To Download The Invitation: Fill & Download for Free

This happened during the Non Covid period.There were 5 Spots for Programming for a Highly Reputed Global Organization. High Level Coding i mean.The Organization came to India - and invited applicants - over 400 applied for the Job. There were no restrictions in the applications. Anyone could apply. Students from different engineering colleges applied but also other students who had done computer courses also applied.My Job was to do legal background on the kids selected for the Job who would need Visas to Canada and Singapore.The Students were seated on desks - with their resumes in their hands when the interviewer came in. He was wearing a T Shirt and ear phones and looked like a Kid not older than 25 -30.He walked over to the main dais - He pressed some Laptop keys and the Screen got the picture of actress Penelope Cruz.He said embedded in his picture is a file. I want you to access my laptop, download this picture and remove the embedded fileHe then talked about sharing 50% of the keys or something to the encrypted password and that they had 2 hours to do so.And he walked off !!!!!!!!He took a look at the Pile of Resumes and collected them and as he went out - he dunked them in the thrashcan (Seriously ! I thought he was a nutcase. He was having a can of cola in one hand, earphones and wearing T Shirt and jeans and Nike type shoes)There were students from IIT Delhi, IIT Mumbai, IIT Chennai, IIT Kanpur, NIT Suratkal and BITS Pilani among the group and they were all stuttering and stumbling here and there.They could even access Google though they were told - their desktops would be monitored and all their activity would be watched or logged.Two Hours Finished!!!!!The Guy comes back and the Students go off to lunch.ONLY 4 Students managed to get into his Laptop. 4 out of 400. And guess which colleges they were from:Andal Engineering College, TamilNaduAn Obscure Engineering College in Vishakapatnam whose name i forgotDelhi Engineering CollegeAn Engineering College in West BengalNo IIT or NIT or BITSAnd only the Delhi Engineering College Kid had managed to isolate the Embedded Image.All Interviews were cancelled. The Delhi Engineering College Kid got the job at a fat salary. Even though the kid had 2 arrears - the Boss was kind enough to allow the kid 6 months to finish it off - asking him to start from tomorrow as all he needed was a Laptop until he reached Singapore.These interviews had been conducted in 5 CountriesAustralia - 19% students had managed to download the image and 7% had managed to remove the embedded fileChina - 21% students had managed to download the image and 11% had manged to remove the embedded fileSingapore- 9% students had managed to download the image and 3% had managed to remove the embedded fileJapan - 24% students had managed to download the image and 15% had managed to remove the embedded fileIndia - 1% students had managed to download the image and 0.25% had managed to remove the embedded fileThe T Shirt wearing guy was worth almost 30 or so million dollars and he was the big shot in his huge company.The guy told me a few things that shocked me to the core about Indian EducationHe told me Indian System created good programmers who could do what they were told to do - but they could not create stuff or go ahead with programming.He told me that demand for Indian MBAs were high but demands for Indian Techs were next to zero. Most of them failed to deliver at the highest level especially post 2000 graduates.The Stats revealed how he could fill only 1 out of 5 spots in India. It was seriously shameful.Finally after it was all over and young Sethia (His surname was Sethia) was all set to go to Singapore for his well paid job - I got an sms from the HR Girl about how Bangladesh (the last stop on the tour)6% managed to download the image and 2.7% managed to remove the embedded file.She sent a gleeful message which i want to post in this but i dont know how to take a screenshot from my phone and i dont know how to black out her number (Any steps will be welcome).Seriously what are we doing that is so wrong?

