Slides from Daniel Burka's presentation at the Atlantic Internet Marketing conference in Halifax, Canada, in April 2009.

1. Failure, it’s part of the process
Getting iterative in your approach to design
Credit: Flickr user ‘ucumari’

6. Dear Digg,
Go fuck yourself.
Your pal,
— J.G.

7. Failure is a good thing? Sort of.
Take chances and release. Listen and iterate
Failure != Mistake

9. Who am I? What do I do?
Creative Dir. Digg, Co-founder Pownce, Co-founder Silverorange

10. Your website sucks
Trust me, it could be a lot better
Photo Credit: Flickr user d-a-n-i-e-l

11. Digg c. 2005

12. Digg c. 2009

13. Desire paths
Don’t try to predict everything
Credit: Phil Gyford

14. Point Reyes Station, California, April 2009
Not a failure... a perfect opportunity

19. Credit: kimballhoman
Realign, don’t redesign
Cameron Moll is awfully clever... read it on A List Apart

20. Subtraction is iteration too
Try to remove as much as you add – don’t be afraid to prune
Credit: Rev Dan Catt

25. Credit: Flickr user ‘law_keven’
Really listen to your users
Both explicit and implicit feedback are crucial
to identifying successes and failures

26. A case study
Digg comments

27. Step 1
Get it out there

28. Step 2
Add sophistication

29. by dburka 20 minutes ago
Of course, what McCain is trying to avoid anyone noticing is that the problem isn't regulators failing to do
their job; it's that that man he tapped to write his economic policy - Phil Gramm - removed oversight of the
instruments that are laying waste to the finance sector from the regulators' job descriptions.
Reply to this comment
by marktrammell 16 minutes ago
We all know McCain is incompetent when it comes to the economy, and that Phil Gramm sold out the
finance sector. You would think they would have brought in someone with substance when Phil hit the road.
5 Replies to this comment
by dburka 14 minutes ago
We all know McCain is incompetent when it comes to the economy, and that Phil Gramm sold out the
finance sector. You would think they would have brought in someone with substance when Phil hit the road.
Step 3
5 Replies to this comment
by kurtwilms 12 minutes ago
Start revising
We all know McCain is incompetent when it comes to the economy, and that Phil Gramm sold out
the finance sector. You would think they would have brought in someone with substance when
Phil hit the road.
Reply to this comment
by kevinrose 10 minutes ago

30. Establish goals
Add multiple levels of nesting
Reduce complexity of nesting
Discourage top-posting
Increase participation
Improve quality of discussions
Address scaling issues
Make things feel simpler & improve interactions

31. by dburka 20 minutes ago
Of course, what McCain is trying to avoid anyone noticing is that the problem isn't regulators failing to do
their job; it's that that man he tapped to write his economic policy - Phil Gramm - removed oversight of the
instruments that are laying waste to the finance sector from the regulators' job descriptions.
Reply to this comment
by marktrammell 16 minutes ago
We all know McCain is incompetent when it comes to the economy, and that Phil Gramm sold out the
finance sector. You would think they would have brought in someone with substance when Phil hit the road.
5 Replies to this comment
by dburka 14 minutes ago
We all know McCain is incompetent when it comes to the economy, and that Phil Gramm sold out the
finance sector. You would think they would have brought in someone with substance when Phil hit the road.
5 Replies to this comment
by kurtwilms 12 minutes ago
We all know McCain is incompetent when it comes to the economy, and that Phil Gramm sold out
the finance sector. You would think they would have brought in someone with substance when
Phil hit the road.
Reply to this comment
by kevinrose 10 minutes ago

34. Measure success
Add multiple levels of nesting
Reduce complexity of nesting
Discourage top-posting
Increase participation
Improve quality of discussions
Address scaling issues
Make things feel simpler & improve interactions

35. One long year...
( I’m sorry )
Credit: Flickr user xjrlokix

36. Then we got it right
Well... sort of

37. Gather feedback
Explicit and implicit

38. Set new goals
(Idea is to avoid feature creep and gauge success)
Make things feel simpler & improve interactions
Improve performance
Add most requested functionality

39. Create some comps
Somewhere to start discussion

40. User test #1
Focus group novices and experts

41. Ask for more feedback
Really? Yes.

42. Create refined comps
In this case html/css/js comps

43. Implement
Work closely with the development team

44. User test #2
Perform task analysis

45. Launch it!
It works? It works!

46. Achieved goals?
Make things feel simpler & improve interactions
Improve performance
Add most requested functionality

47. Still weak for casual visitors
Scales technically, but not socially
Pseudo-pagination is cool, but not great
Hard to keep up-to-date with your conversations
Onerous registration to comment
Done? Nope
Start on next iterations

48. Stay fit: Adapt to survive and thrive
If iterative design isn’t instinctual, be convincing

49. Thanks! I’m dburka
digg twitter flickr dopplr clustershot last.fm
daniel@digg.com
slides will be on slideshare.net/dburka