Trackoji — mix & match to start
That’s an opening post for Trackoji blog. And it’s about how our idea was invented. My name is Nikolay Bezhko, I’m a co-founder of Trackoji.com
Idea arrived
Every project, concept and idea is a remix of other things. And Trackoji is not an exception. It was created during the research for another startup — Wtchin. It was an idea with a bold tagline: Video search that doesn’t suck.
We tried to understand if our concept of Wtchin is viable. The process was complex. The idea was to choose the right direction after Skype interviews. I’ve interviewed about 40 people about two different options.
Results of the interviews revealed two things. One of the options to move became apparently pointless. The second one was that our concept was «vitamine» instead of a «painkiller».
It was a bit wintry, but I was glad to continue. The new obsession was to find out how to perform interviews faster and more productive.
My co-founder Nikolay Korobov advised me to meet his friend Vera. Vera is a marketing professional specialized on surveys for large brands. We’ve met and she kindly shared the methodology of how to conduct interviews true and accurate.
Thing #1: Interview Technique
One of the two faces for Trackoji was about starting interviews. First, you are talking about things around, just a casual talk to tune with your respondent.
After that, there is an easy, but a very effective point. You describe your project in a few words or sentences and watch the reaction. The key is not to listen much, but watch the facial expression attentively. You’ll see raw and honest emotions and feelings.
The same thing works for digital. First, you put an idea to your respondents. Then ask «how it was?». And request them to put a smiley about their feelings:
:-) :-| :-(
There is a Dale’s Carnegie quote:
«When dealing with people, remember you are not dealing with creatures of logic, but creatures of emotion.»
It’s an obvious thing and even highly composed people couldn’t hold everything.
Anyway, that’s just an interview about some new idea. We won’t call Dr. Lightman to help us in making some trained criminal to confess.
Again, by this tiny observation we capture subtle, unconscious reactions. It’s an automatic emotional response, generated by the most primitive part of our brain — the reptilian one.
It was a thing #1 which formed the basis of Trackoji.
Thing #2: Emotional Design
The second thing arrived almost at the same time. My friend Michell Zappa shared a video in envisioning Slack chat. It’s a very interesting and dense lecture of Kevin Hale, founder of Wufoo. I recommend it everyone who wants to build his own startup, here you go:
On the 21st minute of this video second thing has come. It’s about asking users about their “emotional state” before connecting them with technical support. That tiny feature made their users much nicer to them.
«Three things show strong emotions in text: exclamation marks, curse words and all caps. All three of those metrics have gone down.»
What a nice idea!
A not-so-secret 3rd component: Trackoji as a result
Then it’s just appeared in my mind. Facial expressions as a primary unconscious reaction and asking for emotional state suddenly have frozen for a while. And they’ve met another friend to make a Trinity and evolve into new startup idea.
3rd component for the basis was thrown from Japan, it’s one of the top culture trends in the world at the moment.
Sure, it’s Emoji!
Studies on nonverbal communication tell that 7% of any message is conveyed through words, 38% through vocal elements, and 55% through nonverbal elements (facial expressions, gestures, posture, etc).
Emoji is the most effective way to describe nonverbal feelings visually — that’s how we return about 55% back to the 7% of the text.
Surveying technique and asking about emotional state were a lack of this easy-to-use language. Emojis translate emotions fine, they are cross-cultural and could bring these methods to a higher level.
These are the three basic elements that make up our idea with an Emoji as a cherry on top.
~
It’s the first tale about the birth of our early concept.
And by the way. We’ve just launched on ProductHunt!
Cheers 🖖
