It started with a row of blue links.

We just opened a new wing of the site: Mention Labs, the place where we build apps, interfaces, tools, and experiments. This is the story of the instinct behind it, and it starts more than twenty years ago with an iframe and a row of blue links.

Learning UX before it had a name

I began designing for the web in 2004 while living abroad and building a website for a jobs and education center I had created. At the time, I was learning HTML, hosting, code, branding and communications—mostly because there was nobody else around to do it.

I was also learning user experience before I knew to call it user experience.

Every day, I had to track down different email accounts, website builders, hosting tools and services. I kept thinking: there has to be a better way.

The hack

So I took Google’s homepage, placed it inside an iframe and added a row of blue links across the top. Suddenly, everything I used was one click away.

Yes, bookmarks probably existed. That was not the point. I wanted the internet organized around the way I actually worked.

A few years later, Google began putting its own product links front and center and eventually introduced the familiar grid menu it still uses today.

Did I invent it? Of course not. Did I have the right instinct? Absolutely.

That instinct—spot the friction, imagine something better, build a version and see what happens—is what Mention Labs is all about.

Building changes how you think

It is easy to look at an app and think, that seems simple. Then you build one.

You discover permissions, privacy, accessibility, APIs, onboarding, hosting, user behavior, politics, app-store requirements, edge cases, distribution and about forty-seven other things hiding behind the screen.

The first project teaches you how difficult it is. The next few teach you how to do it better.

It is like making baseball bats on a lathe. At first, you are trying not to ruin the wood. After making five or ten, you begin to understand the grain, weight, tools, styles, limitations, buyers, distributors and all the relationships required to turn an object into a product.

That experience compounds. Our first lab project to leave the building was MKE.bike, a free web app for Milwaukee riders—we wrote about why we built it. It taught us maps, permissions, public data, local politics, and how fast people find something useful. And much of what we learn in the lab goes directly into the websites, campaigns, apps and digital products we create for clients.

Ideas are allowed to be ambitious here

Not every idea has to arrive with a perfect business plan. Some projects begin with a real customer problem. Some come from coaching baseball, riding a bike, raising kids, attending events or trying to make technology less irritating.

Some begin with a sentence like:

• Why is this so hard?
• Why does this app not exist?
• Could this be more fun?
• Could this be faster?
• Could this work for everyone?
• What would happen if we tried it?

Then we start building. A few of these ideas may escape the lab with a press release, a launch campaign and a life of their own. Others may become client tools, prototypes, community projects, licensing opportunities or the beginning of something much larger.

The future is open. Success is not built overnight. It is built by following curiosity, doing the work, making things, learning from them and continuing long enough for the lessons to compound.