Get your sketch on and practice making Clothespin man (& woman) do your bidding.

Once you have these simple skills in your toolkit, you can communicate your customer using your product in a scenario. And that means you’re ready to rock & roll building a product people want, need and will love to buy.

So grab a Sharpie and we’ll see you in Clothespin land.

When working with startup teams, we’ve learned that most people need to learn how to draw a person, in a place, doing a thing. If you can’t draw that, then it’s hard to communicate ideas about how your product makes a difference to a real person in a real place, doing real stuff.

Enter Clothespin Man (and Clothespin Woman.)

Clothespin Man uses simple lines and shapes to communicate a person. He’s so easy to draw, you’ll find yourself doodling him everywhere.

In this episode of Clothespin Man, we explore how to draw him in context. Check out how a few lines and shapes create a world of possibility for communicating your product ideas in context:

He’s a quick and dirty sketch of a person, so you can quickly get your ideas out of your head and onto a page where others can see them.

With Clothespin man (or Clothespin woman…both are correct, of course) you can sketch pictures of how your product will be used by real people in the real world.

With a few simple lines and shapes, you can make Clothespin folks do just about anything! (Yes. Anything.)

What? You’ve not yet met this clever character? That’s a-okay. We’ve put together a short intro video to get you introduced.

Pssst! Wanna spend some, ahem, quality time with Clothespin Man and Clothespin Woman? You can totally do that. Come to one of the workshops and we’ll hook you up.

Today we’re officially announcing the launch of The LUXr Core Curriculum. This toolkit for accelerators is the first of its kind, bringing Silicon Valley methods—including Lean Startup™ and customer development—to entrepreneurs around the world. The toolkit includes four weeks of lessons with web-based video instruction, online support for entrepreneurs, as well as a set of hands-on workshop supplies and reference materials for each participant. The 4-week curriculum costs $495/seat.

“I have met a number of entrepreneurs who have been through the LUXr program, and I’ve witnessed first-hand the positive impact it has had,” said Eric Ries, best-selling author of The Lean Startup. “I’m extremely excited to see what will happen when this material is made more broadly available in the startup ecosystem.”

To fund the growth, we’ve shacked up with 500 Startups. It’s an understatement to say that we’re excited to have backing from Dave McClure and 500 Startups. 500 is without question the most global, broad-minded, interesting seed fund in the Valley. It is a natural partnership that will no doubt lead to great things.

Dave McClure, Managing Director of 500 Startups said, “I’m thrilled that LUXr is offering accelerators their material. There’s massive growth in entrepreneurship outside of Silicon Valley, and having LUXr content available to them is a huge win. It’s exciting to have such a great team in the 500 Startups portfolio.”

The Accelerator Core Curriculum is currently available in bulk orders for startup Accelerators for $395 per seat. Direct sales to entrepreneurs will begin in Fall 2012.

We’ve posted them here in an easy-to-tweet format. So share the love and tweet away!

Abby Sturges & Jennifer Lopez, Founders of Culture Kitchen SF say…

• Partner with someone who works hard.
• Find someone who can lift you up when you are down. 

Angela Shen-Hsieh, Founder of Groupvisual i/o & Board member at AIGA says…

• Learn the lingo of raising money, take a course (e.g., VC 101). 
• Don’t be afraid to show who’s boss (or use “I” when pitching). 

Christina Brodbeck, Founder of The Ice Break & Former Founding Designer at YouTube says…

• Accept risk and you will open yourself up to luck. 
• Get out there and meet as many people as you can. 

Elle Luna, Senior Communication Designer at IDEO says…

• Design your story. 
• Ask yourself: What makes me happy? What gives me meaning? Orient your life around these two answers. 

Janice Fraser, Founder of LUXr & Former Founding Partner at Adaptive Path says…

• Change your internal narrative by owning what you do. 
• If there’s an opportunity to write or speak in public, say yes. 

Jessica Hische, Freelance Illustrator, Letterer, and Designer says…

• Place work you would actually want to do in your portfolio. 
• Find clients as passionate about the work as you are. 

Karen Kaushansky, Principal Device Interaction Designer at Jawbone says…

• Stand your ground. 
• Get outside your comfort zone to move forward.

Kate Aronowitz, Director of Design at Facebook says…

• Learn how to code. 
• Design with purpose (which your portfolio should reflect). 

Liz Danzico, Chair of MFA in Interaction Design at School of Visual Arts (SVA) says…

• Don’t underestimate what you do on the side. 
• Think little risks and big rewards. 

Nancy Broden, Design Lead for User Growth at Twitter says…

• Don’t mistake knowing your tools with knowing your business. 
• Have a mission statement.

Sasha Lubomirsky, User Experience Researcher at Airbnb says…

• Don’t overthink. Go for it.

