The iPhone Economy app displays the latest values for several key economic indicators (e.g. housing, employment, trade deficit, inflation etc.) and draws graphs tracking the history of these indicators over the past few months, years and decades.

The app also compares the latest value of each indicator (e.g. housing starts) with its value from the previous month and the previous year. To make this comparison easy on the eye, we decided to add a green-up-arrow indicator if the latest value was more than the previous month’s value and a red-down-arrow if the value was lower than that of the previous month. See picture (at the bottom of this post) for an example of the UI.

Originally, this seemed like a good idea, but it raised a usability question. The app includes indicators like “unemployment rate”. Showing a green up-arrow for an increase in unemployment didn’t seem like a good idea because a green up-arrow would signify “good” to most people, but very few people would consider an increase in unemployment as good. So here are the options we considered

1. No arrow to indicate increase/decrease, just a sentence that mentioned the increase or decrease.
2. Using the same color to indicate increase and decrease (with an up arrow indicating increase and a down arrow indicating decrease)
3. Using a green up-arrow for indicating a “good” increase (like an increase for the GDP parameter) and using a red up-arrow for a “bad” increase (like an increase in the unemployment rate)
4. Using a green up-arrow for all increases and a red down-arrow for all decreases.

Option-1 seemed a bit user-unfriendly because it was limited to text. Option-2 was better, but using the same color meant that the up and down arrows were less easily distinguishable.

Option-3 had a couple of disadvantages. It introduced a minor inconsistency because some indicators would show increases with a green up-arrow and some others with a red up-arrow. More importantly, it introduced a judgmental element that wouldn’t necessarily be correct. For instance, is it “good” for the interest rate to go up or for imports to go up or for the dollar to become stronger? Arguably, sometimes it is good for some of these values to increase and sometimes it is good for these values to decrease. Option-3 also required some (minor) additional development work.

Given all of the factors discussed above, we decided to go with option-4 in spite of the usability question mentioned earlier. It will be interesting to find out whether users would have preferred one of the other options. However, as discussed in an earlier post on product design, startups need to make quick decisions and execute and ship quickly. So executing on option-4 was the best option for the app.

iPhone Economy app - results, top section

One interesting data point to me was the pie chart showing where the investment was going. Here is the  comment I added to the ChubbyBrain site the day after they published their study.

It is interesting that companies in the social networking space are attracting more money than companies in the “games and entertainment” space and companies in every other space.

In the app store, it seems like social-networking apps are just around 5% of the top-paid apps and the top-free apps, while games and entertainment account for the overwhelming majority of top-paid and top-free apps. Of course, social-networking apps need high adoption rates to be useful to their users and getting to high adoption may require higher investments.

Incidentally, the iPhone is complementary, but not core to the business of the top iPhone social-networking apps (AIM, skype, facebook etc.)

[Btw as an fyi - Cascade Software Corporation is a bootstrapped startup company and we have never looked for VC/angel investment. Nevertheless, it was interesting to read the ChubbyBrain report]

Here is what I suggested.

1. Avoid the paperwork (and potential risk of frivolous lawsuits)of an NDA, unless it is absolutely necessary
2. Set a time-limit for the NDA, if possible (e.g. a 1-year term to limit chances of frivolous lawsuits after one year)
3. Clear documentation on what is covered by the NDA and what is not covered (and try to narrow down the definition of what is “confidential” to limit the risk of frivolous lawsuits)
4. If appropriate, distinguish between disclosure of info and other usage of info (e.g. can you tweak your product (add features etc.) for future customers based on what you’ve learned from your first enterprise customer. This isn’t disclosure, but it amounts to usage of data)
5. (an additional point that wasn’t relevant to the enterprise customer scenario mentioned above) If appropriate, make the agreement mutual. A mutual agreement covering disclosures by both parties is likely to be more reasonable and not be one-sided.

