• 

  Hi Linda! Thank you for making your time for this interview. To start, in order to understand how UX would fit in startups and entrepreneurship, we often go through the four stages of startup maturation cycle – formation, launch, growth and expansion, and version 2.0 and beyond. Understanding the fact that these stages vary for a number of startups, when do you think is the best stage for User Experience to fit in?

• 

  Good to see you, Zana!

  I guess it depends on the goal of the startup by itself. For example, visual-driven startups like Piktochart and InVision, would need user experience locked down from the start. They do not need to have designated UX Designers for this, sometimes in the midst of bootstrapping, the founding team would do most of the tasks.

  Also, many people would confuse UX and design by itself. Even from formation phase, you need to be able do comprehensive user experience – for example, when MaidEasy first started, the most functionality they needed was a booking form, so that was what they focused on what user wanted there. That’s how focusing on user experience is like.

• 

  With the fast-paced environment in startups, how should UX processes adapt and get the best value for the investment?

• 

  We all know startups, especially early in the formation phase, don’t really have the capital or luxurious schedules for UX processes. But UX design is not something you want to skip if you want to make it big in the market, in fact, it is really important.

  Enter Lean UX. It focuses on getting feedback as early as possible so that it can be used to make quick decisions.

  

  Lean UX cycle, focusing on getting feedback as early as possible

  Lean UX works very well for startups ecosystem because it doesn’t focus on requirements, but instead on problem statements, which should lead to a better product that users want to actually use. The focus is on creating Minimum Viable Product (MVP), building the most basic version for the concept as possible, test and polish the design from there.

  So in turn this maximises your resources and minimizes your time in perfecting the product – and in turn, users would want to use the product even more as their feedback are taken care of.

  In conclusion, you really need make sure the product principles are right from the start. What should be the intended experience that user will take from your apps? Design in phases while move through one objection.

• 

  To some startups, UX may be delegated to a little more than an afterthought – last item in their growing list. How do we include UX in the earlier phase before bringing in UX talent at a later stage?

• 

  To be honest, startups are going to need UX sooner or later in their startup phase. It is not something that can be an afterthought.

  If startups already have an existing product, one way to make UX inclusive then it is good to take a look at analytics to find out what can they improve from there. Otherwise, if it is from scratch, presenting on a use case basis is a good start. A lot of startups have problems because they focus on coding from day one, instead of focusing on users.

  Entrepreneurs need to have a basic UX design knowledge in order to make it bigger in the wild too. User experience lets you connect with your eventual users and customers, improves your ability to communicate with your employees, improves your hiring process – this is extremely important as startups need someone who share the same drive and passion as you and also, it builds better teams, as in a fast-paced environment, the founders need to know what keeps your teams happy.

• 

  Speaking of making teams happy, how will including UX processes improve the dynamics of the team internally?

• 

  User experience is what internal and external parties see. If we include all processes and everyone from the start, they can feel the involvement and are more motivated because they are part of the team. You are more likely to build cooperative teams that are fully engaged in the design process, rather than a silo organisational chart that divides everyone and hindering development efforts.

  When we were in Joota, in order to get everyone to be in the character for the product, we assign one persona per one employee. In the end, assuming the user persona results in a comprehensive customer journey, complete with pain points and all. Good times.

• 

  What sort of opportunities can startups offer UX talents?

• 

  You will get to gain more experience, if you are into it.

  Your work will not be just within your scope – because startups are mostly bootstrapping, so you get to do more, learn more and push more beyond your boundaries. Compared to if you are employed in MNCs, you get to only do your part, so your learning opportunity is not so much.

  In return, you also need to be prepared to give more.

• 

  What real-life challenges do you think UX talents need to be ready to embark on a career with startups?

• 

  Do a lot of homework. Get ready to do more critical thinking. Approach problems as many perspectives as possible. Work fast. Essentially, we need both a Thinker and a Doer.

  In many cases, user experience can be a major disruptor to your career as a designer. There is also a lot of leadership opportunities you’ll have to educate people about user experience and communicate its benefits. And people won’t really believe in the value that User Experience provides until they see it, so that means you have to show them.

  Fresh grads do not normally sustain in startups although they have the passion and the vigour. They are still in the transition from the chilled life in education to intense real life, and there are many instances they are not brave enough to push the boundary.

  However, in isolated cases, there are some who are very determined – and they are good fit for startups.

• 

  With these in mind, do you have any advice to UX talents looking to join startups?

• 

  Don’t stop learning. Be very very curious about the workings of nearly everything, because in startups, you will need to see a lot of things as broken and you will need to always be fixing them.

  Startups are in the constant state of change – so you need to have a backup plan in case it doesn’t work. Not to scare you, but it polishes your skill of planning and critical thinking. In the end, you get to contribute to be in full engagement with your craft, as in startups, you have a higher degree of collaboration.

  In the end, do not be afraid to make mistakes. You’ll never know how far you will go if you have never made any mistakes.

• 

  Always inspired to talk to you, Linda! Thank you so much for your time!

• 

  Thank you for having me Zana!

Startups represent exciting opportunities for UX professionals to practice their craft and directly mold an exciting product or user experience. In startups, UX designers also get to hone their skills in being a leader and help a startup to successfully evolve and mature their internal processes.

• 

  Hi Fuqaha, thank you for making time for the interview! This is as part of our Working Remote series — we would like to share with our readers that remote working is possible as long as we get things right, and seeing as you have conducted Katsana brilliantly while on the run, we thought it’d be awesome to speak to you!

• 

  Thank you Zana! Happy to speak to you and Shaza as well.

• 

  So tell us about how Katsana starts, and the current setup?

• 

  Certainly.

  We are quite a small team, currently at around 6-7 people. When Katsana first started, we hitched a ride at the former JomSocial office. This lasted about a year. JomSocial was also where I met my co-founder, Irwan, who came from electrical engineering background. He brought the hardware expertise in Katsana, and I, with an architecture background, am more towards strategising, researching, proposing etc. you know, the things founders do.

  It was during the first year and we were bootstrapping as much as we could, so we all worked remotely most of the time. There were only three of us. At that time it seems such a big thing for businesses to have an office, which, while we do not see the necessity, we understand how clients and customers might see the value in having one. So what we did during that one was we applied for a virtual incubator at Technology Park Malaysia (TPM) and we got the mailing address along with some credibility by association to TPM.

