A New Reaction

So last Friday, at 2pm the internet goes down at the workplace. Damned downtime and it’s the release weekend. Well, what pains can a dessert not fix! Berry’d Alive is right below, so we decide to get some dessert in and beat these network issues. We’re placing our orders when “Engineering” walks up to this big board with a huge bunch of post-it notes — there are multicolored thank you’s, love-you’s and miss-yous with even more doodles. Engineering is reading everything intently… Hmm… very unusual to see him do this. Maybe the ISP is not the only one which is fried?

He comes back, plonks himself down on a chair and has “that” preachy look. Uh-oh. Something’s coming to hit us real bad. And then it starts….

Engineering : “You know, this whole reaction, this thing is broken”

Me(rolling eyes): What do you mean?

E: … I mean, the usual comments are there, yes, but in the real world, people don’t really have uniform reactions. We don’t all smell green.

Sound-Rover (snide side comment to me): Well, I sure as hell don’t smell… he he

E(animated now): EXACTLY. We all don’t sound the same, we all don’t react the same. And the reactions available across platforms, they are all just that. Meant for machines man, not for us humans. We like our reactions to be US! Have our own unique signature.

Me: Ok .. go on?

E: Ya… these platforms don’t allow us to express ourselves. They don’t put a canvas for our reactions. Rather they have these drawn out pictures, emojis.. for machines to understand these set of “universal reactions”. BUT, language is not about universality, it is also about individuality!

S-R now nods feverishly, web-engineer is snacking on all our desserts, I am thinking hard.

Me (contemplative): Have you seen this iMessage feature? I can doodle, I can write, and it shows everything to the other person in a nice nifty animated way!

E (rolling HIS eyes now): I am more of an Android guy.

Me: iOS, Android doesn’t matter. It’s this feature. It’s like a canvas for reactions…You can personalize it…

E (Now getting all excited): Yeah…!?? Lemme see it…

After fiddling for the next 10 minutes like a kid in a candy shop…

E : This is it… let’s get this done…. We will have a unique value prop in the product. No one, no one is offering this!

Me (Wryly): Well we need to calm you down first… and wireframe.

‘Visually reacting’. Is that the key? Say on my Uber ride in the mornings, I listen to a piece on climate change. I feel guilty about not using Uber-share, so I feel like asking a question to the expert about how can I make an impact on climate change at my home, in my room, et al. A cool half card comes up on the play page when I reactivate the screen mid-listen, where I can record a quick question with my fingertip.. or doodle a reaction. Is this our Eureka moment? We did some napkin-wireframing for it too (well dessert bars have good napkins).

Me : Woah , the internet’s back up. Let’s get to the release now? Maybe another day we pick this one up, hmm, E?

E: Yeah, yeah… I have that API to complete still… We have the ingestion notifications which are still not working correctly…

Web-Engineer (the sane voice): And relevance of the feed algo. My home pages need to feel more ‘me’.

As we headed back upstairs, decided to write about this discussion. We thought it was creative problem solving…What do you think, is it something that could work? Maybe try it out and help us know better.

Like solving problems? Have a cool growth idea? Love listening to audio? Write into us [email protected], or just drop by and say hi! We love desserts.

Until next time!