“Collaboration is Cooperation on steroids.”

—Randy Nelson, Pixar University

Both cooperation and collaboration spring from the same latin origin, collaboratus, which means: to labor with. However; like many latin–based words still in use today, there are substantial differences in their historic and present-day meanings. The words collaborate and cooperate paint very different mental images. Even their choice in example sentences sheds light on the modern distance between the two words. You cooperate with the police, while you collaborate on intellectual endeavors. Cooperation signals that you are working with someone based on an obligation — the guy is a co-worker so you have to cooperate with him, no matter that you think he’s the spoon in the knife drawer. Simply working together towards a common outcome is merely cooperation, and we tend to agree with Randy Nelson on the subject. Collaboration carries with it a higher purpose. You collaborate with someone because you both understand that there is something more important at stake and you are putting your trust in each other to bring something good to the table.

This distinction is an important one to us. We built Jumpchart around the mantra that planning a website project actually constitutes the most crucial (and time consuming) portion of work towards reaching a launched site. We also believe that thorough planning, with the close collaboration of the client, can effectively side-step most project roadblocks and emergencies. Does it work? Well, we can only speak of our own experiences but the simple answer is, yes. Since we’ve started using Jumpchart (21 months ago) we have never had to restart a project from scratch. Never. We’ve also shortened the overall time it takes us to complete a project start-to-finish and vastly simplified our workflow. The reason for all of this? Collaboration.

With Jumpchart, we’ve been able to significantly reduce the number of steps in the build process based on that secret ingredient: Collaboration. Jumpchart not only allows, but encourages, the client to help with the process of planning and constructing a semi-working wireframe of their site. They can move content around, create links, add images and files, even click around in working copies of their wireframe. You’d be surprised how much of a difference this makes to the overall project- clients don’t have to wait around until someone emails them with a list of required content, they don’t have to wait until the design team shows them how their site will work with stacks of mockups, they don’t have to wait period. It’s immediate gratification, and who doesn’t like that?!

Another added benefit of enabling direct conversation is that it gives the client a sense of ownership in the project. We’ve gone over this a hundred times before but we’ll say it again because it’s so important: clients who feel ownership are clients who will fight for your agency. They will back up your work in their internal meetings and they will push to hire you again in the future. They become your evangelists within their own organization.

From the beginning we’ve tried to make Jumpchart as open and transparent as possible. Allowing your clients to work right alongside you may seem terrifying at first but we would encourage you to give it a try, even if only on a small scale at first. True collaboration can completely transform the way you run your business, making you more efficient and in the end, just plain happier. The old adage, “Two heads are better than one”, really is true. Collaboration is just another word for how you have to put those heads together.

...We don’t know them ourselves.
...They’ll probably change a lot before we’re done.
...After exploring, we might decide not to finish the project due to several reasons.
...It’s a competitive advantage to be somewhat secretive when building niche apps.
...Keeping things a secret builds interest, and makes the whole thing more fun.

Still, keeping everything secretive goes against our nature. We love to share, and we love to help the community. As an experiment, we’re going to share some of the growing pains we’re experiencing as we plan, sweat and think about this new app.

We’ll be as forthcoming as we can about the process we’re going through, and maybe if you’re going through some of the same steps you’ll find this useful.

The first thing we want to talk about is the idea.

When an idea hits, sometimes it smacks you over the head, and sometimes it builds slowly. They can both be valuable, but this particular idea smacked me over the head. It was such a clearly defined niche that it practically leapt out at me.

I always think that’s a good sign. It’s one thing to learn to love, but it’s yet another
thing to fall in.

But, I want to say very firmly, and not braggingly, that I have lots of ideas. One of my jobs here at Paste is to think about our momentum, and where we might go next. I carve out lots of time in my week to just think about stuff. I’ll say this next part firmly and unabashedly, too: most of my ideas are total crap.

That’s what’s great about ideas. You can flirt with them, get to know them, see how they evolve. Several times a month I practically jump out of the shower, or wake from an ebbing sleep suddenly, or have to use the nerdy voice recorder app on my iPhone because I am assured that I have the next huge idea. I’m not especially proud of that fact- anyone could do it if it was their job to do so.

