Ipso Facto

Dave McClure, a well-known Silicon Valley investor who now runs 500 Startups, has a thing about design. He notes:

Addictive User Experience (Design) and Scalable Distribution Methods (Marketing) are the most critical components of success in consumer Internet startups, not Pure Engineering Talent.

The emphasis on good design is a concept that’s gaining more traction in the startup world. I see it in the slick Web pages and mobile interfaces of hot new products, but I also hear the UX mantra from experts who say that while “minimum viable product” (MVP) is important for getting a prototype out the door and starting feedback loops, the design element can’t be ignored. An advisor for my startup, Invantory, suggested that for a consumer-oriented product, the emphasis should be on “minimum delightful product”, or MDP, rather than MVP. You can read about it here, or on a separate post I wrote about UI, UX, and MVP.

How many classifieds apps are out there? In my review of Craigslist Mobile, I observed about a dozen in the Apple App Store and 20 in Android Market. Why they exist is not a surprise — Craigslist is the most popular local classifieds marketplace in existence. But what I did find surprising were the poor design, user interfaces and user flow (collectively known as user experience, or UX) that had gone into the apps. For instance, as I noted in the Craigslist Mobile review:

” … The Craigslist Mobile UX is not helped by placing all required fields right next to each other on the same page, which requires lots of text input and screen manipulation, and increases the chances of making a mistake. The ‘add photo’ button takes users to stored photos on the iOS device; a separate button accesses the camera directly.”

There were many other UX issues identified in the review. Options crowd each screen and are hard to find or activate, users are forced to navigate back to the home screen to change settings, strange color schemes are used, text rather than photos dominates the browsing experience, etc. Some of these issues relate to Craigslist’s requirements for listings, but others are the direct result of choices the app designers made. Despite the crowded field, the designers of other apps often decided to copy what was already out there rather than innovating on UX and differentiating themselves.

Is there any other way to do classifieds app UX? Certainly. EggDrop, Zaarly and Rumgr point the way, with a user-centric (rather than engineer-centric) approach to design, UI, and user flow. There is no clutter on the small screens. Good color choices were made by the designers. Images and maps look sharp. It’s easy to find what you’re looking for, switch views, or change options. This is the way classified app UX should be.

An example of good UX: Zaarly

It’s so disappointing to hear about experiences like the one described below, but at the same time, I am not at all surprised. It’s the story of yet another earnest student signing up for distance education classes at the Harvard Extension School, hoping to get access to “Harvard faculty and rigorous academics” and “engaging online classes,” and instead being treated to this:

Last term was my first semester at HES and I was surprised at the lack of assignment and test feedback that I received in the courses.

In my first course, I didn’t receive a grade or comments back on a ten page essay that was worth 15% of my final grade or on my final exam that was worth 25% of my final grade.

In my second course, I never received any feedback or grade on a book review that was submitted in mid-November, on 50 page group project, or on the final exam. In the aggregate, these three items represented 55% of my final grade.

My third course consisted of a series of smaller assignments worth either 5% or 10% of my final grade each. The instructors provided grades and comments for most of these assignments, but at the end of the course, feedback and grades for the final couple of assignments wasn’t provided.

The responses to “DesertDog” are telling. “Unfortunately your experiences are not foreign to me,” said one person, who has been taking distance education courses for years at the Extension School. Another Extension School student said, “Last semester, I took a course and did not receive notification of any grades until the final grade was posted at the end of the semester. I got no feedback at all. It was quite frustrating,” A third online education student reported that “Some of my professors didn’t give me any feedback on my final projects and essays even when all the final grades were posted and even while I asked them several times.”

I’ve written about distance students being given a watered-down educational experience by the Harvard Extension School in the past (see “A sad day for the Harvard Extension School” to read yet another case). The usual responses? “You don’t know what you are talking about!” (even though I have taken distance education for credit) and “how dare you belittle distance education students!” (even though I am criticizing the Extension School and its policies, as opposed to students who try hard to get a good education).

Of course, not all distance education faculty are unresponsive. But regular reports like the ones above are a sign that many students feel misled about the Extension School’s promise of access to Harvard faculty and a true Harvard experience.

In the six months since our Craigslist app has gotten off the ground, there have been a lot of ups and downs. Of course, ups and downs are a part of any career. But I quickly found that the mood extremes are far more pronounced at a startup than at a multinational tech media company or large research university.

It turns out that the startup roller coaster actually quite typical. Fortunately, there are tactics for managing the highs and lows, as I discuss in the Invantory blog (see link, above).

I also think it’s important to note that while we are still in the early stages, every day when I get up, I look forward to getting started on Invantory’s business. The challenges change every day, but the wins, when they come, are positively exhilarating.

The Chronicle of Higher Education has an interesting article on the rise of “badges”, a reward/accomplishment system that some online educational services like Khan Academy are using. Here’s the summary:

Educational upstarts across the Web are adopting systems of “badges” to certify skills and abilities. If scouting focuses on outdoorsy skills like tying knots, these badges denote areas employers might look for, like mentorship or digital video editing. Many of the new digital badges are easy to attain—intentionally so—to keep students motivated, while others signal mastery of fine-grained skills that are not formally recognized in a traditional classroom.

The article goes on to ask whether easy-to-understand badges that denote focused study or skills will undermine traditional diplomas, which offer very little insights into the specific skills or abilities that were attained.

In my opinion, this is unlikely, at least for some professions such as information technology. We’ve seen efforts like this in the past, such as certification programs based on in-class or online instructions. While certification exams are a prerequisite for certain occupations, they are sometimes seen as a poor indicator of how well someone will perform in real-world situations. Badges and certificates also suffer from short shelf-lives relative to the value of a diploma, which has brand power that can last decades.

It will be interesting to see how the badge system evolves, and whether it can gain strength through acceptance of widely followed standards or partnerships with testing organizations or government agencies.

On the official Invantory blog, I’ve written a long post about the Cambridge Innovation Center (CIC) in Kendall Square. This is where Invantory and hundreds of other nascent tech startups spend a lot of time planning, meeting, coding, and testing. It’s a fascinating place that provides office space, amenities and a network that can provide advice and connections necessary to build a business.

The CIC has really helped my partner and I get our dream off the ground, and we already have a prototype Craigslist app in the hands of testers. The CIC is also relatively cheap, at least for those startups that are taking advantage of the “C3″ co-working space. Read the blog post to learn more and also be sure to follow updates from our company, either by reading the blog or following us on Twitter.

There has been a huge buzz in the world of programming and online education over Stanford’s move to open up computer science lectures to the public. It’s an ambitious move that takes online learning beyond the model established by MIT OpenCourseWare — not only can members of the public have access to some of the highest-quality college-level instruction on the planet, but they are taking the same classes as Stanford students.

But not everyone is satisfied with the offerings. A Stanford student who tried one of the classes on machine learning says it was watered down and provided a poor substitute for in-person Stanford lectures. Here’s an excerpt:

… Since the video lectures were excellent in the class, I’ll start with the programming exercises. At the beginning, some of the programming assignments were challenging since I wasn’t used to matlab/octave programming or machine learning. However, the level of difficulty dropped off drastically as the quarter progressed. At its worst, I completed a few programming assignments without even knowing that the corresponding lectures had been released (I have never done machine learning in the past) …

… If these classes are going to be labeled as Stanford classes, then they should be taught as such. CS229a has by far been my easiest CS class (besides maybe the final project) I’ve taken at Stanford. Normally, I wouldn’t have had a problem with this, except now that Winter quarter registration has opened and I have found that half of my classes are now open to the public in the online format, I’m worried that the rest of the classes will follow this trend. If all of my classes suddenly become as easy 229a, I will be seriously disappointed. I came primarily to Stanford to learn and study – classes like CS229a don’t satiate that desire. Perhaps it’s a fluke and the other online classes will be much more difficult, but it is still worrisome. Stanford needs to keep rigor even in their online courses – it’s useless to lower the bar so low that it only takes a small step to get over. …

… Online lectures suck. Sure, they’re great for rainy days or people learning at a distance or people that don’t go to Stanford. However, these new classes are getting rid of in-person lectures completely. I met barely anyone in my CS229a class. Everything was done alone in my room, which is kind of crappy especially when there is such a nice campus right outside. If Stanford is going to offer these classes, then by all means offer them, but don’t make students take them as well. Have the professors teach as many students as they can in-person and the rest can watch online.”

(Be sure to read the reaction in the comments at the bottom of the post. There is more discussion of the class and Stanford’s online lectures on Hacker News)

The concern about content being watered down is also valid one — the school apparently put the interests of the public ahead of its own students, which understandably does not sit well with them. However, there are several ways to serve both populations without sacrificing the interests of either group, such as not watering down the content or keeping the two groups separate when it comes to designing for-credit content.

As for issues with the online format, this post should be a wake-up call for Stanford administrators and people who assume that online coursework can be substituted for an in-class learning experience. While there are benefits, there are many pitfalls. I’ve been a critic of online education for years, based on the developments I’ve seen at the Harvard Extension School as well as my own experience taking an online precalculus class for credit at UC Berkeley.

Opening up education to everyone via the models established by OpenCourseWare and Khan Academy lets learners get access to once-exclusive knowledge, and is an admirable goal. But when watered-down online coursework is offered as an equivalent of an in-class experience, or are offered for credit, that’s when the value proposition is thrown into sharp focus.

Spotted recently on the Harvard Extension School website:

The citation program was good while it lasted. It let people who wanted to concentrate in a specialized field show their accomplishments and differentiate their degree — a significant issue for people in the Liberal Arts ALM, who don’t receive diplomas that reflect their course of study.

But the rules were terribly frustrating, in terms of what counted and the relatively short window for completing it. I sent this email to the school in 2008 asking about the possibility of getting a citation, based on my coursework and research:

I am a soon-to-be ALM graduate (History), and I have a question about citations. I see from the Extension School website that the window of opportunity for a citation in East Asian Studies lasts three years, and I would like to know if the following four courses — which were all taken and completed within a three-year period, starting in the summer of 2004 — would count. They are:

1. ANTH S-171 – Archaeology of the Silk Road
2. HIST E-1834 – Chinese Emigration in Modern Times
3. History S-1855 – Film and History in Postwar Japan and Post-Mao China
4. HIST E-499 – ALM Thesis (Title: Making a Case for Quantitative Research in the Study of Modern Chinese History: The New China News Agency and Chinese Policy Views of Vietnam, 1977-1993.)

You may recall that I asked about this a few years back, but that was before I completed my thesis, under the direction of Alastair Iain Johnston, the Governor James Albert Noe and Linda Noe Laine Professor of China in World Affairs. Getting such a citation would accurately reflect my overall studies at the Extension School, considering much of my coursework and all of my thesis research at the Extension School has been on East Asian history — especially China.

The answer: No, because the thesis didn’t count. This was despite the fact that the thesis was directly related to modern Chinese history, was directed by a tenured faculty member and expert in the field, and took 10 times as much effort than any single class at the Extension School.

In addition, I had taken another eligible class in early 2003 (History E-1830: The Emergence of Modern China). But again it couldn’t count toward a citation, as it was outside of the three-year window for a citation — hardy a rare occurrence, considering most students don’t have the luxury of being able to take classes so rapidly and certain courses aren’t offered every semester.

Back to the retirement of the citation program. According to two curt emails sent to me by the staff member in charge, the school discontinued the citations in favor of certificates. This doesn’t make sense. Certificates have nothing to do with most liberal arts master’s degrees offered by the Extension School, which was the focus of the citations. Rather, they are a profitable, short-term continuing education scheme for people in various industries, although the program page notes you can apply the course credit in four out of the five programs to professional ALM degrees. Several of the certificates, such as Web technologies, are entirely online — no face-to-face contact with fellow students or instructors required!

If you are earning a liberal arts ALM, and wanted to get additional recognition for your work in a certain field, you are out of luck. But that’s no surprise. The liberal arts character of the Extension School, not to mention the in-person classroom experience taught by Harvard professors that defined the Extension School experience beginning 100 years ago, has lately been given short shrift, in favor of scalable, impersonal online coursework that limits contact with actual Harvard professors and is oriented toward profitable professional education. I won’t get into that here, but you can read more about my thoughts on these and other Harvard Extension issues.

A lot of people don’t appreciate how much of a pain it is to make a listing on Craigslist. There are dozens of discrete steps involved, as I describe on my post about how to make an ad on Craigslist. I also reveal how much time it takes, on average, to create a classified ad. While 5-10 minutes may not sound like much, if you are emptying out your home prior to a move, or getting rid of a bunch of baby stuff, it’s a major hassle, as listing just 20 items with photos will take more than two hours.

One man we talked with had just this sort of experience. An MIT graduate student, he planned to move out of his student housing shortly after graduation. So he decided to put his stuff on Craigslist. Very quickly he realized that he would run out of time. The result? “I only listed the big stuff, like the sofa,” he said. “The small stuff, I either took with me or put it out on the curb.”

That’s a lost opportunity — he could have made a few hundred dollars if he had the time to sell the other stuff. It would have given value to other people, too. Instead, he only managed to sell a few items, and some of his belongings ended up in a landfill.

(Update at bottom) There is another sad tale of a Harvard Extension School student attempting to pass himself off as a Harvard College freshman. (Or maybe not; the person claims he went to the Extension School, but the school hasn’t confirmed it). I say “sad” because similar tales erupt every few years (the Godelia affair, Edward Meinert, “Phillip Shaw,” etc.). They involve people who so want to be part of an elite group, that they lie about their backgrounds and use tricks to dupe other members of the Harvard community. Sometimes crimes are committed, while at other times the friends or contacts from the larger Harvard community feel like their trust has been abused.

That’s bad enough. But there’s another element, too. When these cases are exposed in such a public fashion, they perpetuate the notion that Extension School students are trying to pass themselves off as Harvard College students. I once thought these were isolated, rare examples. But I’m sorry to say that the more cases I see like this (at least four that have been reported in the press), coupled with vague or misleading claims by some Extension School students and alumni (e.g., saying “I’m a Harvard graduate” but going out of their way to avoid any mention of their Extension School affiliation), the more I realize that there are a large number of Extension students who have unhealthy identity issues and/or obsessions with the Harvard “brand”. It distracts from the positive experiences and contributions that many other Extension School students have made during their time at the University, and reflects poorly on us all. Thanks to the coverage in the Crimson of these cases, many or most of the members of the College classes of 2000, 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005, 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011, and now the classes up to 2015 have been exposed to news of Extension School posers actively misrepresenting themselves in an attempt to be viewed as Harvard College students.

The Crimson has the story about the latest impostor:

Abe Liu, a 27-year-old student at Harvard Extension School, was escorted out of Weld Hall on Thursday by Harvard University Police Department officers after sleeping in friends’ rooms in the freshman dormitory and telling students that he was a freshman at the College.

Over a period of two months, Liu told Harvard students that he lived in Weld, a dorm in Harvard Yard. He sometimes spent the night there when invited by freshman acquaintances.

Liu also created a presence at Harvard online, posting frequently to the Harvard University Class of 2015 Facebook group and becoming friends on the social networking website with Harvard students he had never met in person. Pictures of Liu taken in freshman dorms and posted on Facebook added to his credibility, acquaintances said. Since Thursday, Liu’s account has become unsearchable and his posts to the Harvard freshman group are gone.

Liu was convincing enough with his words and online social networking profiles to dupe many students, including staff at the Crimson, who featured him in the attached photo for a magazine special earlier this year. But others knew he was lying, as he wasn’t in the Freshman Register and needed help getting access to certain buildings.

The Harvard Independent has more details about the ruses he used, as well as the text of a police report indicating stolen property (an ID card) was involved. Liu admitted to the Crimson that he lied about his College status and forged an ID card.

A lot of information is being disputed (read the comments of the Harvard Independent article), and there are allegations that the administration is trying to keep it out of the media, but it’s sure to be noticed. While the charges against Liu are relatively minor, his time at Harvard is over and the story is not good for the Extension School.

Update: The backlash has started. The story has spread to the national media (Gawker and HuffPo) and lots of negative comments on many of the articles. See the linked Crimson article, above, to understand the tone of the conversation.

About: My name is Ian Lamont. I am an Extension School graduate and the co-founder of Invantory, which provides a Craigslist app for people interested in buying and selling furniture, computers, cars, electronics, tools, toys, strollers, bikes, and household items. For sellers, it’s safer and quicker than using a PC (just a minute or two to create a listing using a mobile phone!) and lets buyers discover interesting items to buy using alerts, photos, and maps. You can sign up for Invantory product updates or request service in your city or town.