3 - David Earle

My second blog post praised Stumbleupon.com for its transparent and user friendly interface. While giving users an intuitive and seamless experience is quasi necessary, it is by no means equivalent to a successful design. Simon Sinek, in his TED talk on leadership and inspiration, posits that the tipping factor for 'successful' design or company, is that it inspire action and loyalty through emotion/belief rather than through it's details and interface or features. This idea is also raised in the book's second chapter focusing on purpose, after the first chapter gave us the 'checklist' -or in Sinek's words 'What'- of good design.
The golden circle theory, presented in the talk, is very relevant to the design of a website like stumbleupon.com, because it's near impossible to make such a seemingly random product without a purpose in mind. Where would you start? On the surface, StumbleUpon's purpose is entertainment -- to help users "easily discover new and interesting stuff on the Web [...] that you wouldn’t have found on your own" (About Us page of site). Therefore this website's 'how' is to filter websites (it's 'what') based on user preferences, but it's 'why' is much more vague. This is necessary to appeal to a wider audience of users/believers. In the case of StumbleUpon the widely held belief by which it is backed is something like:
 - The web should be catered to our individual preferences.
 - To provide the entirety of the web in one place (one stop shopping).
 - To empower and spotlight interesting articles and websites based on interests rather than queries.

http://www.stumbleupon.com/su/2NWegz/:1agfgsFHL:l7lKOdwf/www.buzzfeed.com/cyanideandhappiness/rude/