Smilebox Blog

posted by Paul Ingalls, Smilebox Director of Technology

Howdy.  If you have been following along previous installments of Inside the Box, welcome back.  If this is all new, then I’m glad you stopped by.  My name is Paul, I’m Director of Technology here at Smilebox, and this week I am going to discuss our “Creative and Technical Excellence” value.  As mentioned in previous editions of Inside the Box, we pay a lot of attention to our company values: “Consumer Centric,” “Creative and Technical Excellence,” “Family Oriented,” “Accountable,” “Transparent,” “Collaborative” and “Fun.”  I’ve already discussed our “Consumer Centric” value in Part II, be sure to check it out.  “Creative and Technical Excellence” supports another important section of our culture – a focus on creating a world class service.

We knew when we started Smilebox that we needed to create something different.  We wanted to build a software application that would not only amuse its user, but would amaze those with whom they shared their creations.  Hence our original tagline – “Amuse yourself, Amaze others!”  Our focus on creative and technical excellence helps us reach and maintain this goal.  This value is fundamental to our company, as an excellent service is our bread and butter. 

There are at least two key elements that make an application fun: it must be easy to use; and it needs to just work.  This is where technical excellence comes in.  We have built an agile process around practices that focus on technical excellence.  For example, we work in pairs to ensure that every line of code we write has had two heads thinking about it.  We are responsible for writing automated tests for our own code.  This ensures that the code has been used at least twice.  When we identify a better way to achieve a goal, we are obligated to use the better way through a practice called refactoring.  This is just a sampling, but you can already see how we have leveraged redundancy to improve quality.  Suffice to say that we take our craft seriously.  The goal is to ensure an easy to use product that just works.

Amazing others relies heavily on combining your amazing personal media with amazing designs.  This is where creative excellence comes in.  We work very hard to ensure that the designs we produce are creative and unique.  Through our internal efforts, as well as collaboration with amazing partners like Hallmark, Madison Park Greetings, Scrapgirls, K & Company, Pinkerton Design and Sarah Beise we have a large selection of design concepts to build upon.  We then leverage our technical excellence and interactive design expertise to help take those concepts and bring them to life.  The goal is to ensure that we have the right design to fit your special moment, and that it is something you are proud to share with your friends and family.

We combine technical with creative for a reason.  Our cross-team collaboration is vital to the health of our service.  We have found that some of our most impressive ideas and solutions have come from people outside the team facing a particular challenge.  Therefore, we work hard to combine technical and the creative into one team.

As you can see, a focus on “Creative and Technical Excellence” is key for Smilebox.  To build an application that makes creating a Smilebox a rewarding experience requires deep technical and creative skill.  Instilling a culture of excellence ensures that we keep our eyes on the prize – amusing ourselves and amazing others.

Can you think of ways to improve the Smilebox experience?  Leave me a comment below.  And for those waiting for a Mac version, let’s just say the end is in sight…J  Until next time, happy Smileboxing!