Napkin Labs Blog

Your Facebook fans are more than customers; they’re passionate, creative, and insightful people interested in your brand.  This makes Facebook a great place to tap into their thoughts and understand what they’re thinking.

Here’s a list of five questions that will help you collect valuable input from your fans, using a fictitious soft drink brand, ACME-Cola, to illustrate each point.

1. Would you rather drink ACME-Cola from a straw or straight from the can?
“Would you rather…” questions provide instant, succinct insight, which is great when you need quick customer feedback to help you make a decision.  Just think of how many decisions your brand makes in a day that could benefit from a little customer input!  Your community of fans can provide instant feedback, so why not ask them!

2. How do you enjoy an ACME-Cola?
“How do you…” questions give fans a chance to share how your brand fits into their lifestyle.  The responses provided will give you an idea of how your fans experience your brand, which is important information if you want to continually develop products that fit into their lifestyle.  Other versions of this question are “Where do you…” and “What time of day do you…”

3. What celebrity would you like to see sipping on ACME-Cola?
This question can be used in a number of different ways, but the idea is to ask fans what celebrity, brand, sports team, or other well known entity they associate with your brand.  This relation can provide interesting insight into your target consumers’ interests and preferences, plus is a great way to determine who you should partner with next.

4. What top three words come to mind when you think of ACME-Cola?
Word association questions help you learn what worlds your fans use to describe your brand.  This will give you an idea of the language your customers use, which can help you when it comes to developing new brand messaging, plus can provide an indication of your fans’ feelings toward your brand.

5. What would you like to see ACME-Cola do differently?
Asking questions about how your brand can improve is the easiest, most direct way to find out what your fans really want.  Remember, negative feedback isn’t bad!  In face, it’s super valuable if you use it to steer your brand in the right direction.  Plus, openly asking your fans for feedback is a great way to build a trusting relationship with your customers by showing them you care.

What other questions have you asked your community that have gotten you great results?

At Napkin Labs, we’ve always been focused on how we can help companies uncover the passion and creativity of their customers.  Today, we’re moving in a new direction to fulfill that mission: re-creating the experience of our platform within Facebook through a suite of apps and custom-built experiences for brands. 

Since launching last August, we’ve seen great brands and agencies around the world use our crowdsourcing platform in unique ways, but as we talked to our customers, we realized Facebook is the best place to really make a difference. 

We decided to run a test in November by creating our first Facebook app, Brainstorm.  We designed it in a day, built it in a week, and released it for free. A truly agile, minimum-viable product. 

We saw overwhelming response by our customers almost immediately.  In order to stay focused and build a truly great product, we’ve decided to put all of our focus behind Facebook. We believe it will create a much stronger experience to collaborate with, learn from, and engage your fans.  

We’ll be in touch as our new suite of apps are released, and as always, would love to hear your thoughts on our new direction!

Thanks as always for all the support..

Roshan + The Napkin Labs Team

We’re seriously pumped for 2012. To start the year off right, we’ve added a talented mix of folks to our team to further impact the way brands engage their communities online.  They bring a diverse set of experience spanning UI/UX design, development, sales and marketing all of which will help Napkin Labs continue to grow. Here are some quick overviews of their backgrounds.

Jeff Scurlock, formerly with BrandJuice, is our new Director of Business Development.  Jeff’s worked with some huge and diverse brands in the past, including Proctor & Gamble, Pepsi and Ride Snowboards.  His role is to help Napkin Labs keep growing by fusing advertising, lead generation and business development into a specialty he created called Demand Management.

Chandler Hoisington is our new Software Developer. He is going to be a key member of our team, working to build out Napkin Labs’ suite of apps that engage companies’ fans.  Chandler understands more coding languages than we can list. He’s also done some interesting work recently, like working with Ungeo to set up the first public cloud in China.

Alexander Diner joins Napkin Labs as our brand new Designer/Developer.  He’s a guy with an eye for the simple, but beautifully effective design we love.  As a recent graduate from the Art Institute of Colorado, he specializes in Web Design, Branding, Front-End Developing and UI/UX Design, with experience from both Blue Moon Works and Zenman Productions.

Welcome to the team guys! We’re looking forward to collaborating!

A few weeks ago I set out to write a piece for Inc.com readers about how to tell when you’re ready to start a company. Since I had a difficult time deciding whether I should leave my job to launch Napkin Labs, I hoped I could share some brilliant advice that would help make the decision an easier one for others. But when I started to write about signs I knew I was ready, my list very quickly turned into things like, “you eat nothing but Cliff Bars” and “you only wear pink.”