• 

  That’s really clever. So during the year, certainly there were a lot of research to be done – market evaluation, analysis, etc. How long did you take to come up with a concrete plan before the product is launched?

• 

  So this is interesting. What we did is that we got our website launched first, 8 months before the product is launched. We make sure that our design ideas need to mature first. There were loads of questions involved — will this work, how will this data help us, test test test — before we move on to the engineering stage. As Katsana is not only a software startup, but also hardware, the engineering team will also work on its own strategising.

  During this time, while we were doing pricing research, we were already generating some leads. Surprisingly, we had so many enquiries during this stage. We sent them emails for pre-sales with discounted price. Once the MVP was out, we lived on the revenue for a couple of months after that.

  We had been bootstrapping and relying solely on revenue before funding. We only started to grow even more rapidly in 2015.

• 

  Achieved all of these wonderful feats remotely, that’s amazing! Have you always been remote though?

• 

  I guess you can say so, until now. After we moved out of JomSocial’s office, we were based in MCOBA Building, next to Midvalley. As every KL-ite knows, Midvalley is basically Hades for traffic, so most of us choose to work remotely. We found that it is more productive rather than having to commute and brave the traffic everyday.

  

  

  We do have an office now, but the remote working setting remains. Most of us come to the office at most twice a week, usually when we decide to have a strategy meeting or discussing something more in length — something beyond features, driver behaviour or handling fleet.

  The rest of the time, we work wherever we are comfortable with.

• 

  How do you find your team’s productivity when you work remote?

• 

  We have always been remote, so it might become an understatement that we might not know any other ways to do our work rather than always on the go. The setting makes the journey possible for Katsana to become where we are today.

  What I found out is that, as we are result-oriented, working remotely has given my team so much empowerment to produce good results every single time. So don’t worry, hire good people, give them goals, and watch how they amaze you.

• 

  Do you think the setting might change once you are funded?

• 

  That’s a good question.

  It might get stricter, but over time I think I’d still want that kind of flexibility for me and my team. It has worked wonders so far.

• 

  Is there any tips on remote team management and motivation?

• 

  To be honest, it needs to be right from the start. We make a point to only hire good people, those who are self-starter, resourceful and self-motivated. We also do not have the luxury of training, hence we hire people who recognise that they can do great things here. These people who believe on your vision and cherish small small achievements as we do. I am the type of people who believe achievements, no matter how small, drive more achievements.

  

  I also believe Malaysians are capable to do amazing things, we just need some nudging. Work on realising their own potentials and magnify what they love doing into skills.

  Most of the people who are in Katsana are those who we have known and worked with, so we know everyone’s working styles — one less thing to worry about.

  We also stress on the importance of adhering timelines and milestones. One delay could lead to another, so we make sure to make sure we follow the schedule as closely as possible.

• 

  Is the concept of flexibility familiar to other startups, as far as you know?

• 

  To be honest, I have no idea. But if they haven’t done it yet, they should.

  It is nice to be able to see everyone in the same setting and in the same number of hours, but it is another level of satisfaction when are not in the same room with your team and you know things still get done.

• 

  Do you use any communication tools between your team?

• 

  We definitely love Slack, as you guys do too. Other than that, we ditched Whatsapp and move to Kakao Talk, where the userbase is lesser so there’s less distraction.

  As for storing assets, they are all on Google Apps Enterprise and Dropbox.

• 

  Where do you think is a good productive place to do work besides the office?

• 

  For me, definitely not at home. I try not to make it a habit to work from home where I should be relaxing.

  I like to work from the cafe, as I find the ambience sound helps me to concentrate better. The rest of the team works from various places ranging from home to cafes to co-working spaces. It depends on their preference.

• 

  When you started Katsana, do you have an existing business model?

• 

  When you think about it, it is interesting because similar GPS tracking companies as ours are trading companies — they buy the hardware and then sell. Katsana is a service company — we don’t sell products, we develop our own solutions for the users.

  The strength of Katsana lies in its collection of data and its algorithms, which play a critical role in behavioural analysis and driver scoring. We crunch live data from vehicles, understand drivers’ behaviuor, summarise, and score everything in an actionable way.

  

  
  

  

  We now handle data originating from over six million locations in Malaysia daily.

• 

  Six million locations—that’s a lot! One final question: How does your daily life look like?

• 

  I wish I could tell you this better, but to be honest, I don’t have a fixed schedule so far. But I am working towards developing a routine, mainly now trying to wake up as early as 6 am, go jogging and all and head to the office at 8 am.It’s in the works, so I’ll let you know once I get to it. (laughs)

• 

  Gotcha, Fuqaha. Thank you for the interview, and we’ll see you around!

• 

  Thank you, Shaza and Zana!

Currently installed on over 1,100 vehicles in Malaysia, with 90 percent of them owned by firms, including the likes of Sime Darby Hertz, Metrobus, K- Line Logistics, and H&M; Katsana plans to tackle the motor insurance industry next.

With the industry collecting an average of US$2 billion per year in premiums, Fuqaha says to expect 72 percent of that or around US$1.4 billion to be paid in claims.

“We want to reduce this claim loss, while at the same time becoming the catalyst for safer driving in Malaysia,” he says. “We want to ensure that good drivers are rewarded. If you’re a good driver, you should get a much lower premium. It’s that simple.” Fuqaha tells Tech in Asia.

Visit Katsana here for more information.

• 

  Hello Jes! Lovely to have you here! Could you tell us about yourself and your role at PurelyB?

• 

  Hello!

  Well, my name is Jesrina Arshad. I had been in digital industry ever since the start of my career. I graduated in Multimedia Technology Design from University of Kent in Canterbury, United Kingdom. This was one of the top universities in multimedia in the United Kingdom, about 12 years ago when multimedia course was practically unheard of. Did you know writer Kazuo Ishiguro was an alumnus of University of Kent?

  Moving on to career wise, I had been serving in digital agencies before finally accepting a role in Astro and the Head of Digital Marketing. It was limitless in terms of possibilities, it was fun, fulfilling, I learned a lot there and it was the start of so many things.

