Ideas, Aspirations & Sinookas of Shane LK

In an effort to become more productive with my spare time, I am taking inspiration from a tradition that is well known to those who have ever spent time on a college campus - Power Hour!

The concept is simple… one shot of beer every minute for 60 minutes. A highly efficient way to get positively inebriated.

I have long left the boozing life behind in those wobbly off-campus apartment halls, but this is one college activity that may serve me well when applied to more productive matters.

The rules of the game will change… Replace Bud Lite with good lit. Corona with Corona SDK. Miller High Life with get-the-most-out-of-life. 

It is time to turn some of the many ideas floating around in the ether of my mind into something more tangible. #PowerHour will be my attempt to commit at least one undistracted, highly focused hour each night working toward that goal. 

• Ditch the Distractions
• 1 Full Hour of Learning and/or Working

Get your shot glasses ready… Binge productivity!

Having decided to relaunch my blog, I determined that I needed a new logo that could be used across a variety of platforms, including this blog, my design portfolio and on social media profiles. I wanted to create an identity that consisted of my initials with a clean, simple, modern aesthetic.

I began with the following rough sketch:

I imported this sketch into Illustrator and began to lay things out in vector format. I knew that I wanted the S and L to be the same width and height for the purposes of creating symmetry. I wanted this logo to fit nicely within a square and to be readable at all sizes. 

I was able to rather easily create the look I wanted for the S and L in the vector format. However, the K didn’t quite look right. I experimented with the letter in a variety of formats, but nothing really looked the way I wanted it. I knew that I wanted the K to be nested within the L, but I couldn’t find a way to make it “fit” the rest of the design the way I envisioned. I had originally planned to have the K be a different color than the S and L, but every combination I tried failed to achieve the look I desired.

At this point I decided to try experimenting with the concept of placing the K in a box nested above the L. Fortunately, this did the trick. The K silhouetted against a colored rectangle really solidified the logo for me.

I am still unsure of which color combination I prefer, so for now I am using both for different mediums. Here is the alternate version:

FYI, this was the original personal logo that I had been using on my portfolio website and on Twitter for the past year or so:

The following app idea was spawned in a brief moment of inspiration. I have no plans to develop this idea into anything further. Feel free to #stealthisidea

TicTake (Name TBD)
Debate / Opinion Video App

Idea: A social video platform that allows users to share short 3 minute takes on questions that have a “pro” or “con” stance. An additional component for live debates between 2 users. Gamified. (Mobile & Desktop)

Is there a market?: Yes. Debate / opinion shows are amongst the most popular on any medium. The internet is rife with people who debate passionately on variety of topics - most specifically, politics, sports and religion. However, most of this debate currently takes place on forums or social media platforms. There are a handful of video debate platforms in existence, but they do not appear to have gained traction.

Competitors: Deeyoon, MeeVSyou, DebateHall

Why haven’t existing video debate platforms gained traction?: Current video debate platforms have a few problems:

1. Live debates only.
In order for this format to work, you need to have a large user base to ensure that each user has at least 1 other user to interact with on any given topic. Otherwise, their experience will be poor since there may be times when there is no one around to debate with.

SOLUTION: QuickTakes - a system in which users can share quick 3 minute “takes” on a topic/question of their choosing. This will allow users to create content even when they do not have a challenger for a live debate. These would be ideal for a mobile app, as live debates are probably not the most technologically feasible on mobile devices at the moment.

2. Poor discovery engine.

The current video debate platforms have atrocious discovery engines. At the moment, DeeYoon simply has a chronological list of archived debates. MeeVSyou has no discernable way to discover content. DebateHall has a generic navigation system.

SOLUTION: Utilize a system of tagging to allow the community to categorize content. Rank high quality content and debates in descending order.

I visualize this working kind of like Quora, where there is ONE question under which users can debate or share their takes. For example, the question “Who will win the Super Bowl: 49ers or Ravens” can only be asked once. Any time a new user attempts to create this question, they will be directed to this “thread” under which they can share their takes or challenge other users to a live debate. The live debates and takes will be archived under this thread, with the most popular ones (based on upvotes) will be at the top.

3. No Incentive to debate.

Other than the desire to share your opinion and debate, there are no outside incentives to use the services.

SOLUTION: Gamification. Allow users to gain points and levels based on their participation in live debates and takes. Users can use these points to purchase “power-ups” that can be used during live debates to gain an advantage against your opponent. In addition, as a user levels up, new “power-ups” are unlocked. Highest level users can perhaps enter a revshare program (similar to YouTube Publisher) in which they will receive a portion of revenue from ads on their content.

In addition to gamification, the other incentive to join this platform would be to gain authority on a topic. This is a major component of the Twitter post extention platform Sulia (See: http://sulia.com/channel/miami-dolphins/) Journalists were routinely using this platform in order to become recognized as a “leading expert” on their topic within Sulia because it helped them gain visibility and authority on their topic. A similar mentality is present on Quora.

On TicTake, users will try to outrank other users on a topic in order to maintain their status as an “expert” on a topic that is important to them.

• QuickTake - A 3 minute “take” on a question or topic.
  The QuickTake is split into 3 “takes” at 1 minute each, with a conclusion at the end.
  
  
• TakeDuel - A live debate.
  Users can challenge other users to a structured debate on the topic or question of their choice. Users can find challengers by browsing through the topic channels or by tweeting or sharing an invite to their challenge via social networks. The live debate will have a traditional debate structure between 2 opponents that will not exceed 10 minutes in duration. Other users can view these debates live and once they are archived. In both cases (live and archived), users can vote on winners of each round and of the overall duel.

During the duel, each challenger will have 5 slots in which to set their “power-ups”. These special cards can be purchased with points either accumulated from their activity or those purchased in the store.