New Hive
UX Design & Research, Brand, Product Management
Overview
This was my first startup. When I met Zach, he was of the opinion that it was too hard for a non technical person to express themselves online. After looking at the competition, I was convinced he was right. Together, we set out to build a product and a team that ultimately succeeded in creating a tool and community that made the internet a blank slate for creativity without requiring users to write a single line of code, while also giving them complete creative control of the pages they were building.
Challenges
1. Hard to have creative freedom without coding
In 2010, there was really no way to express yourself creatively online in a visually rich manner. Blogs existed but were very rigid in format, limiting users to templates. Customization required HTML or hiring a programmer, both of which were out of reach for most content creators and curator.
2. Hard to build community without social networking
People want more than just a way to make websites, they want an audience. And more importantly, they want to tap into their existing social networks to share the content they’ve created rather than start all over on every new platform.
Process
1. Define value proposition
At its core, our solution to the problem of self expression being limited online was a drag and drop editor, but more importantly it was also designed and succeeded in becoming a community where users could follow eachother, remix each others’s expression, and share to other platforms with ease.
2. Build MVP for content creation
Making a drag and drop editor where users can just drag content from their desktop onto the browser, then rearrange it, layer it, link it, and use basic editing tools was no small challenge. The goal of any great design is for users to be able to intuitively figure it out. This video demonstrates how the process worked and was part of our built-in tutorial.
3. Create pathways for community to build
The main defining factor of our success was creating a model that was both internally contained, but also connected to the rest of the internet. We achieved this in several ways. First of all, each page (called expressions) had their own URL. This allowed easy sharing to the rest of the web, but also created a sense of permanence. Instead of something just appearing in a feed then getting lost, the content created on the newhive has a sense of permamence.
4. Connect with the rest of the web
The main defining factor of our success was creating a model that was both internally contained, but also connected to the rest of the internet. We achieved this in several ways. First of all, each page (called expressions) had their own URL. This allowed easy sharing to the rest of the web, but also created a sense of permanence. Instead of something just appearing in a feed then getting lost, the content created on the newhive has a sense of permamence.
Lessons Learned
1. Virality doesn't inherently lead to success
The main way we grew was finding users and creating content ourselves that reached a community larger than our own people. Getting right ups on Tech Crunch helped ALOT. I even was lucky enough to create some interactive content that lead to millions of unique users coming to the site mostly from Stumble upon. We milked this success, however creating features that are sticky and a platform that works consistently is the secret to long term success. In our case, we had a technical problem that we deemed unimportant, but affected our users a lot.
2. Doing one thing perfectly is more important than doing a lot of things well. Responsiveness is key.
In a few different ways, our team bit off more than we could chew, by trying to make a tool that allowed users to layout content ANY way they wanted, and have it look consistent on ANY screen. In reality, we should have used an approach where all content was forced into columns and rows, similar to the way this portfolio site was made – using Elementor. Its not quite as user friendly as a simple grid but by starting with a few flexible but simple options, site builders like Elementor force content into a fixed yet flexible format that is easy to keep consistent across browsers and different formats.