  But eventually it’s about time I found a calling in life. I have loads of allergies – you know the feeling before you walk into restaurants and having to do extensive research before ordering something so that allergies won’t hit you and you won’t go home with practically bumps on your face, having trouble breathing and all? So I thought, why didn’t I collect all these resources into one platform to help all my fellow allergy-sufferers as well as the others who are looking to lead a healthier lifestyle?

  Hence, PurelyB is born.

• 

  PurelyB is the first of its kind in Malaysia – a website dedicated to healthy living and eating in Malaysia and Southeast Asia, and soon expanding to Asia. This is especially a good initiative for the region where most of the dishes, due to diversity, result in a symphony of flavours. However good they are, they might not offer some healthy choices though. What brings you to the idea of realising PurelyB?

• 

  It started when I have began following some of healthy food bloggers from Australia and the United States, offering tips about healthy lifestyle and healthy dishes every day. These food bloggers made me realise that good food, in all its sentiments, does not have to be bland, that they can be surprisingly healthy and yummy by itself. But, you see, we haven’t had such people doing so in Malaysia so far.

  This is where I saw a market for us to create a portal that resonates with people at this region featuring more localised as well as fusion recipes. There are also families and friends who are now into superfoods as well – chia seeds, kale, açai and the likes.

  My Instagram account was also such a hit when I began featuring alternative ingredients to our everyday Malaysian food. Something like cauliflower fried rice – you have no idea how excited people to see that there is a healthier option to their favourite everyday meals! They don’t have to give it up yet they can still eat healthy.

  

• 

  Oh yes! I remember someone came through Intercom.io (the platform where we use for PurelyB to communicate with customers in real time) from Alor Setar praising so much of the cauliflower rice. Shaza kept asking if it was me, since I am based in Kedah now.

  No, it wasn’t me though, but it was great to see how people reacted positively to it. (we all laughed)

• 

  Yes, something like that!

  It was great to see people’s reception to these alternative ingredients that won’t make them give up their beloved everyday Malaysian meals. All we need to do is to educate them – give them the right information, the sources of where they can get these ingredients, all the useful deets. Implicitly, giving them an objective point of view so they are more aware and more educated on healthy eating.

  So I decided, well if no one else is doing it, it has to be us.

• 

  What do you think is the highest concern of Malaysians when it comes to embarking on healthier eating and living? Is it the convenience of obtaining healthy food and finding these fitness classes? The price?

• 

  Well, we did a thorough survey before starting with the business model for PurelyB in its initial stage.

  While price is definitely a concern, people are definitely embarking on a healthier lifestyle and are willing to spend more especially when they have family and kids. However, they do not have enough information on these aspects, especially something more localised and catered towards Asian tastebuds. They didn’t know where to go to get stuff, where to start, how to start, which yoga position is for beginners, which class should they take etc. Eventually, this hindered them from changing their lifestyle to a healthier one.

  So, more so than the pricing, it’s more of building education and mindset. Once all of that is transitioned properly, pricing wouldn’t be an issue.

• 

  Your team is made up of such wonderful line up of experts, writers as well as team members! Tell me about your experience engaging with this brilliant people and getting them onboard to contribute to PurelyB.

• 

  Oh my team! We wouldn’t be where we are now without them!

  

  As soon I got the idea for PurelyB, I knew I had to get only the right people onboard.

  Half of the team should be the best of the best in health and wellness. They need to have the right credibility, their visions should be in line with mine. There are a lot of healthy practitioners these days, but I am looking for those who are more into natural health, emphasising on prevention, treatment, and optimal health through the use of therapeutic methods and substances that encourage individuals’ inherent self-healing process.

  I think this is because I had been brought up this way. My sister, Dina is a naturopath, so whenever any of the family members have any sickness, Dina is the first person we often consult to for natural remedies rather than going straight for medications.

  There was one time one of our family members had H1N1. It was very alarming, none of the hospital medications worked at that time but Dina concocted a natural healing and saved him. So we had always been believers in natural healing first.

  I was then introduced to Amanda, one of the best and few certified natural healthy practitioners in the country. I was reminded that there were only five of them in the country, along with Dina, so being introduced and got to have a long chat to Amanda about having her on PurelyB, where she immediately said yes, was so amazing!

  My mentor, Wu Han, of whom I met during my earlier working days, then connected me to Marissa, the co-founder of Centre Circle, a training facility that helps individuals and teams flourish in the workplace, who also runs Movimento Simples de Capoeira, Malaysia’s leading Capoeira and Brazilian culture academy with her husband. We immediately clicked and she introduced me to Carina, a renowned nutrition expert. When I spoke to Carina, she was excited to come onboard and professed this is something she had always wanted to do. Carina introduced me to Dave soon after, and my lineup of experts are complete for now.

  Once these five key people were established, I immediately identified my digital experts. My good friend, Stephanie had been in digital strategy for years and she had won numerous awards for many of her campaigns so I knew she would have been a great fit as the COO. I brought Helenness onboard as the CMO, of whom I had known for years. She had experiences running many successful social media campaigns and also runs her very own digital agency, so she’s also another perfect addition to PurelyB.

  So here are the pioneers of PurelyB, and I could not have been much prouder 🙂

• 

  Wonderful!

  On the general question of running a startup, what have you learned so far? What sort of wisdom can you disperse to entrepreneurs, especially those who are new to the startup scene – eager to start, albeit a bit scared?

• 

  One thing for sure, you have to have the right team. It’s not about getting the right or smart people, it’s the dynamics – of course finding the right developers as well 🙂 We have just been mostly extremely lucky in getting the right kind of people for every team.

  Also, be sure to have a clear vision and a clear goal of things and be careful not to get distracted in the way. It is easy to get carried away and getting micro when it’s your baby, but having the right team helps you gain the trust to delegate tasks, give them a sense of ownership and they will take care of things.

  For new entrepreneurs, be thoroughly passionate in what you are doing. But passion is not enough, be prepared with all sorts of strategy and believe in them. Have the right target audience. Whatever happens, plow through things – I know this might not seem a very helpful advice, but once you have the drive and passion, you will go do it no matter what.

• 

  Any advice to disperse to women entrepreneurs as well?

• 

  To be honest, I don’t see much differentiation in being an entrepreneur regardless of gender, which is good because that means we are all treated equally.

