We just added the ability for people to share all the rich information on their pages — “save as .ript file”

Posted: October 31st, 2007 under Uncategorized.
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Nice post from Frank Arrigo, the Microsoft evangelist responsible for all Technical Communities in Australia.

“Since I am always on the lookout for WPF apps, I had to download it and it is really really sweet…“

I’m very proud of our application and our team. Now we need to get Ript™ in the hands of more users.

Posted: October 31st, 2007 under Uncategorized.
Comments: 2

Gerry spoke at the Microsoft Women’s Conference this week.

I joined her so that we could meet with some key players at Microsoft to talk about Ript™, our WPF application.

Attending were Henry Hahn, WPF Program Manager, Darren Mc Cormick, Worldwide UX Role Owner, and Katherine Westgate, a Marketing Officer from Microsoft’s NY office.

The conversation ranged over the whole history of our project: our Scrum/XP practices, how our team collaborates on user experience, how we created our product vision and our plan to monetize the product.

The three of them were entirely approachable, engaged and enthusiastic. They also came prepared. They’d all downloaded and worked with our application. Henry actually submitted feature suggestions from his team he knows are easy to implement given what we’ve already created.

Katherine helped pull the attendees together and lined up our hands on demo of Surface™. She was interested in figuring how our experiences with Ript™, agile software development and collaborative product ownership might help her enterprise clients. She also asked Gerry how Oxygen approaches advocacy for women, corporate good will and citizenship. Katherine is sharp and conscientious. I could tell Gerry hit it off with her.

Darren described the Developer Platform Evangelists (DPE) programs for joint marketing and developer assistance around products built in WPF and Silverlight. We discussed some of Microsoft’s goals for Silverlight distribution and what Oxygen’s next steps are to engage these resources. Darren is clearly passionate about user experience at the level of product, brand and within an organization. Yet another example of Microsoft going outside its organization to bring in new thinking.

Gerry’s main points were that women are the principle market for consumer technology, that usability testing with women provides valuable insight, how software should playful, purposeful, simple and accessible and how product development should not focus on early adopters but the people who will make up the vast majority of end users should the product be successful.

The conversation also ranged over tech issues. Henry is a fan of our application and left an open door for further communication. He said the .NET team is working on some of our core concerns:

• breaking up the .NET 3 installer into server and client modules making the package smaller
• improving the experience of their default install (it plays out like a windows update, hiding itself in the system tray - this is very confusing in an application install process)
• making it easier for ISV’s to run a silent install and wrap their own UI around the install
• improving cold start time
• providing more expressive API’s for automated UI testing

Don’t expect any of this soon unfortunately.

Clearly there are employees at Microsoft in leadership roles determined to engage with and support, not simply consume, innovative work originating outside the company. I had the same impression at the ALT.NET conference earlier this month.

This bodes well for both Microsoft’s future as well as for those of us looking to innovate in the marketplace using their tools and platforms.

Posted: October 26th, 2007 under Uncategorized.
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Early in our Ript™ project, we met with reps of a large, northwest software company.

We had asked them, “what does you’re company think of women?”

They showed up with a stack of e-mail and no answer. Realizing they hadn’t managed a coherent response, one of them said:

“we build software for people and we believe women are people.”

1. (they) build for people
2. women are people
3. therefore (they) build for women

This is analogous to saying, “all cats have four legs, my dog has four legs. Therefore my dog is a cat.”

The statement is packed with generic assumptions. At it’s worst, such assumptions can cause harm. At the least, they speak to an insensitivity to the needs and desires of women consumers.

Oxygen’s research confirms women are men’s digital peers and dominant influencers of purchasing decisions.

Businesses in other industries have found their women customers provide original insights into their products. Responding to those insights has lead to better solutions for both women and men.

“… women consider a longer list of criteria when selecting consumer products and stores than men do. …If a brand takes the time to understand her list, they’re going to over-deliver to men and still reach women” — Lisa Johnson, author of Don’t Think Pink

So, a better answer would have been, “we build software for women and we believe that leads to better software for people.” Still a little glib but it would definitely result in better software for those women!

We aspire to create playful & purposeful tools that:

• address real needs in the lives of women
• go beyond user interface conventions
• support collaboration between friends and family
• are accessible on whatever platform best serves the user

Our CEO is a visionary with a love of audacious challenges. We share her belief that we can be of service to women and create an opportunity for our company if we improve the software they use.

We acknowledge the pride of place women hold as our customers and seek to innovate by listening to them.

That’s my answer to why Oxygen is building software.

Posted: September 7th, 2007 under Uncategorized.
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Today, Ript is available for download from ript.com. This version is available as a free, non-expiring public beta.

Ript is our first attempt to create playful and purposeful software for all people based on research into women’s needs and interests.

Our product owner has done a great job of explaining why we built Ript and why we love it so much.

Please try it and let us know what you think!

Technorati search for blog mentions of “Ript”.

Posted: August 17th, 2007 under Uncategorized.
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