UX Conference talk sharing one of my biggest failures in 2003 and the lessons learned. It became a turning point in my life, showed me that in order to build something great you have to fail - a lot.
Today i’d like to share with you one of my biggest failures - though i’m sure i’ll have many more throughout my journey.
It became a turning point in my life, showed me that in order to build something great you have to fail a lot. I find that to be true in life, love, my career, and every project I have worked on since.
So How Did I Get Here:
IT support, Graphic Design, VB6, SQL Server, Manufacturing and part structuring, 3 failed companies > One of those we’ll skim the surface of today, Retail Management, Interaction Design, then User Experience became a thing, JAVA Web & Mobile Development, Startup Search Engine (find.com), NASCAR (kasey kahne, tony stewart, kyle busch, denny hamlin, jamie mcmurray, etc, Lowes, Insurance, and now consulting
So now I’d like to take you back to 2003, to add some context to my story
- Friends was still on TV
- IE 6 ruled, we didn't get firefox until the following year
- MySpace launched that August and this guy became everyones friend
- Apple launched the iTunes Music Store and sold its 1 millionth iPod
- Nokia had the new hotness - we still had 4 more years before the iPhone
And in Atlanta (where I lived) fast and furious was in its hay day.
The first movie had just come out and the second installment
2 fast 2 furious had just hit theaters.
Every 13 - 25 yr old wanted to pimp out their hondas.
The sport compact car scene was in full effect. There was an event pretty much every weekend from May through August across the southeast.
Each season ended in a huge blowout at an event called Nopi Nationals. Which took place at the Atlanta motor speedway.
In 2002 it drew over 7k entries and 100,000 spectators. I can’t really explain NOPI, its something you have to experience for yourself.
In 2003 I had importsouth.com.
It was a community website for car enthusiast’s and I traveled around the southeast going to all those car shows events: drifting, road racing, drag races, etc taking pics, videos, handing out t-shirts, stickers, prizes, etc.
ImportSouth.com had everything:
Event coverage, industry news, forum, chat, vendor directory, models, member pages, car club pages, and a aftermarket part store.
Users were able to create their own profile pages, upload pics of their cars, videos, what mod’s they had done, tag their friends, or car clubs they were in.
There was also a virtual car show on the site where visitors voted on member rides.
Every month there was a meet where I gave out prizes and awards
The member with the highest score from the virtual car show was given a cash prize and featured on the site.
I went to as many car shows as I could find.
I made sure to take multiple pictures of each car, handed out cards where they could find their picture, sponsored prizes and car clubs, and if I couldn’t go - i’d pay for other peoples pictures.
The website spread like crazy.
In 2003 it peaked at around 3 million page views per month and 5,000 users.
And that’s about the time I got the call.
MOPAR (Dodge) was introducing a new Neon that came from the factory with a turbo.
A local dealership teamed up with MOPAR and the National Hot Rod Association and they had a HUGE budget to throw an event to showcase the new car and they wanted me to help.
So I was given free reign to plan the biggest, baddest car show / extravaganza ever.
And they wanted to do it in the middle of summer.
I was like - I’ve been to a bunch of car shows, I’ve helped plan a couple in the past.
I had a pimped out honda accord slammed on 17’s with a playstation in it. (They were 17’s, but they were clean though.)
I got this, I know what people want.
“Let’s call it Tuners Gone Wild”.
And so the planning began.
I’m going to take the best of every car show i’ve ever heard of or experienced and cram it into one fun-filled crazy event.
It will take place at the Atlanta Dragway since we have it for the whole weekend…
Let’s make it EPIC
Only $50 to get your car entered.
For the $50 you get:
- 2 weekend passes
- a t-shirt
- $10 in concession vouchers
- 4 raffle tickets
- vendor goodie bag
Lets kick it off Friday night - let people hit the drag strip for free.
And get MOPAR’s race team on-site doing demonstrations and meet and greets.
Then at 10pm lets party,
bring in a DJ,
a foam pit,
and get the local radio station to broadcast live.
Lets do a car show with 200 trophies and $4,000 in cash payouts
Drag racing with $4,000 in cash payouts
Dyno competition with $2,000 in cash payouts
and a sound competition with 17 classes and triple points
And just to make sure no one got bored while they were there:
the radio station had lined up a bikini contest and 4 bands to play at the main stage all day.
Best band got $2500 in cash and the winner of the bikini contest split 3k with the runner up.
Everything awesome was all crammed into one weekend. I was planning for a blow out.
If we could get 10% of what NOPI does it would be a win.
- 10,000 Spectators (nothing for an NHRA event alone)
- 800 Car Show Entries
- 250 Racers
- 125 Cars for the Dyno (ticket was cheaper than a normal dyno run)
- 150 Super Loud cars for the sound competition
- 60 woman for the bikini contest
I traveled all over the southeast for 2 months passing out flyers and doing hype events.
Had radio advertisements and gave away free tickets every weekend leading up to the event at car shows, bars, venues, events, and concerts.
All this work, no sleep and finally the day was here.
…
So i’ll just cut to the chase - it FAILED, like epic fail.
Friday night - the first dude, like the first one on the drag strip
burned his car to the ground trying to run nitrous oxide.
It shut everything down for the majority of the night so they could get it cleaned up.
Someone broke their toe in the foam pit which meant we had to pay the $10k minimum for the ambulance.
Then Saturday came.
Only 120 cars entered the car show, maybe 30 for the sound competition, 50 for the drag race, and 10-15 for the dyno.
I think we ended up with 3k spectators total (Friday and Saturday)
One of the bands didn’t show up
and only 10 woman entered the bikini contest.
