I seem to have mentioned books I’ve been reading a lot in last few posts, but this is the first time I am writing a post solely dedicated to a book. The Four Steps to the Epiphany by Steven Gary Blank is a book I heard recommended a few times before Eric Ries recommendation during his talk persuaded me, but I bought it mainly because it bothered me that most projects I was involved with relied heavily on intuition and it just seemed that there has to be a better way to expose and test assumptions made during project lifetime.

To a typography nut like me this book looks, well, horrible. I suspect Cafepress’ print-on-demand system has also something to do with it, but this is not its only fault. There are plenty of typos and glitches such as whole chapter 4 carrying a footer of chapter 3. Occasionally you can find grammar errors even someone like me can be sure of. In short, the book also looks like it wasn’t made by experienced publisher.

Having said all that, if you are thinking of starting a business venture or really any project where you and people precisely like you are not the only target market, you should BUY AND READ THIS BOOK. It costs 40$ on Amazon, but I wouldn’t hesitate recommending it even if it cost ten times as much. For those who might doubt veracity of recommendation on account of my Amazon Affiliate link, here is also a non-affiliated link that gains me nothing. Or you can save some more by following link on Steve’s blog (which is a good read too).

Unlike most business books I read or browsed, it isn’t a 2-300 hundred page long discourse about a couple of ideas that could be adequately explained and argued in tenth of its length. It’s a textbook about Customer Development, a different way of organizing and building a company from startup to established company. This is done methodically, each step building on previous where every assumption is tested while it is still relatively cheap to do so. First 200 pages might occasionally contain a short story that proves a point, but are otherwise filled with very concrete advice on what needs to be done and how you can or should go about it. If that wasn’t enough, you also get a Custom Development Checklist (taking a quarter of the book) which you can use to check that nothing was left out.

I suspect not many startups follow every step as prescribed, but even if you don’t or disagree with most of it, I can’t imagine how you wouldn’t profit from reading it. So just go and buy it. You won’t be able to make notes in borrowed copy.

Now that Mini Seedcamp in Ljubljana is behind me (an event that might warrant its own post), I finally have some time to write about Open Hack 2009 . I’m sorry to say to those who didn’t go that this might have been the biggest mistake you’ll do this year. It was indeed awesome. Before I go on I would also like to thank people at Yahoo for really pulling no stops in making it great and to everyone who came, for being inspiring, helpful and generally fun.

Fry and I made two hacks, a website GuessWhatThisIs based on an idea we brought to event (but no code), and a game GeoPong that Fry thought of in wee hours of Sunday. GeoPong, best described as “ a quite irrelevant but lovely hack “, doesn’t always work great (especially on non-FF browsers), nevertheless I am still amazed that we managed to build both, because we essentially did GuessWhatThisIs twice. Wifi didn’t work until later in the evening, so we built first version of the site with pieces of software we had on our machines an educated guess about APIs we needed but couldn’t access.

Event was thoroughly documented on Flickr, Twitter and plethora of other websites, so I won’t dwell much on that. Instead I’ll mention couple of observations that albeit not new, I still found interesting.

First one is that team is absolutely everything. You can certainly do interesting stuff alone, but things really start happening if you have a good team. Working with talented and fun people mean ideas get fleshed out sooner, there’s little coordination and more things get done. If on top they are like Fry, who like a Duracell Bunny just seems to keep going, you can finish projects you certainly would not otherwise.

Hackday also provided another proof that all-nighters as development method are an idiotic idea. Most hackers, who certainly didn’t lack enthusiasm, fell asleep at some point during the night and those, like us, who didn’t, slowly fried our brains. Development slowed down to a glacial speed, code written was frankly embarassing and help was needed to resolve most basic problems. We spent more than 4 hours on GeoPong which normally shouldn’t take us more than half of one. Even worse from efficiency point of view was that Monday was gone too. All-nighter can be a fun thing to do once in a while, but it is really a crappy way to run a business.

At the end a small advice to organizers for next European event, on which I hope we won’t have to wait another two years. Try putting as much documentation and libraries on USB key as you can, so in case of wifi not working, we can still program with them instead of falling back to what we already intimately know or have on our machines.

I recently read Raph Koster ‘s Theory of Fun for Game Design , which I can heartily recommend to anyone interested in what games are all about. But it’s this part on page 88 that really got my attention, since I can relate it to what I do:

Games are not stories. It is interesting to make the comparison, though:

• Games tend to be experiential teaching. Stories teach vicariously.
• Games are good at objectification . Stories are good at empathy.
• Games tend to quantize, reduce and classify. Stories tend to blur, deepen, and make subtle distinctions.
• Games are external — they are about people’s actions. Stories (good ones, anyway) are internal — they are about people’s emotions and thoughts.

A lot has been said in last couple of years about game mechanics and how its principles could be successfully used to make our websites more engaging and fun. Game-like without necessary becoming games. Still more should be said to penetrate consciousness of wider web industry.

But should all websites incorporate devices like collecting points or customization?

Probably not. Well thought through website has its purpose which usually means it wants to provoke action on visitor’s part. Intended action may be almost anything apart from abandoning site immediately. It may be buying at least an item on a commerce site, leaving a comment or subscribe to blog.

I’ve been thinking about above comparisons for days and it would suggest to me that principles of game mechanics are more appropriate for and easier to add to sites that can reasonably aim for prolonged interaction with a visitor.

E.g. a personal blog like this one is visited mostly by google-by visitors. Comments and other engagement devices might increase its pull, but game mechanics obviously plays second fiddle to a good story, told through its content and web design (both sorely lacking on this particular blog). Same is true for most brochure-ware sites.

Amazon.com presents other side of spectrum. It is visited mostly by people who aren’t there to read an item description and leave, but are at least somewhat open to interaction with the site. As such it makes sense to incorporate more elements that can keep visitors engaged, such as easy rating of items, reviews etc. Same goes for most web applications.

I believe that most websites could successfully apply at least some elements from games, but like with everything else they shouldn’t be used too liberally and without understanding. Keeping in mind websites purpose and listed differences between a game and a story can help you make a more informed decision on what and when to include.