So then I had another thought.

Since the decision is an extremely personal one, why don’t I ask a bunch of entrepreneurs to share their advice too? I mean, who am I to think I have all the answers?

When I asked founders in the start-up community to provide advice for my piece, I was overwhelmed by the number of awesome responses I received. Each was totally different from the other…just as I expected.

Below are some of the quotes I collected from entrepreneurs who have made the leap themselves. For more inspiration, check out my post on Inc.com.

“If your first date conversation consists of customer acquisition costs in relation to ROI…and you met on LinkedIn - you might be ready to start a company.” - Alex Finkel, Co-founder of Off The Quad

“You might be ready to start a company if you think risk is something other people worry about and define impossible as stuff I haven’t gotten around to yet.” - Dave Angulo & Richard Grote, founders, Spotinfluence

“If you can convince the smartest person you know to throw away all material certainties and join you in your quest to change the world - you might be ready to start a company.” - Riley Gibson (Oh, wait, that’s me!)

“If boxes of watches and straps are your preferred living room decor, bedroom furniture, and kitchen utensils, you might be ready to start a (watch) company.” - Aaron Schwartz, Founder and CEO, Modify Watches

“You know you are an entrepreneur when you figure out how to combine passion and insanity.” - Adam Wilson, Co-founder and Chief Software Architect

A few weeks ago our CEO Riley Gibson spoke at DMI’s Design at Scale conference about how new social tools can help designers bring global communities of thinkers into the design process. The video of Riley’s presentation was selected as DMI’s “Editor’s Choice Video” so it’s up on the DMI site for public viewing! Check it out!

What is a Facebook “like” worth to a brand? Well, starting today, it has the potential to be worth a lot.

Today we’ve launched the new Napkin Labs Brainstorm Facebook app, and we think the app could totally change the way companies engage with customers on Facebook.

Why?

Because the Brainstorm app makes it super easy for companies to collect ideas and feedback from Facebook fans on things like new product designs, service changes, or even the way things are done in a company altogether. This means companies can proactively tap into the full potential of their Facebook community, easily turning Facebook fans into innovation gold.

But there’s much more to the app that makes it awesome. Here’s a quick run-down of the benefits:

Simple, Customizable, and FREE
Installing the Brainstorm app into a Facebook page takes one click, and setting up a brainstorm takes just a few more. Brainstorms can be customized with questions, branding and images, or you can use a pre-built brainstorm instead. Brainstorms can also easily be turned into idea contests by adding time constraints and rewards.

Helps Attract New Fans
The app is a great way for companies to build social buzz and attract new fans, because as customers contribute to a brainstorm, their likes and comments will be broadcast across Facebook.

Unifies Conversations
Within the app, fans can help build-out each others’ specific ideas, so at the end of a brainstorm a company has a ton of fully developed, actionable suggestions.

And now we’ll leave you with a little story.

Once there was a company that was thinking about splitting their businesses and renaming one part as Qwikster. They decided to throw out the idea to their Facebook community of customers to see what they thought…and turns out they absolutely hated the idea. So they ixnayed the whole Qwikster thing and implemented another idea that a Facebook fan brought to the table and a bunch others agreed was awesome. They avoided losing hundreds of thousands of customers and instead built a really successful customer-centric business.  

Don’t you just love a happy ending?

So if you’re interested in getting some new insights, feedback and letting your customers voices be heard, head to http://napkinlabs.com/brainstorm, install the free Brainstorm app (no Napkin Labs subscription required!) and get started!

When Google+ first launched, it made waves by not allowing brands to create profiles. Today, that all changed with Google + Pages. At first blush, this move by Google seems a lot like a Facebook Page, but here is what we think are the top three differentiators for brands looking to build an epic, live conversation with their customers:

Google+ Direct Connect
Google has the majority market share for search (most people aren’t searching for brands actively on Facebook. So in a totally brilliant move, Google tightly integrated its +Pages into the search engine. If a user types + in front of any search term, they’ll be driven directly to the Google+ page. This function could present an opportunity for brands to collaborate with anyone searching for them on Google. Think for a moment about how huge that is! As written on the Google product blog:

“Maybe you’re watching a movie trailer, or you just heard that your favorite band is coming to town. In both cases you want to connect with them right now, and Direct Connect makes it easy—even automatic. Just go to Google and search for [+], followed by the page you’re interested in (like +Angry Birds). We’ll take you to their Google+ page, and if you want, we’ll add them to your circles.”