Ideas are practically valueless. Sure some are better than others, but what creates value is time and energy invested in an idea. And that is something that I’m sort of proud of. For every 100 ideas we have, we only work on one or two. There’s a loose, but thorough vetting process we go through.

Here are some of the things we think about.

Will people want this?
How many people?
Are these people identifiable in a certain niche?
Can we get at them inexpensively?
Is this the type of idea that builds its own momentum? If not, are the customers we’re able to get through normal means enough to make it profitable?
Will we be proud of it?
Are we passionate about it?
Do we think we can do a good job of it? Just because we can, and just because it’s a good idea doesn’t mean we can make it great.
Are there competitors? Direct competitors? Can we do better? Does it matter if we do?

These thoughts happen before we even bother with technical stuff. Before we write copy, think of names, or push pixels. Before we waste a single minute on execution, we think about whether we should even bother.

Your time is incredibly finite, so it’s important to be critical of your ideas.

If we think the idea passes these tests generally, that’s great. But you imperatively have to check, research study- make sure. We call people in the industry. We research blogs, forums and anything we can get our hands on to check our facts and see if we’re right.

If, and it’s very rare that it happens, we’re still convinced that the idea is good at this point, we start to chase it. That very thing happened to us last week. It’s not too late- we might still dodge a bullet. All sorts of things could convince us that our time is better invested somewhere else. But for now, our teeth are sunk in and we’re trying to bite off exactly what we can chew.

Next time: Naming.

http://www.apple.com/magicmouse/

What’s great about designs like this is that they teach you one simple rule and invite you to explore more. At its basic level, the Magic Mouse can move your cursor. That aspect is as evident as with any other mouse. But if you can additionally grasp the fact that the entire surface is also interactive, your own exploration (not through a manual) will allow you to discover more power.

By swiping, dragging, and rubbing on the top of the mouse, you can achieve lots of interaction that a normal mouse can’t do. Less buttons and interface actually lead to more flexibility, and more features.

Also nice to see is that this product targets smart users. It gives the user credit. It’s not the McDonalds coffee cup that says “contents hot.” There just might be a tiny “smarts” barrier of entry to use this product- and that’s just fine.

2. Adding a user
If you’ve got an extra unused user on your account you can add a new user to the project in question with either full permissions to make changes to the Jumpchart or you can mark their permissions as “view only” when inviting them. Most of the time we prefer to add users with full privileges because the more included people feel, the more likely they are to help out.

3. Export your Jumpchart
One of the more complicated, but customizable, ways to share your work would be to use Jumpchart’s export function to export your work out to XHTML/CSS and upload that to a web server. This is particularly useful when you’re nearing the end of your planning phase and you are ready to begin taking your content wireframe towards a graphic wireframe. A quick export and twenty minutes of css styling to change some details can go a long way towards showing a client a rough outline of what their finished site might look like. In fact, by hosting your exported Jumpcharts in a central location you can reference a single master stylesheet to personalize your Jumpcharts. For example, you could add your logo and branding from the master stylesheet and personalize the color-scheme of the exported Jumpchart to the clients colors using a simple @import in your master stylesheet to include a custom file for each clients exported Jumpchart.

4. Make a copy of the whole Jumpchart
When you create a new Jumpchart you are given the option of starting from scratch or copying another Jumpchart. By copying an existing Jumpchart and giving a new user full access privileges you can allow a client to change as much as they want and still maintain a clean master copy for your own use. This is really helpful when you’d like the client to add content, files and comments but would still like to keep your own copy for organization and internal commenting.

Sharing and collaborating on your website planning goes a long way towards paving the road to a smooth project. Clients that are included feel more of a sense of ownership in the project outcome and will work harder to ensure it’s a success. Designers and Developers benefit from a shorter and simpler planning cycle – always a nice thing. Jumpchart gives you lots of different options for sharing and collaborating on your website planning – so get to it and make your work easier.

Do you share your Jumpcharts in another way than these four? We’d love to know about it in the comments.