Stutter Social is a new organization I recently co-founded with my friend, David Resnick. It connects our fellow stutterers all over the world through group video chats. Using Google Plus.

Why would we want to do that? Because it’s often difficult to meet other people who stutter in your geographical area so you end up facing your unique social challenge alone. It is said that only 1% of the population stutters. We are faced with many prejudices including bullying at school, losing job interviews and worse of all, stuttering is misunderstood as a character flaw. Science continues to prove that it is neurologically based.

So meeting other stutterers online is the next best thing! In fact, that is our goal with Stutter Social. To spread the message of the National Stuttering Association – if you stutter, you’re not alone.

Why Google+?

We decided to use Google+ Hangouts because it’s free to use, pretty easy to use and a lot more stable than Skype. When David, myself or our other Hangout hosts starts a chat, we post the link to the Stutter Social Google+ page. As well as the Stutter Social Facebook page, Twitter account and right on the Stutter Social website homepage via a great big green button. You can’t miss it.

We host three to four Hangouts per week right now and momentum is growing to include more in timezones around the world (stuttering is taboo in some geographical locations while others do not even have speech therapists!). On average we get about five to nine people hanging out at one time and our Hangouts last about 2 hours. Sometimes longer! Topics of conversation include stuttering, of course, our experiences and off topic stuff like, well, whatever happens to be on our minds at the time!

Hangout Hopping and going viral

Thanks to a brilliant Chrome plugin named Hangout Canopy, which allows users to go “Hangout Hopping”, Stutter Social even played a role in spreading awareness about stuttering. In fact, one night, David suddenly found himself educating a large number of Hangout Hoppers. The next day – blog posts about our unique use of Google+ Hangouts started popping up in G+ Streams. Such as this article written by Peter McDermott. And David being interviewed on Sarah Hill’s KOMU News program.

New website

Initially, we used Google Sites to host the Stutter Social website. But as momentum and media attention grew, we knew it was time for a new home for our organization. As creative director, I designed the new Stutter Social website with a simple user interface consisting of only need-to-know information up front and center to bring users to our Hangouts as quickly as possible. Or to find future Hangouts via an embedded Google Calendar.

David and I really like using Google+ Hangouts for Stutter Social and now with the arrival of “Hangout with extras“, we have a few more features to engage participants.

David and I chatted about Stutter Social on a recent episode of my podcast, Stuttering is Cool. You can also listen to a few snippets of typical conversations in our Hangouts.

Stutterer or not, I hope to see you in a future Stutter Social Hangout. I’d also love to hear how you are using Google+ Hangouts in unique ways. Please share your story in the comment section below.

New comic over at my graphic blog: a good example of not quite the user experience both parties had hoped for. Download, print it and use it for your September calendar :)

I was a Harry Potter fanatic back in the day. Not so much a fan of the movies, but the amount of imagination in the books… how could I resist? So my interest was really perked up when I heard about Pottermore. Even the branding – note the use of the title’s font different from the movies and books. This is clearly showing that this site is after the books (and movie). It is not the same as the books (and movie). It is an entity on its own.

The author herself explains what to expect from the new website, opening in October:

I can’t wait to see what comes out of this experience and the lessons and ideas to be learned!

Click on the comic above to read more about the inspiration behind this comic.

Then I came across this beautiful idea, Under The City. It’s a documentary about Montreal’s lost rivers (long story short: rivers were dried up to make way for urban development). And of course, in this day and age, a film is complemented with a website. But my attention got perked when I saw that an accompanying iPhone app is currently in the making.

There used to be a river where I am now walking

The app will allow users to explore Montreal’s lost rivers via geo location and storytelling.

I think this is a fascinating way to continue the documentary long after the closing credits. With their smartphones, viewers will be able to experience the content as they go about their business in the city. And it’s a fun, interesting way to learn about an invisible history of your city.

*by ‘website’ I also mean mobile site, of course.

This is why traditional marketing tactics and social psychology are vital to Ux and influencing the user to make that purchase. I can also see how adding elements like social proof, triggers, the concept of scarcity and authority has made social media networks so successful (well, most of them!. You get my drift).

Below is Brian’s slides from his presentation.

I was inspired by the simple user interface of traditional radio. After all, my show is an audio podcast! With traditional radio, the user turns the dial (or presses the button these days) to the desired frequency and starts listening. But with podcasting, it’s a little more complex. You need software to subscribe, you have to find the RSS feed, enter the RSS feed, hook up your mp3 player, etc. Try explaining that to a non-technical person who is used to the simple interface of YouTube and Facebook videos.

Therefore, I placed the audio player right on the homepage along with the latest episode. And the makeover is designed around the latest episode. So the traditional radio metaphor is the user falls on my homepage and clicks the play button.

Subscription information is displayed on the right side. This is to serve two purposes. The first is to give seasoned podcast listeners a few convenient one-click solutions to subscribing with popular RSS readers (and to help spread the word about CastRoller, built by friends of mine in the podcasting community). The second is to introduce the idea of subscribing to users who may not be familiar with the option prefer email notification.

Of course, the audio player shows up on every episode’s page. Perfect for users to click the link in the email notice, automatically launch browser, then user clicks play. And for those who stumbled upon any page in my site from a search engine result or shared link, etc.

The big blue area without the patterned background highlights the mission of my show: audience participation via submitted audio. I keep that displayed throughout the site as a reminder for users who browse around the site. It makes for a big footer, but this is important for the spirit of the show.

Then finally, I kept my “101 Stuttering Links” feature at the bottom. I don’t want it to play a major role on my site since it’s more of a courtesy feature.

I removed the large comic area that played a major role in the second design. The comics now show up on my podcast’s companion site, ti-ger.org. This way, I keep stutteringiscool.com interface focused on the podcast.

You may have noticed that I use the same fonts on the two companion sites and this danielerossi.ca. The reason being that I like the idea of consistent branding across these three sites that were made by me. Presented by me. Produced by me.

Rogers TabLife TO video: Tablets and Autism Case Study from Rogers Buzz on Vimeo.

Check it out at comicsanscriminal.com.