That’s my wtf face
Oh and then this car flew off the dyno going 100mph almost taking out the people under the tent and the crowd.
So with more trophies than there were entries - the show ended early.
And in the end I did a poor job of highlighting MOPAR, NHRA, the new Neon, and my company/website.
I had poured my life, my heart, my soul, my bank account, and the sponsors money into making this successful, and it flopped.
It took me a month and a part-time job to save up enough money to pay the photographers to get the pictures from the event.
I was destroyed. I had no idea what went wrong, I knew I had done everything right.
I tried reinventing the company and changed the name of the website from importsouth to ecmoto to attract more sponsors and visitors to the site.
I got rid of the forum and launched more features.
A month later I re-designed it.
I couldn't shake the feeling of failure every time I looked at the pictures or logged on.
In the end I just left the website to die.
That time of my life continues to help me grow. It changed the way i looked at things.
I lost 100 lbs by the following spring, sold everything I had, and moved back to Charlotte and just worked.
I worked a lot, I worked on every project I could find so I could learn, grow, and fail more. The more I learned I dissected everything that happened.
I dove into User experience and from then on used testing and research in every project as best as I could. Using data to make decisions and not personal opinion.
It took me a long time to reflect on all the things I did and my decisions that made this event unsuccessful.
I learned a lot of valuable lessons that weekend.
I continue to learn from that experience
And yes that gentleman standing next to me is wearing a fur coat.
Lesson 1: Talk to your users. To build something great it’s never one person who knows everything telling someone else how to be successful.
Go on a fact finding mission to find the truth - talk to your customers/users - learn, listen, adapt to change, and use data to make decisions - never personal opinions. And test - test fast and often, learn and incorporate. It takes time and a lot of trial and error to make something great.
If I would have talked to my customers I would have learned:
There was way too much going on to make any sense of it. People were unsure of times, dates, events, cost, pretty much everything.
I also forgot to hype the event locally. I relied on radio advertising. And the core audience didn’t even listen to that channel - come to find out.
oh and radio advertising is a waste of money - don’t do it.
The typical car show participant wanted to be special, so the top 100 didn’t appeal to them, they wanted to compete against other cars like their own.
The typical NHRA fan didn’t care much for anything but racing, and with not many big name racers there - they didn’t come.
There was also a competing drag racing association - NDRA (NOPI’s race series). They had just launched and were geared specifically to sport compact cars and were not as strict with their safety regulations - so a lot of those racers never came cause they didn’t want to have to change their setups.
Lesson 2: Look at the whole picture. Understand where your (product, app, website, event, solution, etc) fits into a users journey. Know what factors influence them. What expectations do they have, what have you set for them, have you meet those expectations.\
Come to find out - the venue was just too far away for the target customer. And 2 days was too much for them to take off work and they’d have to pay for a hotel room.
Also - It was also too close to NOPI nationals and most people were preparing for that event.
There was also a huge drag race the following week and the prize money wasn’t enough to get people there.
Lesson 3: There’s no such thing as magic sprinkles. Combining the best of everything just creates the worst of anything.
Meaning just because its successful one place doesn’t mean it will work everywhere.
Never build a solution and then apply a problem to it. Understand the problem and build or find the best solution to fit.
Lesson 4: Keep it simple. Wether in an app, website, product, or event - keep it simple.
I failed because there was too much going on, it was hard to explain to people.
“Well its a car show, and a dyno competition, and there’s drag racing, and oh yeah a sound competition. And then there’s test and tune the night before, and a foam party. oh and we’re giving away 20k in cash prizes, and its only $50 to get in for each event. no you still have to pay for each, yes everyone gets a t-shirt, yes you have to pay to come in if you aren’t in one of the events.”
Each one of the events Friday and Saturday were geared toward different people. The messages should have been different - each customer/potential participants goals and motivations were different.
What was said wasn’t relevant to the audience - it just left people confused.
Instead of trying to make one thing do everything - just do one thing well. Create relevant content and experiences for your customers. Know their goals, motivations, and passions.
Lesson 5: Know your strengths and weaknesses. This is so true in UX today. There use to be a time when one person could do everything. Now there’s so much technology in front end/back end development as well as new trends and technology in design, application development, accessibility, compliance, research, testing. There’s no way to know everything about everything and be successful.
Like for instance - I didn’t know anything about racing, dynos, or sound competitions. I didn’t ask anyone, I just assumed I knew what they wanted.
Know what your good at, know what you don’t know, always be willing to learn, and be honest. The best job security and path to success is to teach everyone everything you know - empower them with knowledge - and they will return the favor.
Lesson 6: There’s no perfect. Don’t wait for perfect, just start.
This is something I have to remind myself of everyday.
I think that the show would have have been way more successful promoting the srt-4 and my website as little events across the south and not one big huge blowout incorporating everything awesome.
Lesson 7: You are not the user. And this goes for sme's and po's as well - a power user is not a typical user and building something based on one persons assumptions is never a good thing.
And when it comes to redoing systems.
A users opinion of success is how well the new system did the stuff the old system did.
If the old system or power user used hacks and work arounds to be successful - more than likely that sme is going to want to build a system that mimics those hacks.
Your job is to build the best solution possible that takes the business requirements and makes them match the users expectations - not move things around on the screen and change colors.
Talk to real users, go to where they are, plan something that is scalable and intuitive.
Use the sme’s and power users to understand process, capture user goals and content priorities - share with them the knowledge, thought process, and tools used to build something successful.
Don't do what I did and build a product for one.