  We were at Tech in Asia recently where we talked to a lot of investors and they were really interested in what we are creating, hence I don’t see any prejudice at all. Just work as hard as anyone does and we will get through it.

• 

  What’s the BEST thing about running PurelyB?

• 

  Well, I get two hours of sleep everyday… (we all chuckled)

  … BUT it does not feel that way. I just love PurelyB and I love what I am doing. There is a definite difference to it when people are really passionate about what they are doing.

  Another thing is that there are so many things you learned along the way. I learned so much from the health experts because they wouldn’t stop sharing all their wisdom – what to eat, how to take better care of myself etc. I learned so much about running a company on a daily basis – the psychology of getting customers interested, how to retain visitors to the site, what kind of content resonates well with the audience etc. I also learned about the best technical and UI/UX solutions to give more visibility to PurelyB website to compete against all the other health websites sprouting in the virtual sphere.

  

• 

  How did you find out about Stampede and what brings you to the decision of engaging us for your work?

• 

  It started out when I spoke to Wu Han and shared with him about the idea of having PurelyB. I told him, “I want to work with the best developers, and I need some names,” so he pointed me towards Stampede and another company.

  We spoke to Stampede and this other company within the same week, and we took our time in evaluating both companies. What I found out about Stampede, outside of the online portfolio that was in the website is that Shaza, the first person I spoke to in Stampede, could really connect to the project. There is this unspoken level of dedication and into details that you just could sense. Upon time working with Stampede, we realised how the whole team put their all into it – this is so unlike other agencies.

• 

  Couldn’t stop smiling. How have the experience working with us so far?

• 

  In general, it was brilliant.

  Look at it this way – I have been in the industry for 9 years, I have been working with numerous agencies. Honestly speaking, working with Stampede is the best experience thus far. Whilst other agencies treated us like projects, Stampede goes above and beyond in realising our long term goals. You know there are agencies which are good in design, but somehow lacks a bit in the implementation – and there’s also who has so many documentations it is really convincing but when it comes to design, front end and project management, it all goes haywire?

  Stampede is not that kind of company. You guys really do deliver beyond expectations and within timeline.

  So far we have received so much compliments, nothing beyond flattery. We hear of how the design is refreshing, inviting, not cluttered although there’s loads of content and browsing on mobile is also seamless.

  On Stampede’s understanding on the requirements, they got them nailed from the start. When I relied my requirements, I have set the tone of what I have envisioned – I want to have the capability that Salesforce, Shopify or Magento have that I can highly customise as well as intuitive. I understood what would work well in retaining audience and driving leads but as a startup, I could not afford as much to have the same capabilities as the features those platforms would offer, and I see over time I would be expanding more and more, so the solution has to be sustainable.

  Once I communicated these concerns to Dov and Shaza, they immediately came back about the right solutions – and as you can see with the launch, Stampede is capable to deliver! There were also a lot of adhoc things that my team had been asking in such a short time, but Stampede had always been able to accommodate within such a reasonable timeline.

  On top of that, mostly what I love about Stampede as well is that you guys are like family. There is a definite team dynamics there that you do not get from working with other agencies.

• 

  What sort of features can the fans expect soon in the works?

• 

  Right now, we have the blog feature, where you can read articles on mindfulness, recipes, living an active lifestyle, parenting and so many more. Then we have also the directory feature where we list healthy restaurants and shops in Malaysia and Singapore with search option on locations and health considerations so healthy lifestyle enthusiasts will have a one-stop centre to refer to if they are looking for healthy ingredients and where to eat.

  Recently launched, we are now also offering health programmes. Currently we have three: 21-Day Kickstart to a Healthy Lifestyle, 7-Day Detox and 3-Day Detox. These are catered towards people who need guidance in living a healthier lifestyle, but are too busy to start on their own. So in this case, we will be offering programmes created especially by our nutrition and fitness experts ranging from daily exercises, fitness tips, grocery list and many more. Also, if they do not have time to create their own meals, subscribers can opt for a premium plan where we can get food delivered to them.

  

  In the next phase, we shall have recipes feature. We will be aggregating favourite recipes across the web according to dietary needs and these will be customised to local tastebuds. What even more interesting is that these aggregated recipes shall also be linked to shopping lists. Soon in the next phase we shall also have is the marketplace feature. This works as an online store – think Mudah.com for healthy lifestyle needs – where people can purchase healthy products and services ranging from personal care and ecofashion from various suppliers and brands.

  In targeting even more widely towards Southeast Asian users, we also target to launch multilingual features in the next phase. Starting small, we are going to start offering the site in both English and Mandarin first, and then Bahasa Malaysia in about a month after that.

  All in all, PurelyB aims to be the 3C’s platform – offering one-stop solution for community, content and commerce catered for healthy lifestyle.

• 

  One final question: Where do you get all the energy?!

• 

  (laughs) I have no idea – I guess I have found something I am really passionate about in PurelyB, and there is no stopping me!

  What keeps me going also are those praises I get on a daily basis. I regard PurelyB as my own baby, so when people have been expressing nothing but praises on something you love so much and you believe in, that keeps you going even more.

• 

  Does it also have to do with the fact that you are eating even healthier?

• 

  I have always been a staunch believer of eating healthy! Now on top of running PurelyB, I have set up my mind to walk the talk even more, to become the advocate of my own product and eating healthy every single day. You cannot build something you don’t believe and practice on.

• 

  Jes, what you do not know also is that, PurelyB has also changed the life and habits of us at Stampede.

  I have started working out. Zana, for a while, had been trying to find out where to buy quinoa because she had some while she was in Melbourne and she loved it – now she knows where to find them. Shaiful, on the other hand, had been starting to try planking every day, so he had been reading articles in PurelyB Be Active section every day.

• 

  You see? THIS, these kind of comments, they are the ones that kept me going! Every time I wake up to know that PurelyB changes lives, all is well.

  I can’t thank you guys enough for being in this journey together. Happy working is a mutual thing, so I am glad to have found Stampede.

• 

  Wonderful to hear that, Jes! We are so glad to be able to help realise your vision too.

  Thank you for the time and speak soon!

• 

  See ya!

You have to check out all the wonderful articles, a hefty selection of healthy shops and restaurants and specially curated health programmes all on PurelyB.

