports?
9. 0 2.5 5 7.5 10 -4 weeks -3 weeks -2 weeks -1 Week Launch! +1 Week +2 Weeks+3 Weeks+4 Weeks Bug Reports Ideal Bug Reports Ideal Bug Reports Actual - blue = dev eyes, green = management eyes (maybe one project & one product) - bummer.
10. Bigelow Window - With that context: - The Bigelow Window refers to two kinds of space - Mental - when we’re steeped in a project, we’re able to quickly refer to it, recall how things work, and stay focused. Besides that, it is harder to move _back_ to something you’ve already checked in your mind as “completed.” - remember the house cleaning example? - Temporal - As we saw in the charts exercise, not all times are created equal - as customers gain access and exposure to your product, broken things will increase. - So our goal is to extend the Bigelow Window to retain the pre-completion momentum as long as possible.
11. Simon Ouderkirk @saouderkirk ouderkirk.co So that’s the idea. Sort of a way of framing support around launch. What do you think?