We are all big fans of user-centered design, and all of us have tried our hand at CSS or database design. But somewhere along the way, the third leg of the tripod got lost: business.
It’s critical to know what your business model is. Without this information, you have no idea which actions of the user are valuable and which are not. And without knowing that, you are as likely to spend hours working on an aspect of the website that delivers no value as one that does. This is not usually a fatal mistake in a large corporation, but in a start-up it can literally kill the company.
In this talk, Christina Wodtke, founder of Boxes and Arrows and product developer at LinkedIn, walks through the most common business models, the desired user behavior that supports them, and how those business models affect the architecture of the website including features and functionality.