My lastest investment Layout easy

Layout Easy is a WordPress plugin that automatically suggests magazine like designs for posts and pages, targeting small and medium sized editorial publishers. It works with a wide variety of existing themes and integrates with the default WordPress editor, without the need for any code or design experience.

We are currently looking for smaller to midsize editorial publishers for usability testing. Please email info@layouteasy.com. We will set you up for a no code needed test. Looking forward to hearing from you.

Building digital fertility services in emerging markets

Building digital fertility services in emerging markets, an episode with Therese Mannheimer, founder of Grace health, a fertility health app acting a digital health clinic, targeting emerging markets, we round topics of female health, venture building and success.

Founder and CEO, is a user centric venture builder,  business developer and strategist with over 10 years experience of working with digital service and product development for Swedish as well as international companies. Prior to founding Grace Health she was the Head of Rn’D at the market leading health app, Lifesum and spent six years as partner and strategist at the global design firm Doberman. Therese has also started several other ventures, including Lissly AB and the Swedish non-profit Allbright. 





Swedish Pandemic numbers with Award winning journalist Emanuel Karlsten

We speak with award winning data journalist Emanuel Karlsten about the Swedish pandemic numbers, as he reports at hos blog in both English and Swedish.

☕️ Support Emanuel on Patreon

Emanuels bio
Journalist, speaker and advisor on digital media. He is the winner of the Swedish Grand national journalism award, 2020. Considered one of Sweden’s most influential people on social media, and a sought after speaker both on a local and international level for businesses across all industries and sectors.

Columnist in major newspaper Göteborgs-posten, and radio host on one of Sweden’s biggest radio shows.

Chairman of the Swedish Media Academy and board member of Göteborg Film Festival, the biggest film festival in the Nordics.

“Screw goals and focus on the value direction.”

Interested in digital transformation from a leadership Perspective?
We speak with Mathias Eriksson about how to lead businesses boldy in times of change and a pandemic.

Listen to our new @howthepod episode with the brilliant @MathiasEriksson on leading businesses through change, in this Episode with examples from Icebug.

Mathias Eriksson calls himself an applier/bastardiser of science. A Doer-Thinker. A practitioner. He is an entrepreneur with a handful of companies behind him. He started the awarded (60+ international awards, Gold Lions and Webbys among them) content agency Matter in 2009 and sold it in 2018. Before Matter he co-founded and ran furniture producer/incorporated art project Brikolör that made themselves famous offering a 300-year emotional and technical guarantee of their products. 

He is a founding team member of the AI-company Adverai and is currently active as a digital transformation specialist, helping companies lay the groundwork for massive automation through clever use of data, software, and smarter processes where HUMANS + MACHINES is the secret sauce.

Mathias started his career as an investigative reporter for Swedish Broadcasting and has recently picked up his studies in Social Anthropology and Science- and Technology Studies. He researches our current and future lives with the machines and how the new machine age influences culture. From time to time, Mathias shares some writing on Machines, Humans, and Science on his blog and on his Instagram.  

10 insights from Clubhouse

Clubhouse being a voice and app only social network, by invite only that can take an extended time to drip in to your email. Once in, here is a bit of the deserved hype about the app that mimics humans behaviour on the internet. Here are some takeawys from my first weeks.

1. Human Onboarding (if your lucky)
Upon entering, anyone you know will be notified to meet and walk you though the experience with someone you already know in a private room. Quite a refreshing approach to onboarding new users.

2. Partyhat for your first week 🎉.
Being a newbie is human, and finding your ropes during that period os indicated a patyhat/partypopper emoji. If you don’t know what you’r doing you are likely to be asked about your experience and a little bit more patience is given.

3. Browse around rooms, clubs and follow relevant people.
Browsing around your first rooms (anyone can create) and clubs (takes more effort to create)found in the Hallway, you might look at some of the room or club 🟢moderators profiles. Following any profile, will algorithmically show more content skewed to that profiles interest. Feel free to unfollow whenever you like to regulate, as well as leaving rooms quietly whenever you feel like venturing on.

4. Experiment a bit by starting your own room
I started a room and invited som people by word, there are no formal invites as such, even tho ones events how in the hallway to followers and in the calendar. After trying to record an episode via Clubhouse we realised that the quality of the room sound would not hold up, we recorded another episode in a classical podcast environment. The 1-hour session I held where Maryem and I spoke about how clubhouse works with a few people.