In the meantime, do also give a follow to their Facebook, Twitter & Instagram. Be careful treading about the photos of yummy, yet healthy recipes during Ramadan!

• 

  Hi Danish, good to have you! How are you doing? Could you tell us about yourself and your role at Motopedia?

• 

  Hello, you two! I am good, thanks – how about you?

  I am the main man of Motopedia – I am the guy with ideas! Well, to be official, I am Motopedia’s Executive Producer as well as the Content Writer. It all started when Alawi and I were discussing on cars  – we do that a lot, but then we realised there were no video reviews for cars sold in the UAE as well as GCC. It’s unfortunate because the Saudis love their cars, but they only had to make decisions based on existing print articles or having to watch their favourite cars being driven somewhere in California. These guys, they want the real thing. Branded content is also on the rise – there are quite a number of Youtube videos doing reviews, and we asked ourselves, why not?

  So this is where we see the opportunity – we have the means, the tools and ultimately the passion, and so Motopedia was born!

• 

  How did you find out about Stampede? During the proposal process, what made you confident to move forward with Stampede?

• 

  This is an interesting story.

  The first few months when we decided on the idea of Motopedia, we commissioned a small agency to build the website. However, after a few weeks, they probably realised the magnitude of work involved and they could not do it. We were devastated of course, so we were on a search again for the team who could realise Motopedia.

  During these months, we contacted a few agencies – listing down all our requirements and deciding on a number of websites we could base Motopedia on. We were running high and dry. Finally, a UK-based agency replied. The price quoted was a bit too high though, since they decided we should go with a custom content management system (CMS). We were close to agreeing, but then I decided to sleep on it.

  

  Compare cars or check out Motopedia’s favourite picks

  I remember the time I was in Malaysia and heard about the rise of digital agencies in Malaysia, and some of them are reputedly to be really good. I did some research and came upon Stampede’s website. I love the design – it is modern, contemporary and it is easy to navigate – just how I want the new Motopedia to be. I found Shaza’s number and gave her a call only to be directed to her voicemail. A few minutes later, she sent me an email — I had no idea how she tracked me (Shaza: I Googled the number!). We exchanged a couple of emails discussing the requirements and she sent me a proposal outlining the scope and plans. The proposal was comprehensive and really reasonable, since now it turns out we could build the website using WordPress.

  So now it is between Stampede and this other company.

  In the course of us trying to make our decisions, Shaza and Dov have been very transparent and helpful with walking me through the pros and cons of WordPress and custom CMS. Stampede has done both options for clients in the past so they are able to recommend the best-viable solution to us. Both WordPress and custom CMS have their own strengths and weaknesses. However WordPress has come a long way with so many well-developed plugins. It’s also backed by a huge community of developers. The fact that WordPress is both powerful and versatile allows us to launch the website on time with the features we want. We can also implement more exciting ideas as we go along with all the plugins available for WordPress.

  In our case, going fully custom would have been an unnecessary cost and will be similar to reinventing the wheel all over again.

  I took a leap of faith — and decided Stampede it is.

• 

  Interesting indeed!

  So Danish, tell us more about your love affair with cars, how did the spark ignite? Perhaps you used to own a classic car or having involved in backyard car projects or a friend took you for a 250km per hour spin in a supercar?

• 

  Unfortunately, my man, there is no real life-changing stories about it. (We all chuckled)

  It was that most of us share a common interest over liking cars. In Dubai, we get to see all types of cars sprinting fast by us and we could not help wondering, how does it feel to get to drive these cars? How different they are from the rest? Who would be interested by them?

  These kind of thoughts could lead to a lot of ideas. Even though if one is not interested in luxury cars, you’d want to give it a test drive just to see how cool it is, you know, like Bugatti or something.

  

  Sexy, boiled-down stats that matter

• 

  Oh yeah, Bugatti is one sexy beast.

  Your latest Wadi Special video featuring three American 4×4 put through a series of off-road tests kind of reminisce of Top Gear challenge segments. Can we expect more videos shot in a similar style in the future?

• 

  Probably!

  The funny thing is, we never intended for the shoot to turn out like that. Some things coincidentally turned out good, like our chance encounter with Stampede. Also, it seems people have an affinity for a number of friends arguing with each other on-screen – so yes, expect some similar style in the future!

• 

  What cars are you looking forward to review in 2015?

• 

  I think we would be reviewing a number of Mercs and Beemers. Throw in some Fords as well.

  We would like to review some American cars apart from German ones, like the 2014 Chrysler 300CC we already have in the reviews. And yes, supercars too – Porsche 911 or Cayenne. That would be great.

  

  Dealership listing by locations and brands

• 

  Sweet! Looking forward!

  The people of UAE certainly love their cars. Based on your experience, what are Emiratis favorite subjects when it comes to “car-talk” besides price tags? For example, here in Malaysia potential car owners tend to talk a lot about resale values and after sales services.

• 

  The truth is, after a certain price point, after sales service and resales are not much of higher importance.

  I have a friend in London who just bought a Range Rover Vogue. This is a smart SUV, excellent for both off-road capability and on-road handling – superior in many ways. Its monthly petrol bill could reach USD700, this is not including the roadtax and other maintenance bills for the car. Was he concerned? No, because he is driving a Rover in Central London!

  Based on my experience, I guess the certain price point where people would talk about resale values  is about USD100,000. After that, people do not seem to mind anymore if they could spend more on that.

• 

  So, what sort of features can Motopedia fans expect soon in the website?

• 

  Well, as we all know, we are currently working with you on the cars comparison page. Users can add up till four cars in the same page side-by-side and compare the criteria based on its performance, interior, safety details and many more. Users can also save the comparisons in PDF format and also share with friends over social media. We are very excited to get it launched this week.

  I was also thinking of putting up a page for deals, something like Groupon, but specifically for cars.

  We are working with a number of small automotive businesses in the area at the moment. It would be good if we could help them promote their businesses by aggregating car-related deals every week – for example, for car polish, maintenance, window tinting, car wash and many more.

• 

  Sounds great! Let us know if you need our help!

  Final question – which features do you love best in the current Motopedia website?

• 

  How many am I allowed? Because I think I love everything!

