Hollidazed

I had a great time at this years dConstruct conference combined with a lovely few sun soaked days with the family in Brighton.

Differing expectations

dConstruct is special because it’s not like other web conferences. The future design challenges we face won’t be straight forward so why should our conference talks and the ideas they explore?
I enjoyed just about all the talks, but not everyone agreed. There’s since been some good discussion on conferences and expectations.

Lots to think about

The day started with Don Norman. Don told us to think ‘systems’ not products. Create things that integrate fully. Design for memories and not just design experiences because memories last much longer.

Kelly Goto talked about the need to think about the spaces between the experiences we’re creating. Creating seamless connections that work with our lifestyles. Kelly told us that the way to do this is to understand how people actually live their lives rather than just knowing what they think.

Bryan Rieger & Stephanie Rieger’s tag team talk was based around the challenge of “Letting Go“. They talked about designing for a unique set of challenges combining current events and technology, arguing that users won’t wait for us to create the experiences they want.

Craig Mod closed the morning with a talk titled “the Shape of the Future Book?”. I’ve got to be honest, I struggled with this one. It was close to lunch, if anything I needed more coffee. Credit to Craig for trying something different in the form of the monologue he used for the main section of his talk.

In the afternoon session Frank Chimero followed up Don’s earlier message and talked about the importance of both the experience and the memory in the creation of delightful design. Frank went on to talk about archiving and making our collections of digital artifacts more useful. Creating and preserving the unique identity of digital objects, and the need to curate.

Dan Hon talk “Storytelling, Play, and Code” continued on the curation theme by talking about the lost association of physical artifacts with digital objects and highlighted the problem of digital artifacts all looking the same.

Kars Alfrink’s talk was influenced by about the recent UK riots. I enjoyed his talk but didn’t really take any notes.

Matt Sheeret talked about bringing the digital world into our pockets as physical artifacts. Doctor Who references aside he was essentially talking about the need for more human, digital objects that matter to us as much as their physical predecessors. These need to have the unique, sometimes random qualities and quirks of the physical objects we cherish and keep.

Kevin Slavin closed the day and talked about augmented reality by making the point that, actually, reality is plenty. Full of beauty and wonder if we look close enough. Augmented reality works if devices guide and connect our experiences, but they need to let our eyes do what they’re meant to do – experience the world around us and not just the world in front of us.

Not a bad message to end on.

I recently had the luxury of a day away from the office attending (my third) dConstruct conference.

dConstruct has always been more ‘conceptual’ than a ‘technology’ driven conference which is a great as it’s always guaranteed  to stimulate good conversation.  This years theme ‘Design and Creativity’ didn’t disappoint and focused largely towards creative thinking and innovation in the digital design industry.  You can now listen to podcasts of all the sessions on the dConstruct website … the following thoughts are my own reflections/notes from the conference.

Marty Neumeier started the day by telling the audience about design thinking – “if you want to innovate, you have to design”. He made it clear design is much more than aesthetics, instead saying it’s simply anything that changes an existing situation to something better.

• Customer demand now equates to “free/perfect/now” (used to be any two from (cheap/good/fast”)
• We live in a world with a wealth of information and a poverty of attention
• To differentiate from others, your brand is the key
• Make things that are both ‘good and different’ (‘really different’). Being good OR different is no longer enough
• ‘Good and different’ is an uncomfortable mix as customers don’t actually know what they want
• There is an reliance on using analytics over intuition
• ‘Making’ is the process of dealing with the gap between vision and reality.

Brendan Dawes then followed on with a talk about creative process. He emphasised that we mustn’t underestimate ‘playfulness’

• Inspiration (Boil) /Consideration (Simmer) /Reduce
• Risk needs a partner
• Better output if you have a better input
• It’s finished when there is nothing left to remove
• Justify everything (reduce)
• Not everything needs a purpose to belong.

David McCandless spoke about the visualising data and patterns beautifully. He emphaised how this could help people solve problems more effectively.

• Google Insights http://www.google.com/insights/

In the final session of the morning Samantha Warren moved the focus onto typography comparing them to shoes… ie. you need the right choice for the right situation.

After lunch John Gruber spoke on “The Auteur Theory of Design” taking about the colloborative approach used in the art of film making. His reference to “taste” caused some controversy on Twitter with arguments around how can you actually define (good) taste?

• Writing is single handed/making requires collaboration
• Why some projects never rise to the level of the talent of those involved?
• The requirement for an arbiter of taste (auteur or director in charge) so collaborative projects can excel
• Raising the bar higher and people do their best work.

Hannah Donovan talked about (and demonstrated) musical improvisation and how this can be used within a design process

• Learning music like a language (improvisation is easiest in a mother tongue)
• The best ideas happen in conversation
• Mutual respect in collaboration (inc. trading parts)
• It pays to be picky who you work with
• Spontaneous processes (eg. paper prototyping in a design process).

James Bridle‘s “The value of ruins” focused on the importance of digital history and archiving

• We’re defined by objects, places and memories
• Documentation is important in maintaining digital history.

Tom Coates spoke about networks being “transformative infrastructures” and a vision for the future with everything becoming a connectivity of data.

• The web now is about efficiently bringing together services
• Physical objects are also services
• Digification is the worlds future
• We are the road builders.

Merlin Mann finished the day talking without slides and by explaining the difference between nerds and geeks (defining the the dConstruct audience as nerds).

• Not everyone cares (that’s what sets people apart in creative work)
• Be aware of what’s changing in industry
• The key to progressing is to keep learning.

Last friday I attended d.construct 2006 at the Corn Exchange in Brighton. It was a really good conference and answered many of my questions about API‘s as well as addressing the usefulness of the various services to designers/developers working in real business situations.

Without wanting to review everything that happened in fine detail my highlights of the day were the Jeremy Keith and Jeff Veen sessions:

Jeremy Keith’s – The Joy of API – simply looked at having fun with web services and what is actually possible. This was the most inspiring talk of the day and he also taked about Microformats with great enthusiasm – something I’ve already begun to implement on the sites I work on. I agree that it’s a real benefit to open your data up as much as possible using Microformats. Unfortunately I didn’t make the Microformats picnic though as the call of the Gormet Burger Kitchen was too hard to resist.

My other highlight of the day, Jeff Veen’s session about designing the complete user experience, really helped put everything else into context and looked at making sure that we still focus on user-centred design when working with API’s and creating mashups. This session is especially worth downloading when the the podcasts of the event are released.

Overall the event was really well run and everyone I spoke to was really friendly – Brighton was even really lovely and sunny, something that never happened during the entire month of August. If your a web designer or developer and havn’t been to d.construct yet I’d definetly recomend going next year simply because of value for money for the quality of presentation.

Finally there’s also a really good podcast largely focused this week on reviewing d.construct and interviewing some of the key speakers (especially covering Microformats) by Paul Boag on the excellent Boagworld podcast.

I’m pleased to say I’m the proud owner of one dconstruct 2006 ticket. I believe they sold out in 36 hours so it will be great be there… especially as it’s in Brighton!