5. Clear formats formats win for larger rooms
Of course many more things are on here and new formats are tested endlessly from jamming session with worldly artists, to PhD BJ Fogg from Stanford University clearly formated 1 hour sessions on how to create more sustainable habits, where you speak for one minute about what works for you.

6. Terminology of the unique functionality.

7. Moderating:
The room creator, can share moderatorship by inviting people to moderating. Long rooms that last for more that 24hours, handoff moderatorship to the next trusted person. Trusted is important due to a moderator being able to throw you out of your own room. Not likely but can technically happen.

8. Hand-raising: If you want to go up on stage at the upper part of your screen, you raise you hand to ask a question, the moderator then might grant you access to the stage for further interaction.

9. Re-setting the Stage
New people come in, others leave quietly, every now and then moderators re-set the stage, meaning they mention formats of the stage, what the room is about, are we topic-less, or if the room has a name with a topic, whats the format. This allows new-comers to understand whats happening and is best practice.

10. PTA – Pull to refresh
There is now way to share images of text directly byt the networks leverages and incorporates with Twitter and Instagram, where direct communication is to be referred to the DM’s with the other plattforms communication functionality, Clubhouse acclimatises itself to the given ecosystem of existing apps and plays nicely.
What is used when people want to share an image is to change their profile image, and at that point “PTA” is used, meaning pulldown page to refresh (and show image).

These point raise many good questions for concept developers, business developers. How will the platform evolve depending on what new features are released, and how will this sticky new product be used, commercialised and grow over time. The best way to make any future theory is to be a part of it.

How Clubhouse works

Maryem Nasri and I have spent some time at Clubhouse, the new voice-only social network. How the pod is doing a talk on Clubhouse on Thursday the 21:st of January at 4pm (CET+1) which will also be recorded into a podcast.

Join in if you have a Clubhouse account to learn, what formats work, and what people are experiencing and what might alter in the space of social networks. See you there 👋

Stockholm: 4PM CET+1 (16:00 local time)
London: 3PM GMT
New York: 10AM EST
San Francisco: 7 AM PST

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How the pod – picking the brains of change makers.

This autumn I started a podcast. In How the pod, I pick the brains of change makers in tech and society.

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Software tools for working from home.

Software tools for working from home

The global pandemic of Covid-19 requires us to be extra diligent when connecting and communicating for work and private conversations to a greater extent than before.

Having worked remotely for large parts of my professional life with developing remote tools at GeekGirlMeetup, Scrive and Lookback I want to share my favourite tools for connection and conversations. I hope you find the list helpful, and that it helps you connect well, communicate better and stay safe from home.

To learn more about the best practices for leaders as well as remote and distributed teamwork, benefits and challenges I suggest a listen to the chat with WordPress founder Matt Mullenweg in the episode  “New Future of Work” from the podcast ‘Making Sense’ by Sam Harris.

Communication tools for connection in remote times: 

  • Slack:  For teams already using slack as a closed chat channel, their video functionality is excellent, allowing users to share their screen and draw on their own screen. Great for sharing sketches and ideas, during technical production. My own personal favourite across work and private projects.
    Requires: account and login, free.

  • Zoom: A great video tool that allows participants to share their screen, and extra good for recording a video session or instruction and sometimes even shorter UX research.
    Requires: download and login.

  • Hangouts: A great tool for simpler video chats with lower technical requirements, allows sharing screens of participants. Great for a simple meeting or a lunch chat.
    Requires: a google account and login, downloads optional on desktop, requires mobile app download on phone, owned by Google.

  • Whereby A personal favourite for meetings and sharing your screen, where on desktop the level of entering the service is low. The user who receives the link to a call on desktop and does not need to login. The simple “open-link-to-enter-video-chat” lowers the threshold of complexity speaking with people who are less likely comfortable taking time and effort to prepare for a meeting, downloading software. Whereby was formerly known as Appear.in.
    Requires: Does not require user account login on desktop. The mobile usage requires a mobile app download.

  • Skype: An old favourite and possibly the longest standing Voip (Voice over IP) service, sold to Microsoft. Probably the most widely adapted tool in the world for simple meetings across work and family calls.
    Requires: user account downloads and login, owned by Microsoft.