Note! An expanded version of this post is now available as a downloadable pdf which you can get here: http://worklogistics.com/category/design-patterns/virality/How this Post is OrganizedThe following is part of a larger product virality study I’m working on. There are three parts here:Virality K-Factor equationVirality design pattern libraryReference sharing designProduct Virality: Basic structure and the K-Factor EquationIn the diagram below, I’ve broken product virality into two parts: Sharing and Engagement and I’ve organized and expanded the standard virality equation around these phases to get better insight into the factors that go into it.These factors are color coded and matched to specific design patterns, which follow below. The attempt here is to directly link the virality equation with specific UX design solutions so that the two perspectives can inform each other.UX Design Pattern LibraryThe UX design patterns below are organized by phase. Each pattern is color coded to show which part of the virality K-factor equation they impact (see above for key). There are five basic phases:The act of Sharing/InvitingThe InvitationSign upFirst Run EngagementDeepening EngagementThis is a general approach and the order and importance of each phase will vary for different products, for example, some products may not have a sign up at all.The Sharing/Invite AskThe context for this phase is that a user is in the process of making a decision to share content or to invite another user. The main challenges for this step are: a) getting a user to decide to share b) making it all the way through the invite process and c) increasing the number and frequency of invites.Each example below illustrates one or more design patterns that address these challenges. This examples come from the following sites:Quora (product) http://www.quora.com/LinkedIn (product) http://www.linkedin.com/Fast Company http://www.fastcompany.com/StumbleUpon http://www.stumbleupon.com/home/SlideShare http://www.slideshare.net/Geni http://www.geni.com/homeEngagement: The InvitationThe context for this phase is that our potential new user has just received an invite and they are in the process of deciding what to do with the invite.The design goal is to get users to a) read, view or otherwise engage with the invite and b) accept the invite and follow link back to site (or take the next step in engagement whatever that may be). Examples come from:Quora (product) http://www.quora.com/Flickr (product) http://www.flickr.com/UX Show and Tell http://uxshowandtell.com/SlideShare http://www.slideshare.net/Engagement: Sign UpNote Sign up is a major hurdle for users, instead of signing up first, often a better design is to have users use the service prior to signing up. This is called Lazy Registration and it’s used to deepen engagement and user commitment before going through sign up.The context here is the user is in the process of deciding if they want to sign up for the service and explore it further. Users come to this stage in several frames of mind, Joshua Porter posits there are three types: 1. Decided users (design need: fast sign up) 2. Unsure (design need: re-iterate value) and 3. Skeptical (design need: additional description, social proof, etc)The challenges of this phase are: a) Moving undecideds into decided and b) getting users all the way through a sign-in process. The examples below come from:Geni http://www.geni.com/homeAbout.me (company) https://about.me/Square (company) https://squareup.com/Path (social network) http://www.path.com/DailyKos.com http://www.dailykos.com/Quora (product) http://www.quora.com/LinkedIn (product) http://www.linkedin.com/SlideShare http://www.slideshare.net/Engagement: First RunContext: user has just completed sign up and we need to help them get started using the site. Note When the Lazy Registration pattern is used, First Run happens before users sign up.The First Run design challenge is to a) orient new users b) provide as much immediate value as possible c) help users discover useful new functionality. Examples come from:UX Show and Tell http://uxshowandtell.com/Flickr (product) http://www.flickr.com/More First Run Engagement articles:What was the step that Twitter added to its new user flow that caused a >20% increase in conversion?Engagement - Deepening EngagementThe context here is that the user is using the product.The design challenge is to get a) more frequent and deeper use of service. b) help users discover full feature set c) engage ongoing interest and d) support users in using and learning product.Increased retention and increased sharing are often outcomes of deepening engagement. Examples come from:The New York Times nytimes.com/Geni http://www.geni.com/homeFoursquare http://foursquare.com/Reference Sharing DesignBelow is a generalized Sharing Use Flow diagram, this follows the following steps:The AskSelect share methodChoose who to share withThe InvitationInvite Landing Page - First Run (not shown)Sign Up (not shown)

Closing the viral loop, that old chestnut is hard to crack. From my experience, I've come to believe that closing the viral loop with a mobile app can be done by creating an activity-based incentive for the user to download the app, and to make the registration process as frictionless as possible.Getting someone to download the app is easier if you frame the download in the context of completing or joining in an activity that a friend has initiated with them. Zynga does this well with their games where you can invite anyone from your Facebook friends list to start playing a game with you. Immediately the user has a real reason to go get the app, to join the game their friend has invited them to. Based off the apps we've built at my company, and the analytics we've analyzed, we've found this type of activity-centric marketing is much more effective than posting "Your friend Jack thinks you should try X, a fun new way to explore the world of Bonobo monkeys".Designing the incentive is the first part. To increase the likelihood of the user actually closing the loop, you need to make the signup/registration process for someone responding to this type of invite as simple as possible. You already have some context of the user who has been invited (their facebook id, their name, maybe an email) . When the user opens the app for the first time, let them login with their Facebook and/or Twitter creds, and then use the state you have stored for them in your database to enable you to either fill-in, or skip over registration steps so they can jump right into the activity they downloaded the app to complete.