Location-Awareness
According to AdAge, Google + Pages will soon be location-aware, which means companies will know where their fans are and have the opportunity to serve up location-specific deals. This isn’t anything Earth-shatteringly new, but brands could use this function to collaborate with customers in a certain location around specific products, services, deals and more. For large brands with lots of local stores, for example, this presents a totally new opportunity to connect with customers.

Hangouts for Brands
The one-to-many group chat function made popular by personal Google+ pages has now been opened up to brands. If harnessed properly, brands can use this feature to loop VIP customers into major decisions, making them feel like even more of a part of their team. Brands could get really creative with this, and host regular hangouts for customers that want to influence the long-term direction of their products and services.

So, yes, we’re super excited about Google+ Pages. What do you think?

Here at Napkin Labs, we like to act on feedback quickly. In that spirit, today we’re announcing two really exciting additions to the Napkin Labs platform: Facebook/website integration and our latest app, Photoboard.

Lab owners, we know growing your community is a major priority. With our new Facebook app, now you can add a tab to your Facebook page to help draw fans into your lab. We’ve made pulling in consumers from your website easier, too. Check out the Grow Your Community section of your lab - we’ve provided the code you’ll need to embed a “come join our lab” tab into your website. As you might already know, you can also email invitations directly to customers that you want to join your lab.  

The other new feature we’ve added is a Photoboard app, which lets you collect a library of images for insights and inspiration. Say, for example, you’re designing a new bicycle. You could ask your community to post pictures of bicycles they think are interesting. You could even ask them to post captions about the pictures. You’ll be able to tag pictures you think are really relevant (e.g. dangerous, impressive design), then filter pictures by users and tags. Sometimes a picture is better than words, and Photoboard is designed to encourage this visual interaction.

We know you’re always looking for new innovations, so keep on the lookout for more updates soon, and let us know what you think about our latest features!

Good design tells the story of its creator.  Nowhere was that more purely expressed than in Apple’s products.  I feel as if I came to know Steve Jobs personally through the products I have interacted with. That is why the news of his death has affected me more than I could have imagined.  

Through my use of Apple products, Steve Jobs has become my mentor.  Not in the traditional sense of course - I was not fortunate enough to have met him - but because you could see every aspect of his genius, his obsession, his minimalist approach, his appreciation for beauty, his passion for function, and his love for experiences in each Apple product. He taught a generation who has grown up surrounded by overabundance and thoughtlessly created things to appreciate design. The impact he has had on this world is profound and immeasurable.  

What I respect most about Steve Jobs’ was his unyielding passion for the objects and experiences he was creating.  It is so easy to let a vision be eroded by deadlines, bottom lines, convention, and constraints.  It is amazing that over decades everything he influenced had a certain level of craftsmanship that felt like it defied all of these erosive forces. 

I feel honored to have grown up in the same period as one of the great creators in human history. 

 - Riley

Are you a mom with young kids?

Chances are - your kids love playing with toys, but love cleaning up a little less.  Am I right?  Well, a group of students from Babson College has set out to change all that - and hopefully help preserve a sliver of your sanity in the process!

Meet Playroom (sign up for their lab here).  This lab is all about hearing from parents to create innovative and practical clean-up solutions.  We at Napkin Labs love to spotlight labs doing cool things and working on cool projects, and this one has really caught our eye.

So if you have ever dealt with the pain that is cleaning up toys, and would like to work with others to help shape the future of playing cleaner join their lab right now! You can be a part of crowdsourcing the solution! 

The idea of crowdsourcing is awesome in theory, but can it really work? Obviously we think so, but here is an incredibly awesome (albeit very technical) example of its awesomeness at work:

Fold.it is a game for anyone to help solve really tough science problems dealing with protein folding.  Essentially, scientists created this game that allows users to fold proteins - much like solving one of those annoying spacial puzzles - to try and achieve some optimized folding pattern.  

Apparently the results were stunning.  Scientists and computers have been struggling for years to find certain optimal folding patterns for a protein that is linked to the HIV virus.  In a short amount of time the community - playing Fold.it - found a specific fold that required the lowest amount of energy to sustain. 

It is so cool how these scientists leverage crowdsourcing and game mechanics to build a community of puzzle solvers to help them find solutions. What is even cooler in my mind is their foresight to realize that a community with no experience in biology or science could be the answer to their problem.