  • Whats app. A mobile app that allows free phone and video calls across operating systems iOS (iPhone) and Android. For example, you are on an iPhone and your dad is on Android, FaceTime won’t work, What’s app does! Several users can participate in a call. Great for family calls. Owned by Facebook.

  • FaceTime. A phone and operating system dependent app, thats is embedded for free on every iPhone. No need for downloading anything, just click “FaceTime” when calling any other iPhone user. Several users can participate in a call. Great for family calls.

The role of role models

Last month the organisation My dream Now asked me to speak about finding my path from youth to adulthood and I accepted with pleasure even when finding my path was not always so pleasurable. Being honest about it, accepting it and exploring is the valuable part to share. Meeting, speaking with and answering questions with the 9th graders at Bäcka skolans in Stockholms was a heartwarming experience I’d recommend.

Role-models have been central and meaningful in my life, showing me that everything is possible. Role models can come at any point in life but they were extra meaningful to me when I was young. The role models that lead the way before me lead by example boosted my curiosity and creative confidence, and that is exactly what was behind the creation of GeekGirlMeetup, my work with user experience and my startups.

In general it is hard to serve up a one-answer-fits all type version with this type of engagements, all one can do is speak about ones truth. I was happy the young adults had questions about how I chose my education, how to use a possibility mindset (use your possibility glasses). We ended up making a spontaneous idea development workshop to challenge their boundries of what is possible hopefully widening both my own and their mental models. I dearly hope I managed to spark the importance of doing what you love independently of your background or where you come from just as my role models once did for me for at least one of them.

Make a difference by inspiring the future bright minds of tomorrow
If you too want to make a difference, contribute by signing up to speak about your job at the “My dream Now” link or Transfer that is another organisation I have done talks with to promote the connection between working life and everyday life at school.

 

Learnings from a Meerkat interview

Last week I did an AMA at the Slack-based UX community Designerhangout as the UX research at Lookback.io with Meerkat. Meerkat, similarly to Periscope allows you to live streaming app that allows you to take questions and re-posts your interview to Youtube later which, very neat and practical. Here is a short description of the experience and the findings.

The founder of Designerhangout Jacob Rogelberg and I scheduled the AMA (Ask me anything) a week in advance so I had time to do a test recording with Meerkat before going live on @designerhangout  with their entire community and not bugging them with tech details etc. I would do this again just out of curtesy, you don’t want people waiting while you get yourself together.

I also emptied my phone for excess materials. For example i synced all my photos externally and then deleted them so I had more than 200 MB to play with, that makes it a nice experience. Mainly I do this at any point in time when you are using video on your camera over 10 minutes of recorded material. My interview was 33 minutes. That takes some overhead, clean out some space on your device.

I signed in to Meerkat with our Lookback Twitter account as I have hade major difficulties with twitter password support after adding SMS verification, that has gone awry and won’t let me back in. Twitter customer service has a lot left to wish for but thats another story.

By tagging the video #katch Meerkat allows it to catch the video on Youtube later, so its documented. I named it appropriately so if people RT it it makes sense if its of for them on not “AMA with @lookbacks UX research @heidiharman”. This way when the tweets from your Twitter and Meerkat happens, it’s clear what the clip is about.

Once you are on Meerkat, people will show up in little round circles on your Meerkat screen, thats filming you if you flip to selfie mode (frontal camera). You will also get questions thru the Meerkat app. I got most of my questions thru our UX forum (designers hangout). My thoughts this, it being a new experience for both the founder and me, was that we could have prepped up with some questions in advance. And the forum could have directed the question to be done via Meerkat, this way I as the interviewee would not have to go between 2 screens.

Things I did in the beginning were:
1. Introduce myself, name, role, company and why I’m here – for the AMA.
2. I spoke briefly about what Lookback does.
3. I started answering questions.

It seemed as if more questions started popping towards the end of the 33 minute conversation in 2 different chat-rooms, Twitter and Meerkat. If advise to keep it one Channel.

I might even set up a tripod, so I don’t have to do handhold the recording at the same time I’m looking for questions on my desktop screen, ultimately i would only be working on the Meerkat screen.

All in all, it was a neat experience with people asking great questions and it was a lot of fun teasing out new stuff. Id definitely do it again and recommend it as a great tool for this type of interviews and makes it simpler to gather the material and publish it. Best of luck with your recording, AMA, Q&A or whatever creative use you find for it. Hope this helps your future Meerkat or Periscope interview in the future.

The actual stream: