Having a side project and maintaining it is not easy. How many times have you enthusiastically started something only to abandon it again a few days later? I’ve been there. Many times.
They’re called side projects for a reason: By definition it will never be the main thing you are working on. If you are working on it together with friends that makes it even more complicated: Our schedules are different and everyone just works on it whenever they have some time. …
If you’ve been on Twitter these days you’ve probably noticed the 24hr startup challenge. The idea is to “build a startup” within 24 hours while live streaming it on Twitch.
Joshua and me also participated in it as a team. We’ve been building side-projects together for around 1.5 years now and decided it would be a good way to challenge ourselves.
I’m writing this after 20hours and 27 minutes of livestreaming. Its 6:13 in the morning. We’re done.
I’ve never worked such a long time in a row. But it’s insane what we, and especially what Joshua shipped.
Robbert, a friend and coworker, is currently writing a guide that helps Startups to run better experiments. He has lots of ideas on what to include in the guide but ultimately he wants customer feedback to determine contents of the guide. As the guide is constantly evolving he decided to use Google Documents. By sharing it with friends in the industry he’s able to get feedback on his early version right inside the document.
Pieter Levels used the same approach to write Makebook, the #1 Startup Book on Producthunt
The ultimate validation is a paying customer. So the next step for Robbert was to figure out if people are actually willing to pay for his guide. But surprisingly there was no service available that enables him to sell a Google Document. …
The remote months follows Joshua and Yann — a Developer and a Designer at Firmhouse — on their one month journey working remotely from Bali instead of their main office in Rotterdam. This is part 3. Click here to read the other parts.
For the last four weeks I’ve been working remotely from Bali. In this post I’ll highlight my key takeaways from my time here in Canggu.
The main thing I struggled with was the time difference. …
This series follows Joshua and Yann — a Developer and a Designer at Firmhouse — on their one month journey working remotely from Bali instead of their main office in Rotterdam. This is part 2, click here to read part 1.
It’s been two weeks since we started working remotely from Bali. Time to draw a first conclusion. The two most anticipated topics are also the ones I want to cover in this first recap: The people around me and how working different hours in an exotic place affects me.
One of the main reasons why we decided to go on this trip was to surround ourselves with people that have similar mindsets. To learn from them and to get inspired by them. …
This series follows Joshua and Yann — a Developer and a Designer at Firmhouse — on their one month journey working remotely from Bali instead of their main office in Rotterdam.
At Firmhouse we call ourselves a hybrid company. We have our main office in Rotterdam but we don’t need to physically be there to do our work. Half of our team works remotely from the Netherlands most of the time already.
I’m one of the guys that frequents the office. I like going there and seeing my coworkers. But I have to admit that I’ve always been drawn to the thought of location independence aka. The Digital Nomad lifestyle. …
This blogpost is part of our Dogfood-Series. We’re building a subscription business and document the whole journey. In the last blogpost we talked about the importance of using our own products along the way. Today, we are going to look at how we kicked things off and launched our first experiment.
A week ago we had our first meeting with the team to kick off the candy subscription aka dogfooding project. Our goals during this meeting were to make some decisions on how to start out, what to do first, and to make a plan for the coming weeks.
Here’s how it…
At Firmhouse we help our clients build businesses. We go from idea to a first version of the product together. A lot of what we’re doing revolves around discovering and testing new propositions and products. We’ve been doing that for eight years now. To put our process, methodologies, and tools to the test, the time has come to apply what we’ve been preaching to our own business. This is why we’re going to start a new business. And we invite you to join our journey. …
In March 2015 I took the ten week UXDI course in London. Here’s what I’ve learned.
From March until May 2015 I took General Assembly’s ten week User Experience Design Immersive program in London. Before taking the course I’ve worked as a (mostly) self-taught UI Designer in a small Digital Agency based in Switzerland. After the course I returned to Switzerland and continue to work in the same agency. I’m now trying to apply what I learned and slowly shift towards being a full-time UXer.
These are the top-five things I learned during the course.
At GA we had to present every project we did in front of the class. It ranged from short 3 minute to more thorough 20 minute presentations. There is one simple reason for (UX) Designers to do this: YOU played a major part in the design process, YOU know why the design is how it is, therefore YOU should present it to the client. Or as Mike Monteiro puts…
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