Case Study: 50% Productivity Increase with Better Quality? | Hacker News Reader

Case Study: 50% Productivity Increase with Better Quality?

streamfocus.wordpress.com

1 pointgibsonf113 comments

We've been using StreamFocus at my architectural firm for the past 6 months, and we are having a dramatic experience: 50% increase in productivity, a large increase in quality, and happier clients and staff with a growing business. This sounds impossible, but it's a fact....

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"We've been using StreamFocus at my architectural firm for the past 6 months, and we are having a dramatic experience: 50% increase in productivity, a large increase in quality, and happier clients and staff with a growing business. This sounds impossible, but it's a fact....."

(YC Comments on the link greatly appreciated)

I've seen streamfocus pushed through this site several times already... maybe find a different place to 'market' the product? I don't think we're your target and it starting to read back a little like spam. Congrats on the 50% though...

I'm hoping to get feedback here as opposed to trying to sell the service to YCers (which is not yet publicly available). This article actually goes into some of the technology of our (Lisp based) system which is a whole new approach to project management, which I think makes it relevant for YC. We are a startup trying to find some private beta testers here as well.

Another example, we would really appreciate feedback on our new logo at http://www.streamfocus.com which has been difficult to finalize.

for pete's sake, man, post some screenshots! I am having a really hard time understanding what your product is.

You can get a hint from the vocabulary in the article. I bet they are doing a web app based on David Allen's Getting Things Done.

Edit: http://www.oreillynet.com/pub/a/mac/2005/03/08/productivity.... ; it has a link to a Python implementation based on plain text files, which is something I once did too for myself, but regrettably I didn't follow up with it.

The whole application started because we needed a tool to help my firm implement Lean Management to gain the kind of tranformation that Toyota and many others had achieved, and there were none out there. With Architecture and most service companies, a vast amount of information needs to be organized in the right way to really be lean, so analog methods really don't work well. We tried it first with binders and post-it-notes and white boards but it slowed us down.

"Getting Things Done" is a great productivity breakthrough as well, and when combined with lean, is really impressive - which is what we are doing. Lean helps provide the framework for what to do and how to do it, while GTD helps you actually get it done.

One of the enhancements to GTD that we've got is that rather than think about the next action you need to make, we provide a way to think about the next stream of actions which can can be templated for future use - it has been a great boost for us.

We are working on it right now. I took a brief detour to write about what we are up to which is now finished, so back to programming.

Right now we have a very "geeky" looking UI with the excitement of a slide rule with a pocket protector - it is strictly functional. If you understand the system, which the current users do, it works well. But if you're in for the first time, you would have a hard time knowing what to do without someone walking you through it. The goal of the redesign is so that anyone just looking at the screen will know exactly what the options are and how to work with the system without any tutorial.

I'm vanishing into a fit of interface redesign for the next 2 weeks, at which point we'll have screen shots and let people in to play with the tools - the context focusing and ActionStreams are especially cool. We're calling it our UI launch, and with feedback from that, we'll role into our full beta launch. We are getting excited about it after a good 7 months of hard programming + a few years of research, which explains my too often mentioning it here (which I'll try to refrain from to avoid being considered a spammer, which is not my intention).

I like the new logo a lot better than the old one. That said, I have a suggestion: get rid of the dot in the "o" in the word focus, and make the letters on either side of the "o" progressively more blurry (sorry if that makes no sense, I'm not sure how else to describe it).

My partner was not too happy about the red dot either. Thats a great suggestion on the blur - to give the sense of a dynamic focusing happening on that letter. I was actually trying to get that a little with the contrast between stream and focus, with the whole word focus being in focus and the word stream not so much so. Thanks :)

I think you can get a better effect by showing an overall focused logo on a blurry background, for contrast. Putting the blurriness right into your logo is more of a double edged sword.

Good point

The words are too separated, both physically and stylistically. They sound and read good next to each other, and I feel they'd work better if they were more together in both senses.

The shape of the blue Stream word suggests 'wave' rather than stream. The exaggerate bending also feels kinda cheap, like "hey, look what I can do with my new Amiga" (OK, showing my age here). I think you really want this word straight.

You may want to take a look at the antialiasing in both words; I'm no expert, but it looks kinda fishy to me, esp. since you're advertising focus.

A minor one: I think you got the kerning wrong in F o c. They are a bit too far from each other- at least the F is.

The red dot could work if you somehow harmonize its color with the 'Stream' color. Three unrelated colors is maybe too much in a logo, esp. a mostly text based one.

HTH.

I remember the amiga - a nice machine. But yes, I think it was more like "look what I can do with Photoshop" the I being me. We also got feedback from some bigger business friends that it needed to be more "serious" as the application was for serious business. Your comments are excellent, Thanks for the feedback! :)

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