  

  Motopedia.ae is fully responsive so give it a spin on your tablet and mobile

  First, of course I love the design. It’s elegant, it’s straightforward and best of all, it works wonderfully. Everything is laid out in the homepage – the dealers search, the video reviews, the search functions, everything. It might seem impossible to fit everything you need on one page by itself, but Stampede did it.

  Of course, the search function. It works just how it should be, it predicts very well and it’s intuitive. Just a few letters in while searching and it is suggesting some results for us. Brilliant one, Shaiful.

  

  Search and filter interface for greater comparison control

• 

  Thanks!

• 

  The website is also easy to maintain, since it is on WordPress. My boys had no hard time learning on how to use the platform. Just a few clicks and it’s up. Easy-peasy.

  Finally, more so about the features, it’s about the team. Stampede has been really supportive from the beginning – from the requirements stage, proposal, design, programming, project management – all the way till launch. The post-launch support has been so unbelievably amazing too. Even now, Stampede continues to share exciting ideas and best practices for us to take Motopedia to a greater degree than it already is.

  Superb job, everyone.

• 

  Thank you Danish, from all of us at Stampede!

  And thank you again, for making time for us. It had been such a pleasure to talk to you, and to be able to work with you and Motopedia team.

  All around, a great team we both make!

• 

  Couldn’t agree more! Talk to you both later.

Go ahead and check out the nifty features on Motopedia.ae.

You may also follow their Facebook, Twitter & Google+ for frequently updated information on car reviews and tips.

• 

  Hi Michael, how are you? Thank you so much for spending time for this interview. Could you tell us more about yourself and User Journeys – probably from the inception of the company to where it is now?

• 

  Hi Zana! I’m good, thanks! How are you doing?

  Well, to start – in the mid 1990s, I was a job-hopping media studies graduate. I took up designing websites as a hobby. During the dot-com boom, I got hired by a Dublin-based consulting firm, originally as a content editor for their internal website. Within six months, they sent me to Edinburgh, Los Angeles and New York. They put me in charge of user experience. I was thrown in at the deep end!

  A couple of years later, I decided I want to work for myself. I set up my own internet consulting business. I learned as I went along, largely through my many mistakes. As the online industry matured, I was able to concentrate exclusively on usability and UX.

  I also began to sub-contracts elements of the work to companies and individual freelancers around the world. This allowed me to nurture and grow User Journeys in a way I could not have imagined when I started out. It was an amazing experience.

  Today, I have what could be described as a lifestyle business. I work hard, but I work when I choose to. I make time for my family. I can respectfully turn down client requests, if I need to.

• 

  That is an amazing journey, indeed!

  So Michael, I read a bit through your website and your blog and was impressed by how User Journeys employs many different methods in analysing user experience in websites. We are always interested in these processes.

  Could you walk us through some of them please?

• 

  Absolutely.

  Often when companies engage us initially, they will ask for an expert usability review. This is where we spend time analysing a website for UX issues. We then meet the client for a workshop to give constructive feedback, suggesting improvements.

  Contextual enquiry is one of my favourite research methods – this is where we go into an organisation, watch how they do things, and ask questions.

  For example, once I had to redesign the interface of an internal web system used in a call centre. So I sat for a day with the call centre staff, listening in (with permission) to the incoming customer calls, observing how they entered information into the system, and what problems they encountered.

  We also still rely heavily on the tried-and-trusted method of user testing. For anyone interested, I’d recommend Steve Krug’s book, Rocket Surgery Made Easy. He explains how to do user testing better than I ever could.

  

  A/B testing is when we show one version of a web page to a group of users, and an alternative version to a second group, is another method I love. I find it works better on sites with strong traffic.

• 

  That book is definitely going into our to-read list. Thank you for that, Michael!

  User experience has been inculcated based on design thinking many years ago. However it seems much more evident now and that seems to be what everyone talks about – empathy, storytelling etc. much more about putting yourself in your users’ shoes.

  What do you think are the challenges in engaging clients from multiple backgrounds for usability testing and how did you solve it?

• 

  I regularly encounter organisational resistance to usability – what Jakob Nielsen the “usability intimidation barrier”. The way I overcome this challenge is to use lean or “discount” usability techniques – I try to get usability research done quickly and without fuss.

  In other words, I try to remove the clients’ fears; reassure them.

  The client thinks hiring a lab is going to be costly? We don’t need a lab. We can do the testing in the client’s office. It’s going to take too long? We can do it tomorrow morning and write the report in the afternoon. The client can’t get volunteers? I will get them. The volunteers can’t come to the office? We can do remote testing.

• 

  Love that part about reassuring the users. So over the years, how has the usability process changed or progressed based in your experience?

• 

  Well, the concept of usability has grown complicated by its amalgamation, in recent years, with the wider concept of user experience.

  Usability advocates the user’s needs. When we speak about making an interface more usable, we mean putting the user’s interests first. User experience considers all of the users senses – not just whether they find something easy to use. Moreover, user experience can be manipulated. It is not always about putting the user first. Marketers can ask: “How can we create an experience X so that the user will buy product Y?”

  Overall, though, it’s a great time to be working in UX. Clients have a far greater understanding of the role of UX practitioners now, and of the value we can bring. New tools like Balsamiq Mockups have made it easy to create rapid designs and prototypes. And we have so much user data now, thanks to apps like Google Analytics, which also lets you run advanced A/B tests.

  With all these resources easily available, users are more educated and also more directly involved now.

• 

  So I heard that your first email to Stampede was about 8 years ago! That’s amazing.

  How did you find out about Stampede and what brings you to the decision of engaging us for your work?

• 

  Yes!

  I remember deciding I wanted to find an overseas designer. I had read about ‘outsourcing’ and wanted to try it. I looked at showcase websites such as webcreme.com and some designs stood out. One of them was by Stampede. I thought, “This is better than any design I could get from a local graphic artist.”

  I got in touch with Shaza and the rest is history. With sites like Elance, working with other companies and individuals around the world seems so ordinary now, but back then it felt very new.

• 

  How has the experience been working with us so far?

• 

  Excellent. That’s why I keep coming back!

  Stampede are part of what I consider my online village – even though, like many of the people I “know” professionally online, we only communicate through email and Skype.

