UX Design is Not a One Man Show

In the last few months, I saw heaps of job vacancies with “UX” on their titles, both in Indonesia and abroad. Surely I am glad to see more and more companies are interested in UX and aware about potentials of UX to their businesses. However, I was astonished to find out how companies regard UX as the work of one person, not a team.

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Does it Matter that Microsoft Will Release Office For iOS and Android Next Year?

Earlier this month The Verge revealed that Microsoft Office is coming for iOS and Android. The apps are supposedly being prepped for launch in the first half of next year. The app was to bring the company’s cloud-based Office 365 to a wider range of customers and to allow them access to the service from non-Microsoft operating systems. The Office app is said to be free to download but will require a subscription to Office 365 to activate editing function, without which the app can only be used as a file viewer.

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[Manic Monday] Your Fans Are Your Monetization Strategy [Part 2]

I’m revisiting this article simply because it just touched the surface on how fans of any type of creative content, which could be movies, music, games, software and so on. The decentralized nature of the internet has helped make a lot of things simpler – production, aggregation, distribution, payment – and many internet-based services can help you with these needs cheaply or even for free. The trick is, since every creative content is unique and probably has a similarly unique fan base or consumer segment, you need to come up with the business strategy behind it yourself.

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[Manic Monday] Looking At E-Commerce From A Digital Entertainment Perspective

During the past two years, various e-commerce sites have set up shop in Indonesia, some being multinational companies setting up a branch here, some being joint ventures, and some local players as well. The objective is pretty clear – to enable sales of anything imaginable via the internet, to reach a larger amount of customers while increasing the level of convenience for them as they do not have to take the effort of going to a store. Although Indonesia may not yet reach the level of e-commerce like in some other countries, where they even sell fresh produce of the internet, it is pretty clear that these e-commerce sites are here to stay.

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[Manic Monday] Your Fans Are Your Monetization Strategy

I come from a corporate background, but somehow I really hate the word ‘monetization’. The word is somehow soulless in its way that categorizes everything into things that can make money for you, and things that cannot. As if, the merit of a certain idea, creation, program, strategy, or product, solely depends on how it can make money for you. And the people who are the object of monetization – the consumers – are somehow treated just as a factor, that they would mindlessly spend money for no reason. But of course, this is all in my head. The ‘monetization’ term is not a greedy capitalist term, but it’s a business term that we should get used to.

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Silicon Valley Trip Journal: Day 1, TechCrunch Disrupt

This is part two of Jaka Wiradisuria’s journal of his recent trip to Silicon Valley. Read part one here.

This journey was my first time to United States and it definitely was a remarkable one. I was humbly welcomed by several prominent events by some big names in global Tech industry, i.e. Endeavor, TechCrunch, SalesForce and Gogobot. As soon as I arrived in San Francisco around 1.30pm PST on September 12th 2012, I immediately rushed downtown, to TechCruch Disrupt 2012, one of the most awaited tech startup events in 2012, created by TechCrunch.

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Silicon Valley Trip Journal: Prologue

Valadoo co-founder Jaka Wiradisuria recently went to the United States to visit Silicon Valley as part of a program by Endeavor.org for young tech entrepreneurs. He began chronicling his trip on his blog earlier this month and we’ve been given permission to republish his posts here on DailySocial. Continue reading Silicon Valley Trip Journal: Prologue

[Manic Monday] Perception Of Value For Digital Music

We live in times when actual value and perceived value are rarely the same thing. Even that piece of paper you use as money, has more relation to perceived value as to actual value, as the number written on the money is almost definitely more than the actual value of the paper it was made with. Money is represented by specially-printed pieces of paper as a form of guarantee from the government, that it represents the number printed on it; harking back from old times (as recently as the 20th century) where every piece of money was guaranteed its value in gold, kept safe in government safes.

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[Manic Monday] Why The Universal Music Purchase Of EMI May Turn Out To Be A Good Thing

The music industry was abuzz late last week regarding the approval from the European Commission and the US’s Federal Trade Commssion, regarding the planned purchase of EMI’s recording arm by the already-dominant Universal Music Group International. Many groups, including indie bands and indie labels, have stated opposition to the deal from the start, saying that Universal will have too much power in the market, and of course articles here and there have claimed that this is the day that the music died.

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UX Advice For Startups

I totally understand startup founders usually take steps too fast because of the excitement during the initiation phase. Let’s take it slow, take a deep breath, and focus yourself and evaluate every single aspect of your project. You don’t need to have any knowledge about user experience (UX) or usability to understand this article. Here I’m just trying to remind you on some basic things about UX that are pretty crucial for your project. So here are the things that you should pay attention to for your startup project.

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