Smilebox Blog

posted by Paul Ingalls, Smilebox Director of Technology

Howdy.  If you have been following along previous installments of Inside the Box, welcome back.  If this is all new, then I’m glad you stopped by.  My name is Paul, I’m Director of Technology here at Smilebox, and this week I am going to discuss our “Creative and Technical Excellence” value.  As mentioned in previous editions of Inside the Box, we pay a lot of attention to our company values: “Consumer Centric,” “Creative and Technical Excellence,” “Family Oriented,” “Accountable,” “Transparent,” “Collaborative” and “Fun.”  I’ve already discussed our “Consumer Centric” value in Part II, be sure to check it out.  “Creative and Technical Excellence” supports another important section of our culture – a focus on creating a world class service.

We knew when we started Smilebox that we needed to create something different.  We wanted to build a software application that would not only amuse its user, but would amaze those with whom they shared their creations.  Hence our original tagline – “Amuse yourself, Amaze others!”  Our focus on creative and technical excellence helps us reach and maintain this goal.  This value is fundamental to our company, as an excellent service is our bread and butter. 

There are at least two key elements that make an application fun: it must be easy to use; and it needs to just work.  This is where technical excellence comes in.  We have built an agile process around practices that focus on technical excellence.  For example, we work in pairs to ensure that every line of code we write has had two heads thinking about it.  We are responsible for writing automated tests for our own code.  This ensures that the code has been used at least twice.  When we identify a better way to achieve a goal, we are obligated to use the better way through a practice called refactoring.  This is just a sampling, but you can already see how we have leveraged redundancy to improve quality.  Suffice to say that we take our craft seriously.  The goal is to ensure an easy to use product that just works.

Amazing others relies heavily on combining your amazing personal media with amazing designs.  This is where creative excellence comes in.  We work very hard to ensure that the designs we produce are creative and unique.  Through our internal efforts, as well as collaboration with amazing partners like Hallmark, Madison Park Greetings, Scrapgirls, K & Company, Pinkerton Design and Sarah Beise we have a large selection of design concepts to build upon.  We then leverage our technical excellence and interactive design expertise to help take those concepts and bring them to life.  The goal is to ensure that we have the right design to fit your special moment, and that it is something you are proud to share with your friends and family.

We combine technical with creative for a reason.  Our cross-team collaboration is vital to the health of our service.  We have found that some of our most impressive ideas and solutions have come from people outside the team facing a particular challenge.  Therefore, we work hard to combine technical and the creative into one team.

As you can see, a focus on “Creative and Technical Excellence” is key for Smilebox.  To build an application that makes creating a Smilebox a rewarding experience requires deep technical and creative skill.  Instilling a culture of excellence ensures that we keep our eyes on the prize – amusing ourselves and amazing others.

Can you think of ways to improve the Smilebox experience?  Leave me a comment below.  And for those waiting for a Mac version, let’s just say the end is in sight…J  Until next time, happy Smileboxing!

Howdy.  It’s Paul again, director of technology at Smilebox.  It’s time for another installment of Inside the Box.  In my last post, I introduced our company values:  “Consumer Centric,” “Creative and Technical Excellence,” “Family Oriented,” “Accountable,” “Transparent,” “Collaborative” and “Fun.”  I promised to discuss each value in more detail, why we feel the value is important and how that value is reflected in both our work and in our service.

Today I’d like to tell you about our “Consumer Centric” value.  When we first started Smilebox, we knew we needed to build a service that was friendly and easy to use.  How would we measure success against that goal?  The answer was clear:  We’d ask our customers!  We rely on our customers to help us create new features and designs that will excite them.  We ask them questions on our regular survey and in frequent focus groups about what we could do to improve the service.  We regularly bring in our “review board” of customers in our office to show them our latest thinking and get their feedback.  When we create a mock-up of an important new feature we invite customers in to play with it and watch closely to make sure it’s really easy and intuitive to use.

Every company, to some degree, values their customers.  But we try to take it a little further. “Consumer Centric” is reflected everywhere in our work.  It’s in the color of our office walls, in the layout of our desks, in our strong customer support team and in the design and content of our newsletter.  When we moved in our office space a few years ago, we wanted to make sure we had a place that would welcome the many customers we would invite to visit us.  We made sure we painted our office in the bright and cheery colors that reflect our Smilebox character so our visitors felt welcome.

Our work environment is very open.  There are no cube walls and our disco ball reflects at least 20 heads (more about that in “Fun”).  When we laid out our office we made sure our customer support team was conveniently located right next to our program management and development teams.  The three groups who are best capable of identifying and then either addressing a customer issue or implementing a customer request sit right next to each other.  Our investment in a high-quality, local customer support team — instead of one based offshore — is very “Customer Centric.”

I love our newsletter.  Every week we feature one of our customer’s Smilebox creations.  It’s really amazing how people have used Smilebox to share their gifts with us and the Smilebox community.  They’re constantly giving us new ideas on how to push our creative and technical envelopes.  Hopefully they provide all of you with some ideas as well. 

Being so customer centric not only makes Smilebox a lot better, but it also energizes and drives our team.  It makes creating a product all the more interesting and fulfilling.  These are just a few examples of how we bring our values to life.  There are plenty of others (look for my upcoming post on our new slideshows!).  As you can see, we take our “Consumer Centric” value seriously.  Can you think of other ways we could keep our customers top of mind?  Leave me a comment below.Until next time, happy Smileboxing….

Howdy.  My name is Paul and I’m the Director of Technology here at Smilebox.  Smilebox is an interesting and unique company.  There are a lot of processes and rituals we follow that may interest others, so I thought I would spend some time sharing what happens “Inside the Box.”  In the next weeks and months, I hope to give you a glimpse of what makes Smilebox special, not only as a service, but as a place to work.  We take a lot of pride in what we do and spend a lot of time trying different ways to improve.  Some succeed and some don’t; but we always learn something.   

This week I’d like to start out by sharing with you a decision we made early in the company.  When we first started Smilebox, we knew we needed to do something a little different.  We wanted to ensure that we designed and built a service that was fun and creative.  Leveraging the idea that a product directly reflects the team that built it, we needed to foster a culture within Smilebox that was also fun and creative.  Explicitly designing the culture of a company during its early stages was a unique challenge and we attacked it directly. 

So, how does one go about cultivating a company’s culture?  For us, we defined a set of values upon which we would build the company.  Many of the founders of Smilebox, including myself, were familiar with various agile processes and the values they espouse.  For example, the values defined by Kent Beck for his Extreme Programming process are “Communication”, “Simplicity,” “Courage,” “Feedback” and “Respect.”  We wanted to define our own set of values that would set us apart and be guide posts for our future as a company.  After much thought and discussion, we agreed on the following values for Smilebox: “Consumer Centric;” “Creative and Technical Excellence;” “Family Oriented;” “Accountable;” “Transparent;” “Collaborative;” and “Fun.” 

Just glancing through the values we picked, I think you’ll start to see how Smilebox has built such a fun and creative service.  In my next posts, I’ll briefly discuss each value, along with why we feel it is important and how it is reflected in both our work and in our service.  Till then, happy Smileboxing…