Teamwork at the Extremes: WordPress.com and UX for Good

Davide ‘Folletto’ Casali

TEAMWORK AT THE EXTREMES WORDPRESS·COM & UX FOR GOOD

Manifesto Ibridi F E L L O W

UX REDIRECTOR

NIGHT.EU

ADVISOR

@Folletto

THE REMOTENESS CONTINUUM

Distributed 100%

Local 100%

Remote in between

AUTOMATTIC

PART I

2015

468People

worldwide

~160kMessages per week

~1,000Deployments

per week

WHAT IS CALYPSO?Modern foundation for WordPress.com

NODE.JS · REACT · REST API

OPEN SOURCE SINCE NOVEMBER 2015

127Contributors

26,030Commits

6,915Reviews

March 2014 → November 2015 (20 months)

20Months to v1

…how did you do that?You’re fully distributed…

Story of a

Showcase

HYPERION

THE PROBLEM

Themes

v2.0

THX

v4.0 v4.0

3 codebases

DIFFICULT TO MAINTAIN

3 designs

PAINFUL FOR USERS

Create one single Theme Showcase

for WordPress.com

STEP 1: PLANNING

Meetups: face time is important

Know your people

VIENNA MEETUP14 April 2015

Epic Milestone Model

Only user-facing features

One major feature

Many smaller details & fixes

“”

Steve Seear, Hyperion

I found this session really valuable. It was intense, challenging,

and led on to a lot more discussions.

“”

Miguel Fonseca, Hyperion

+1000 on the value and ROI of our meetup exercises.

STEP 2: FIRST MILESTONE

Clear Communication Spaces

Communication is Oxygen

Slack Realtime

P2 Theme Async

Wiki Theme Stable

P2 W

If it’s not communicated transparently, it doesn’t exist

Everything is treated as remote

INITIAL ROADMAP POSTED ON TEAM P2

MASTER THREAD POSTED ON TEAM P2

DES

IGN

ITER

ATI

ON

1

DES

IGN

ITER

ATI

ON

2

DES

IGN

ITER

ATI

ON

3

DES

IGN

ITER

ATI

ON

4

DES

IGN

ITER

ATI

ON

5

ITERATIONS POSTED ON P2

FEEDBACK TRANSPARENT

25

11

15

10

28

9

1

16

Horizon External Testing

JULY 21 JULY 15

Automattic Internal Testing

M1 LAUNCHED 3 August 2015

THEME SHOWCASE M1 IN NUMBERS

5Design

Iterations

11Horizon Testers

6Automattic

Testers

100+Feedbacks &

Comments

124GitHub Tickets

85GitHub

Pull Requests

THEME SHOWCASE M1 TIMELINE

LIVE ~3.5 months

Meetup 4 days

THEME SHOWCASE M1 SALES CHECK

UX FOR GOOD

PART II

“Apply UX design to the most important problems in the world”

Jason Ulaszek

Jeff Leitner

Focus on one thingCommunicate it well

ONE NO·PROFIT PARTNERTO SPONSOR THE CAUSE

Highly independent individuals

Initiative and motivation

10 DESIGNERSFROM ALL AROUND THE WORLD

Discovery Synthesis Creation Validation

+

FULL IMMERSION

2-3 DAYS 2-3 DAYS

GROUP SYNTHESIS

4 5 61 2 3

Zero waste

No bureaucracy, everything useful

“”

Jason Kunesh, Obama For America

We came together as a team in a way that I haven’t experienced

anywhere else.

“”

Marianne Prins, Van Horne Elementary School

I just witnessed an absolute explosion of ideas.

CAN WE DESIGN THE COMMON GOOD?

2011

Chicago

StreetWise · Adler School · The Third Teacher · Cease Fire · Global Lives Project

CAN WE ENRICH LIVES OF WORKING MUSICIANS?

2012

New Orleans

Grammy Foundation · New Orleans Jazz Heritage F. & F. · Clinton Global Initiative · MusiCares

CAN WE GROW MINDFULNESS IN SCHOOLS?

2013

Vancouver

The Dalai Lama Center for Peace + Education

CAN WE HARNESS FEELINGS TO END GENOCIDE?

2014

Kigali & London

Aegis Trust

2014 Kigali

500,000–1,000,000 RWANDANS KILLED

70% TUTSI

20% OF POPULATION

100 DAYS

1994

“In my family, we never talked about the genocide It was too fresh in my parents’ mind”

And you saved the life of the people I was planning on killing”

“You saved my life.

- Child of victims to teacher of mobile education

“I came back and my grandmother says, I hope you got that Africa out of your system.

But at that moment, I realized it was there and growing.

So I moved my family here and opened a school” - KGM Visitor

“Users go through the hard part, but then also the uplifting part

realizing some of the possibilities that are there” - Morley Hanson, Aegis Trust

UX FOR GOOD 2014 IN NUMBERS

40+Interviews

with staff and locals

90Flights

worldwide

15People forever

changed

3,124Post-its

and flip-charts

500+Hours

of research

96Servings of french fries

INZOVU CURVE

HopeReflectionPain Action

Pain

Reflection

Hope

Action

“

”Prof. Dr. Tania Singer

People with a lot of empathy want to change that to compassion

so they don't get overwhelmed when confronted with suffering.

EMPATHETIC Feeling

COMPASSIONATE Action

The Inzovu Curve maps a prototypical journey of a person going through a transformative experience reaching a state of motivation and action.

The word Inzovu means Elephant in Kinyarwanda, the native language of Rwanda.

EPIPHANY

WILL

CONNECT WITH YOUR LIFE

MOTIVATION TO ACT

AWARE TOURIST

EMPATHIC TOURIST

ADVOCATECATALYST

GENOCIDE CHILDRENFIRST

GEN

AFFECTED RWANDANS

UNAWARE TOURIST

inzovucurve.org

PRINCIPLES

PART III

Remote Local

Months of Work Days of Work

Know each other First time meeting

Smaller group Larger group

No client Has client

BOTH WORK.

THE REMOTENESS CONTINUUM

Distributed 100%

Local 100%

Remote in between

A separate floor, office, city, country…

MAKES THE COMPANY ALREADY REMOTE

Meet in person

Communication spaces

Transparency

Focus on one thing

Independent individuals

Zero waste

Pick whatever works… then improve it.

automattic.com/jobs

Happiness Engineer

JavaScript Engineer

Mobile Developer

Product Designer

Code Wrangler

Theme Wrangler

Enterprise Growth Engineer

Technical Account Engineer

Performance Marketing

Marketing Designer

Events Wrangler

Thanks.

@Folletto

INTENSEMINIMALISM.COM