  In small communities, everyone would know their local greengrocer, or their doctor. I feel that level of familiarity and trust when I am working on a new project with Stampede. I am always delighted and honoured when they accept a new project – because, just like me, they have the right to say no.

• 

  You have no idea how happy this remark has made us, Michael. We love working with you too.

  Thank you again from all of us at Stampede. We look forward to work for more exciting projects with you. See you around!

• 

  It has been a pleasure, Zana. Talk to you later!

A veteran of the Internet scene, Michael has published an e-book about SEO called “Website Findability” which you can download here.

On top of that, with close to 20 years of experience, Michael has worked on a huge number of exciting projects and has been giving lectures on usability/SEO for a number of institutions. You may find out more about Michael from his Twitter account and User Journeys website here.

• 

  Hi Lily! How’s it going? On behalf of the team, we’d like to thank you for spending time for this interview. To start, could you tell us about yourself and your role in Joota?

• 

  Hi Zana! I’m good, thanks, how about yourself?

  Where do we start? Before Joota, I had quite a “colourful” career. Even though I was trained in Computer Science, I definitely went beyond programming. I had done corporate training, e-learning and courseware development as an Instructional Designer, web development, dabbled in web design even, project management, IT consulting and even event management (of the multi-million dollar kind). Basically my inherent interest in combining both art and science in whatever I do, allowed me to play on both side of the fence. Some say I am just nuts or have short-attention span!

  By the time I co-founded Joota with Ashran and Fauzi, I had already started multiple business ventures. But Joota was to be my life-defining passion. In the first phase of Joota, I was largely in charge of managing product development. And when you are a startup with no team, you start from the very beginning. From the idea inception (which took some time); business model and product inception; finding a team to build a prototype and then taking them into multiple alpha, beta versions of the product; managing budgets and multiple teams; overlooking infrastructure growth and much more – we built this city of rock and roll from scratch.

  

  Joota team in the early years!

  With the launch version of Joota coming out September last year, I now look at user acquisition and content strategies – which I think is tougher than product development. You know that one person who goes out there and convinces people and businesses that “hey you need Joota, man” – that is me. I am your girl for that. It is definitely no small task.

  I would say my current role in Joota largely marketing. I go out and seal partnerships, I find new ways in which communities can use Joota, I do A LOT of training and education programs, I do quite a number of interviews and basically getting the word out. But that is not to say I don’t have anything technical to look at. I still have SEO strategies to worry about, social media strategies to oversee and implement, and look at analytics of user behavior on Joota, and constantly keep an eye on my competitors and shifts in the market.

  Managing Joota is a constant adrenaline rush. I could not ask for anything better.

• 

  Definitely love that Jefferson Starship reference!

  Lily, we at Stampede are impressed with Joota principle – this idea about engaging users through the mutual interest in content instead of people – which is really new. As everyone have heard, it is now the age of the millennials where this me-me-me centric attitude is prevalent.

  Tell us more about this principle, please?

• 

  Before Friendster, MySpace and Facebook, you use Internet only for email and searches. Email is very private and searching is a “nameless” task. Social networking sites have managed to get everyone to be a contributor to the internet, more so than ever before. Why? Because it opened up the “self” to be heard across the globe.

  Social media fuels this inherent need for the individual to be “connected” to someone else. The fact that a “named” person can say something and add to the global conversation is very powerful.However, social media has swung the other extreme. Now everyone wants to say something, and not everything that is said is of worth or of value. A lot of things that are being shared on the Internet is more of the same thing, it does not help with the human condition, nor does it add to humanity’s body of knowledge, and what is worse is that people have become more bold to the point of being uncivic and rude – because you feel that you can still hide behind some IP address.

  This is where Joota comes in. Its purpose is to cut away the “noise” and promote knowledge sharing. Evidently, Joota may not be for everyone. But our aspiration is that the philosophy of Joota transcends to all internet users. Internet users need to bring back that balance onto the internet.

  It is not just about social conversations, but it is also about knowledge sharing – which was the foundation of the creation of the World Wide Web.

  Joota is bringing sexy back.

• 

  You bet we do.

  Surely there are challenges to have Joota as this platform to cultivate the idea of having a group of likeminded people gathering together to talk about their interests more so than about… themselves?

• 

  Well of course. You could say the challenges are on several fronts:

  Identifying communities that share content all the time – which is not as prevalent as you think. Most Facebookers or Twitterists share their feelings or thoughts or status update, but not really knowledge or content sharing. For Joota to work, we really need to start with communities that are naturally dealing with written or published information on a daily basis.

  Getting these communities on board – we have to convince them to move away from whatever platform that they are used to, or to integrate with whatever platform that they are using and making their daily job/tasks easier. If they are so used to Facebook or Twitter, we have to show how easy it is to organize their topics in visual form.

  Constantly tweaking the product and tweaking the way people use the product in order to finally meet Joota’s goals and aspiration.

• 

  Seeing that Joota is one of the user experience work Stampede is fully engaged in, could you tell us if you have a standard UI/UX workflow that you conduct in Joota?

• 

  Honestly, we are a startup. Joota is not a very big team, there are times we could not afford a lengthy UI/UX design process. A lot of the time we do stuff was based on common sense. Having said that, of course we do implement certain tools and methods.

  In conception, we start with a mental model of the user and how they want to achieve a certain task. We also draw inspirations from the existing concept of existing similar web apps as well as through observation. Ideas have to come from somewhere.

  Then we get into wireframes. The wireframes then get turned to design. Some complex UI may get turned to actual high definition prototypes. And then it gets coded into the Joota framework. Tested, staged and released. A star is born.

  During staging, we may get some users to give us feedback. However, we get a lot more feedback once a feature goes live.

  

  Of course, we do take into account that  UI and UX is everything to a software or application. The process and choice of tools are something that Joota wants and continually will improve on. But as a business owner, I also have to weigh between go-to-market speeds against lengthy, yet quality assured development processes.

  Sometimes business demands that we short-cut certain processes. This is a constant battle.

  Joota is a journey and we are continuously working towards improvement.

• 

  If you must know, we are so delighted to be working with the Joota team. What brings to the decision of engaging Stampede to take care of the user experience aspect of the new Joota?

• 

  The decision came about largely after the first Joota front page “re-skinning”.

