This conference is great fun and incredibly informative. I’ve met just about everyone I’ve written to and for in this community, and that alone made my day.

Kudos to Catherine Devlin, who is quietly but heavily involved in the core Python community (are you on the PSF? Please brag, so we know what you’re doing). I’ve followed her Oracle/SqlAlchemy articles for a while, and saw her name on some organizers lists, and admired her tecchie effort from afar. It was awesome to actually meet her.

Many thanks to Desi and Hashrocket, for hosting the DevChix gathering tonight in Chicago. A Ruby project implementation company hosting a Python gathering, how cool is that? You can’t help but feel the DevChix unity.

Also, a personal thanks to Alex for essentially letting me live ather house for ten days, through late night work and code sprints, whistling tea pots at 2AM, and so forth. You rock.

Gloria

I made the pledge to post for Finding Ada and here it is.

One of the hardest things I had to do in preparation for this post (Ada Lovelace Day) was to decide who I wanted to post about. I am lucky enough to know so many intelligent, skilled, motivated and inspiring women in technology (and specifically software development) that it was extraordinarily difficult to narrow it down to just a handful. It bothers me that I can’t call out all the women who have had a positive impact on my life and career. To each and every one of you: know that I appreciate you and everything you have done for me. Finally, I would like to say a special thanks to all the ladies in DevChix for their conversations, help, and encouragement to be the best at my job and in my life. As of today, DevChix has 167 members from all around the world. Our organization is comprised entirely of women devoted to software development. You are all my heros.

Okay, on to the few ladies I would like to call out specifically as role models for me:

Nola Stowe: Nola is a developer at Google and we have known each other for a few years now. She was one of the original cofounders of DevChix and deserves the majority of credit for getting us off the ground because she did all the hard work to make it a reality. She has the ability to be involved in so much, both inside work and out, that she simply amazes me. Nola reads and writes reviews for tech books, learns new languages (or picks up old ones), and manages commitments with a myriad of organizations and activities, including DevChix. She does all of this in addition to her full-time job. She is always caring and supportive of the ladies in our organization; always eager to help when someone has a question. Nola, thank you for all that you do.

Jacqui Maher: Jacqui is now a coworker of mine at Hashrocket and I throughly enjoy working with her. She is by far one of the best developers I have ever met and is very respected within Hashrocket, DevChix and the Ruby community. She is socially conscious and makes an effort to improve the world with every chance she gets. She is currently working on the OpenMRS gem for Ruby and recently traveled to Africa to work as a Rails Developer for Baobab Health. She is inspiring in just about every sense of the word. Jacqui, thanks for teaching me that we can make time to use our skills for the greater good of the world.

Liz Henry: I just recently met Liz at the SFO She’s Geeky Event and I have to say this woman is amazing. I know very little about her even though I have run into her at several events since then. Every encounter with her has been enjoyable and she has given me some wisdom each time I have seen her that I didn’t have before. In one of our last meetings, we actually discussed this post. We discussed how some women which we revere as heros would in fact rather not be publicly described as such. (For this reason, I am have asked permission from each of the ladies mentioned in this post before publishing this article.) In addition to being full of very useful information, Liz is also one of the best live bloggers I have ever seen. Liz is capable of capturing an entire session (through notes, tweets, etc.) while still maintaining full attention to the topic at hand; even participating in the actual conversation. She allows people to be present at events that for whatever reason they couldn’t be and for those of us who read her write ups I would just like to say; you rock that shit! Oh yeah and she works for BlogHer, a community for women bloggers. (They have a great conference too!)

Carmelyne Thompson: Carm… Carm is one of the happiest designers/developers I know. She has a positive outlook on everything, all the time. She is always able to see the good in a situation, often times when no one else can. She is an incredible designer, but don’t take my word for it! Go check Carmelyne’s work out for yourself. Carmelyne can implement her designs as well. She has a great depth of knowledge across a wide range of topics within the software development world. Carmelyne is oftentimes one of the first people to respond to ladies on the list asking Ruby and Rails questions and is often one of the first to respond to new member requests making her one of the most active admins at DevChix. I am continually happy to see Carm greeting people to the our group. She is friendly and quick in getting them setup and running with the DevChix organization. Carm, I look forward to working with you in the future!

Audrey Eschright: Audrey is highly involved with the OpenSource Community; doing everything she can to get more women involved with OpenSource initiatives. She is currently working on the Open Source Bridge Conference in Portland and she has been involved with several other events in the area, including: BarCamp Portland, Ignite Portland, and others. Audrey reminds me that it’s important to pick your passion and excel at it; that is exactly what she does. She is a very inspiring woman, encouraging others to get involved and speak at these events. Audrey, good job with the conference organizing and congrats on getting that off the ground!

Kathy Sierra: It would be impossible to write this post and omit Kathy. I don’t read many blogs on a day-to-day basis, mostly for lack of time; that is, except Kathy’s blog back when Kathy would post. Kathy was a role model for me and is partly responsible for the aggregated blog on DevChix, representing the entire DevChix community. Unfortunately, she was on the receiving end of some nasty comments and threats causing her to discontinue her blog.

Many women don’t desire the attention they receive for putting their personal opinions out into the blogosphere. Kathy received more than just attention. But DevChix is a community, first and foremost; if you attack one of us then you are attacking all of us.

We still get some pretty nasty comments from time to time but we are fortunate that it hasn’t been too bad; certainly not to the degree that Kathy had. Kathy brought a unique viewpoint to software development and possessed a great voice for presenting it. The community certainly lost something special when she stopped blogging. Kathy, I understand your reason for leaving the blogsphere, I thank you for the time you gave us there, and I hope that one day you will return.