 
What are your design tips? Tweet ‘em with @luxrco and we’ll share with our followers.

See ya on Twitter!

The Designer Fund has published a recap of the event with audio and slide links, and I recommend you check it out. The presentations are filled with great stories, smart insights, warmth and humor. Every speaker showed the passion and courage that are key to doing great design work and loving what you do. Two other summaries are here: this Fast Company article and an article on The Paly Voice by Kate Apostolou.

At the event, I spoke on a topic that seems to never go away, and is particularly hot right now: How to be successful in a business with a gender imbalance. The recent conversation about whether Silicon Valley is a meritocracy has helped to crystalize my thinking on the issue. (For backstory, see posts like this one by Eric Reis, the CNN documentary Black in America and responses such as this from Vivek Wadha.)

It doesn’t matter whether there is bias in the Valley. Even just the threat of bias is enough to cause women to leave the field, to avoid putting themselves out there at conferences and in the media, and to perform below their actual capabilities. This is a well-documented social phenomenon called Stereotype Threat.

So how can women succeed? Be confident. Believe that you (women) are up to the challenge that a possibly biased environment would present. Then go forward and Run The World (girls). Here’s my talk and the related audio:

If you have a chance to attend a Designer Fund event, do it! The community is smart, engaged and passionate. It was one of the most exciting events I’ve been to in the past few years.

Rachel started us out by covering key concepts for using sketching as a way to clearly communicate ideas and interactions.

Why do we sketch?

• To generate new ideas: A quick way to get a lot of ideas out into the world
• To figure out how an idea works: See context, interactions & variables
• To communicate ideas to other people: Present & talk about ideas that aren’t final yet

She also gave the group a Neuroscience Bonus: Using the paper as a thought-holding area: Our prefrontal cortex can only hold a certain number of ideas at the same time. When we use paper, we free up valuable brainpower for comparing, prioritizing & deciding. (If you’re a fellow neuroscience geek, you’ll love Your Brain At Work by David Rock.)

In fact, some of the info was so fabulous we wanted it as a handout…which we’re happy to share for your downloading pleasure (thanks, Rachel!)

{ Sketching for Lean UX – Handout }

As a final activity, she assigned a set of constraints and each of us used our newly-acquired skills to sketch out an interface. With only 10 minutes, it was rapid-fire sketching for sure. Then we stuck them all up on the wall for a review.

It was fascinating to see the different challenges that people addressed, and it was an eye-opener to pinpoint the simple touches that transform a sketch from a rough set of lines into a fully communicative sketch.

More about Rachel
Rachel Glaves is an interaction designer, UX practitioner and visual communicator based in Seattle, WA. Rachel has worked as a consultant to organizations big and small, early-stage and enterprise. She’s passionate about creating products that deliver great user experiences. And she’s one hell of a sketcher. You can follow her on twitter -> @glaves.

Wonder why service companies can’t get their s**t together? Dave Gray captures it nicely here:  Can’t get no satisfaction: Why service companies can’t keep their promises

You gotta see this amazing interactive visual of the evolution of western dance music.

Last week, LUXr NYC hosted Giff Constable for a talk on “What are MVP’s? Think Experiments.” Check it out.

Here’s a roundup of great quotations from A List Apart about “What I learned about the Web in 2011“.

Yeah, we can’t wait either: We Can’t Wait: Obama Administration Announces $2 Billion in Resources to Support Job-Creating Startups

Guaranteed to make you hungry: The Info Diet – a review.

This NYT article looked startlingly familiar: With a Leaner Model, Start-Ups Reach Further Afield. [Free Login required]

It’s a big question: Can Tech Startup Schools Teach #TheNextBigThing?

Stanford Online apparently thinks so. They’re hosting 2 online education classes in 2012: Technology Entrepreneurship with Chuck Eesley and The Lean Launchpad class with Steve Blank.

Can there be anything more fun than kittehs and error messages?

Have a great weekend.

Introduction to Lean Startup

(by Janice)

Jump into the Lean Startup ideas with this short and succinct summary of the key concepts.

MVP : What is it and why we (all) should Care

(by Kate)

This short presentation helps you get your mind around what a Minimum Viable Product is, why it’s worth doing, and some tips & tricks to get started.

“Today’s ideal social form is not the commune or the movement or even the individual creator as such; it’s the small business. Every artistic or moral aspiration — music, food, good works, what have you — is expressed in those terms.”
- William Deresiewicz

This is the kind of trajectory we’re seeing at LUXr: designers and developers looking to express their aspirations through a startup. Awesome. It’s gonna be an exciting road.

Read the whole article at: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/13/opinion/sunday/the-entrepreneurial-generation.html?_r=1