  Basically we think Stampede has a “thinking” team. I think it is extremely important that Joota hires contractors that also help do the thinking for us. Stampede is not afraid to question certain decisions and we also like the fact that Stampede is not only about design, but also our sounding board regarding Joota’s user experience.

• 

  So, how has the experience been so far working with us?

  We could probably divide this into three components: the experience working with Stampede as a team for people factor, our UX consultation process for technical factor and our grasp of Joota’s goals and executing that into a working product to conclude.

• 

  It has been great! We love the Stampede team, nothing further could be said.

  As for the consultation process, it has been a breeze. So far setting up something simple as Basecamp Discussion keeps the ideas flowing when it comes to improving the UX and UI. We also appreciate bringing in your own friends and family to test out Joota.

  Maybe in the next round, we could install a tool like KissMetrics or similar tools to gather data about how people use Joota.

• 

  We love you too! And yes, we will definitely look into utilising big data more.

  This has been such a refreshing session, Lily. Thank you again for spending time for this and we at Stampede could not thank you and Joota team enough for including us in this knowledge sharing revolution, if that is the apt description for Joota’s mission.

• 

  I like that. Thank you also for having me!

• 

  Hi Jose, it’s good to see you! We could not be even more excited and so proud to be able to work with FHRCuba for the implementation of the new website. On behalf of Stampede, I’d like to extend the gratitude of the entire team for having us. Could you tell us further about FHRCuba and what is your role at the foundation?

• 

  Hi Zana, it’s great to see you too! It had been exciting on our side as well. Thank you so much for all the hard work. To answer the first question, the Foundation for the Human Rights in Cuba, or FHRCuba for short, is created with the mission to empower the Cuban civil society with open, uncensored access to the Internet and the ability to communicate freely with each other and the world.

  Towards this positive change, we work with the members of the Cuban civil society to brief them about their basic human rights, which is outlined by The United Nations. It is this international standard of how every human being is supposed to be treated and that is the thing that everyone needs to be enlightened about.

  I am the Director of Communications at the Foundation. My role is basically is to manage everything communications-wise, from press release to elevating the awareness through various methods of social media, fundraising and many more. It is the least of things I could do to participate in the change in Cuba.

  You see, when you have the chance to change the world, you can’t just sit around and not do anything about it.

• 

  How true, and that is very inspiring. Jose, when you mention about basic human rights, could you tell us how is FHRCuba reaching to the civil society to make them aware of these rights? Any organisations you are working with?

• 

  Certainly. We work with a lot of organisations through a number of activism initiatives. These organisations include Ladies in White, Cuban Patriotic Union (UNPACU) and also individuals such as the blogger Yoani Sánchez.

  

  Yoani Sánchez is a Cuban blogger who has achieved international fame and multiple international awards for her critical portrayal of life in Cuba under its current government.

  We narrow down these activism initiatives into four areas of focus:

  Artivism and culture, where we help Cubans rebuild the social and cultural fabric of Cuban communities and values.

  Humanitarian and social disaster, where we provide humanitarian assistance and relief to the people of Cuba in times of need but also provides outreach services to communities throughout Cuba on an as-requested basis from Cuban partners.

  Human rights defenders, where we provide assistance for communication and domestic transportation, medical issues related to the work as human rights defenders, training workshops, general operating costs and event international travel expenses.

  Prisoners of Conscience, where we provide awareness of the locations of these large numbers of individuals in prison for their individual beliefs or actions, including nonviolent acts of civil disobedience. You can also view these individuals in the Human Rights Tracker map in the new website.

  We have recently launched the Connect Cuba campaign where, also, with the help of your team, we built a website which includes the functions of online donations, petitions, online store and social media to spread the word.

  
• 

  So the rebranding of the new FHRCuba website, is this because of the Connect Cuba campaign?

• 

  Nope, that is just in addition to that.

  In general, our activists have traveled all across the world in order for our voices to be heard. Our activists, including Yoani Sánchez would need better access to the Internet and better ways to communicate. We believe the online space is the perfect medium and will have the potential to make Cuba more connected. The online space also appeals more to younger generation.

  Hence, the rebranding could help in carrying these voices further and more amplified.

• 

  So proud to be part of the team that has helped amplifying these voices of freedom!

  All right, as we can see the new website now support online donations and petitions along with geo-located maps of Cuban activists and their respective human rights efforts. So, how has these new features in the website helped in reaching the foundation’s objective in empowering the Cuban civil society with the ability to communicate freely with the world?

• 

  Good question. From the visual standpoint, the new website now shows a whole new updated, much more contemporary look, of course.

  

  I must say that the interactive human rights tracker map actually changes a lot of perspective. Before this, people do not have much idea of what is going on even though there is a whole loads of activities organised by the Foundation. It seemed small and contained.

  Now with the map showing every single activity, people finally have the whole bird’s eye view on it. There are 11,000 people on the island, and every single one of us is willing to go out and come together to exercise our rights as the Cuban civil society. Now everyone could see what is going on.

• 

  If you must know, the map is also our programmer, Shaiful’s favourite – as this was his first Google Map integration and he learned a lot from it while on the job.

• 

  That is great to hear! Tell him that is also my favourite feature on the website.

• 

  I will! As you can see, we are so thrilled to be given the chance to participate in the rebranding exercise of the website. What brings to the decision of engaging Stampede as the web development company responsible for it?

• 

  Well, we first scouted a number of local agencies in California and also Miami. You guys were referred to us via a mutual client, and after a few proposals we discovered that Stampede has the best approach in coming up with solutions for our web development needs for this rebranding exercise.

• 

  And how has the experience working with us been so far? Hopefully not negative…

• 

  Actually not at all! I am happy to be able to work with such an awesome team like Stampede. Communications had been fast and reliable – and you guys are always giving the best advice in terms of web design and development. The experience has been positive overall.

• 

  That is wonderful! The feeling is mutual, Jose. We are so glad to be able to work with you and your team too.

  Again, on behalf of Stampede I am thrilled we are to be able to work with the FHRCuba. Thank you again for making time for this interview.

• 

  My pleasure. Have a great day!

The website for the Foundation for Human Rights in Cuba (FHRCuba), packed with features such as online donations, online petitions and the Human Rights Tracker map was successfully launched early this year.

For more information on FHRCuba, follow them on Facebook, Twitter and Youtube.