Val Anita Aurora (formerly Val Henson): I have only had the opportunity to meet Val once (for a few hours) but in that brief span of time she helped me tremendously. She is a Linux Kernel developer and has been involved with the LinuxChix organization for many years.

Val offered sound advice to me early on in the organization of DevChix; advice that I cannot thank her enough for. She pointed me to a number of resources that would help me understand what I was getting into as well as things which would soon come my way. Additionally, she helped DevChix by promoting us within LinuxChix and giving us some space on the LinuxChix IRC server. I continually look to the LinuxChix organization for guidance and can’t thank them enough for their support. Val, plain and simple, you are a personal hero to me and LinuxChix is an organizational hero to DevChix.

NOTE: I was not able to get permission from Kathy Sierra but I am hoping since she is already in the public eye she doesn’t mind me calling her out as a role model.

Cheers and Thanks for reading my Ada Lovelace Day Post.

Software does more than crunch your numbers or take your picture: it can make you angry or bring you joy. And those are the things that we, as developers, have to tune in to if we want to make our products stand out.

Skitch is one of a handful of products I’ve used recently that remind me what makes a product successful. Utility is important, of course, but the love and emotional connection it engenders in its users is where it’s going to live or die.

Let’s start backwards, with the logo, since it’s the first thing you see. Their logo says nothing about their product’s functionality. There’s no initial, no recognizable signifier (thanks for sparing us the paintbrush), or even an abstract swoop. It’s, um, a heart.

And not just any heart, but a hot-pink, shimmering, pumping, overflowing, disco heart.

They’re not saying, “You might like us”. Or even, “As you can see by the ‘S‘, we’re Skitch”. They’re saying, “This is LOVE, baby!”. You and me!!! (How they’re managing to do that without coming across like Mr. Roper, though, is a mystery that is beyond the scope of this post.)

Now, this Love they offer, it’s not too intense. It’s not Valentines Day Red. It’s not a pushy “when are you going to commit” heart, a dreaded “we have to talk” heart, or even an “I’m complicated, but deep” kind of heart. Just hey, hearts, baby, I’m an extrovert, let’s groove on the dance floor and take some snaps!!!

I focus on this because right there in their identity they align themselves not with Software, but with Love and Play — a great gap to bridge. If the product sucked, it would be one thing. But it doesn’t. It makes bold choices and executes them well. They’re going for the whole tamale, not hiding behind industry-speak, and not afraid of a little heart and soul.

So, they have a lot to live up to. Moving beyond the logo, what does Skitch do that works and how can we learn from that?

It’s makes it easy to get started.
I haven’t taken the time to figure out all the features — in fact, I was too ADD to even watch the whole 3 minute video. But I didn’t need to. The critical 2 or 3 features are easy enough to get right away. Once someone commits, they’ll go deeper, but don’t make them wait, fiddle, or read a manual first. Make your learning curve the equivalent of 140 characters or less.

It does the things you’d want it to do.
This may sound simple, but it’s worth repeating. I wanted to take screenshots, write on them in fun fonts with arrows, then upload them to the web. Bingo. No matter how fun an imagined feature is, the trick is matching it to the intuitive use of your product. If people wouldn’t naturally want to do that thing, drop it. It doesn’t matter how slick it is.

It cuts out the middle steps.
In Skitch, you don’t have to select layers, like in Photoshop, to move items that are separate, such as text and arrows. You don’t have to explicitly save the picture on your desktop and then FTP it to the web — the app does it for you in one click. The designers have figured out your starting and ending points, then cut out all the excess steps in between. Spend time here, trimming the middle.

It makes it fun.
It understands that an application is not just about utility: you’re not just tediously trying to upload a picture to a website or share it with a friend — you’re having a moment in your life. Make that moment simple, and when you achieve that, make it fun.

It makes common actions unexpectedly pleasurable to use.
There are tons of patterns we use all the time when interacting with web and desktop applications. For instance, copy and paste. Copy and paste is great and I love doing it, but the folks at Skitch saved me a couple keystrokes by giving me a fun copy button on the image detail page. It wasn’t necessary per se, but it genuinely improved my user experience. So, don’t try to think about new things you could add: find out what the most integral interactions with your product are. Improve those.

Squeals of Delight
That’s what I did when I first used that copy button. That’s what I did when I clicked “webpost”, heard a whoosh, and saw that my screenshot was now on my very own Skitch web page. Go for the squeals: it means, this feels JUST RIGHT. If someone is squealing with delight (for Love or Software!) they are going to come back.

It’s not all paradise and apples of course.

There are confusing and frustrating interactions, just like in any product. These stand out more, ironically, because they raised the bar so high. So Skitchers, as you move forward, solve these problems for me

1. How do I get back to my home skitch page from a specific image page? You don’t really mean for me to click on the back button or delete the rest of the URL in the address bar after furrowing my brow looking for the obvious home link, do you?

2. Uploading. From my Skitch app window, I can’t click “webpost” right away because it first shows me “share”. Only after clicking on the “share” is “webpost” exposed. Since clicking “share” triggers a browser window populated with the Share link that steals focus, I have to tab back to Skitch to webpost. Annoying.

Overall, It was great to look at Skitch because it’s so well done. I think it’s worth taking a product apart to see why it works and how we can use those lessons in our own applications.

And finally, Full Disclosure: I have nothing to do with Skitch.

I just heart them.