While writing about Twitter and its impact on election protests, I mentioned that

On another note, when twitter was first conceived, it was probably designed for the North American market and the founders had probably not thought about how their product could help democratize the world.  However,  that has now become an important usage scenario for the product. There is an important lesson here for all startup companies.

This is an important point that is worth calling out seperately. Several other companies (e.g. PayPal) have also learned about new usage scenarios and seen their products evolve after shipping the v1 version of the product

It is easy for product teams to spend hours on discussing open issues relating to product features. Many of these discussions are interesting and some of them may even lead to better decisions. However, opinions within the product team need to be balanced with usage data and good customer feedback , and sometimes decisions should be defered in favor of allowing the product to evolve *after* it ships. 

Basic (pre-ship) market research is good for startup companies and should be done when possible and appropriate, but it also important to keep in mind that the market can prove (pre-ship) market-research and developer-opinions wrong. That makes ‘Ship early, ship often’ a good philosophy for startups as long as the product doesn’t compromise on basic quality (e.g. ability of the app to meet its primary v1 goal, app stability, does it feel right etc.).

The market will give you great research-information for the next version of your product (and potentially for your other future products as well).  Product developers can be surprised at how user perception of the product (and market demand for the product) differs from their original notion of what the market wanted.

However, in many different ways, mainstream for-profit, non-civic-software companies have been far more effective in changing the world for good and some of these changes were probably unintended. The latest news about Twitter and Iran is  a great example of this trend.

Here is an excerpt from today’s New York Times http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/17/world/middleeast/17media.html

This was just a call to say: ‘It appears Twitter is playing an important role at a crucial time in Iran. Could you keep it going?’ ” said P.J. Crowley, the assistant secretary of state for public affairs.

Twitter complied with the request, saying in a blog post on Monday that it put off the upgrade until late Tuesday afternoon — 1:30 a.m. Wednesday in Tehran — because its partners recognized “the role Twitter is currently playing as an important communication tool in Iran.” The network was working normally again by Tuesday evening.

At this point it is worth recalling that, a couple of months ago, protests (against alleged vote-rigging) in Moldova were described as a “twitter revolution”.  At the time, the European Union had tentatively accepted the voting as fair. This week, the Moldovan parliament was dissolved and new elections have been ordered (for July 29).

It is unclear whether the protests in Iran will result in a change of government. Some analysts have also questioned whether twitter really plays a big part in these protests. However, news reports do seem to indicate that Twitter usage is helping  the protestors and the state department’s actions indicate that they support this view.

It is unclear whether publicizing the state government’s involvement was a wise move. The Iranian authorities could seize on this information to claim that the “twitter revolution” isn’t home-grown and that it is sponsored by the American govt. However, regardless of how the story ends, it does seem clear that Twitter has played a big role in the Iran election protests. 

This trend will probably continue in other countries as well. In developing countries, more people tend to have cell-phones than PCs and so microblogging platforms like twitter are likely to be used much more effectively in these countries than in the US. This trend will probably continue.

On another note, when twitter was first conceived, it was probably designed for the North American market and the founders had probably not thought about how their product could help democratize the world.  However,  that has now become an important usage scenario for the product. There is an important lesson here for all startup companies. [Update: More on this startup lesson at http://blog.cascadesoft.net/2009/06/17/usage-scenarios-how-users-can-surprise-product-developers-and-why-to-ship-early/]

[Update2: As a followup to June comments, it appears that the goals of the Moldova "twitter revolution" were accomplished. Repeat elections were held in July 2009 and the Communist party lost in the repeat-elections.]

[Update3 10/13/2009: Today's Guardian has an interesting story on Twitter. The Guardian had been blocked from reporting parliamentary questions relating to an alleged toxic waste dumping company (Trafigura). However, the topic was picked up on Twitter and it soon became a trending topic.

The story is titled as "Twitter can't be gagged.." and concludes by saying that "It might be a bit too exaggerated to call it a historic moment, but surely the real-time web passed its test today." ]