Hollidazed

These are my notes of key points from the session at Friday’s dConstruct conference…

Google – The advertisers are the users and you are the product. They know about us and that’s valuable information. Really good at technology but don’t understand people.
You can be thrown off Google+ for using your “real” name… ie. the name that you’re known by (not your birth certificate/driving license/*credit card*)

Gestures – On tablets there is no feedback, undo, discoverability… it’s a whole new ball game.
Standards like moving the window and not the text.
Apple got uncomfortable and threw out existing standards in OS Lion.

Forget the old model. New world.

iPod… Apple made it legal to get music/made it easy to find … they integrated it into our lives.
It wasn’t successful because it was a beautiful product.
Amazon has done the same thing with the Kindle. An effortless system.

Think ‘systems’ not product design.

Stop thinking of a single application or website. Look at Twitter. Twitter (the company) just provides the opportunity – the users develop the content.

Systems is where the future is.

Emotion and experience. It’s about total experience – not any one component.

We design experience. What matters is the memory. How long does an experience last? “Design for the memory… memories last for years”.
At Disney, photographs/mementos are all parts of remembering the experience.

Gestures – When you scroll to the bottom of a page Safari bounces bit Firefoc and Chrome doesn’t. What function does this serve? It’s neat and elegant… it matters… it’s just more pleasurable. Mozilla/Google don’t get it.

Stories – The greatest pleasure and success comes after a negative. In films, books and games things unfold in time… over time.
Consider and plan for emotions that go up and down.

Memories are more important than reality… It’s like augmented reality… Memories can be better or worse than the reality.

3D printing – Makes it even less of a gap between physical devices and digital interfaces.

Co-creation – The most powerful tools come about when we empower others ie. Blogging.

Opportunities – Sensors that will recognise people and objects.

We’re never disconnected.

The changes are interesting. Computing started with command line which you had to learn/memorise. We then moved to graphical interfaces which were easy to learn… We’ve now moved to gestures and these have to be learn’t/memorised – we’ve gone full circle.
The browser is also like a command line interface.

The most popular games are timewasters.

There’s an opportunity for cell phones to be more exciting. When cars got too complicated they simplified… it needed to be physical/knobs… The physical emdobiment is really important and that’s coming back. Touch and feel + shake etc.

Moving from screens to stories and experiences to memories

The intention economy. Not your actions or experience now but what you intend to do in the future.

Mobile is a tricky and talked about subject at the moment. I sat in on a good round table discussion and presentation led by Amy Clarke at the recent AMA conference.

I’ve shared the mobile presentation that we’ve been using at Tincan to talk to various organisations about the mobile web. As the title suggest it’s become too big a subject to ignore any longer.

We’re trying to get people consider “mobile” more strategically…  it’s not something you add onto your website… it is your website. Ultimately this is about your content and the engagement of real users. To get started you need a content strategy.

The presentation covers responsive design and the re-design work we did work recently for the ICA. This is ultimately a collection of other great ideas and I would heartily recommend that you go and read both Ethans Marcotte’s book Responsive Web Design and Erin Kissane‘s book The Elements of Content Strategy to get started.

Back in June I attended the Inspire Conference in London. I was lucky enough to be given a free ticket after registering to the event website so my thanks to launch48 for the chance to attend.

The conference was introduced by Adil and Ian in the conference programme:

“Brilliant thought leadership leads to amazing innovation which in turn leads to strong trends. We wanted to put these important elements …in front of an audience that will make maximum use of it – you!”

Some of my favourite #InspireLDN tweets help bring together the main themes from the event:

@arhomberg
Alex Ljung “by making things simple you dramatically lower the barrier to engagement and participation” #InspireLDN

@Emmabarnett
People are sharing 28 million links a day on @twitter via @Nik

@deborahmackay
There’s a huge amount of context that comes with each tweet. @Nik showing Twitter data map.

@arhomberg
Twitter anticipates ahead of the Dow Jones with 83% correlation says @nik hedge funds already building social trading algorithm.

@ielshareef
Data needs to be semantic .. and computable. – Conrad Wolfram

@haiyan
With information overload on web, value of information is reducing… (the) value is in processing that information. Like satnavs over maps.

@relishresearch
Transparency and accountability a big trend to look for and adopt. Charity and corporations need to be aware of this.

@KOREuk
“Marketing is the tax you pay for making lame products” – David Rowan of @WiredUK

@christophmccann
The product will always win. the days of selling a bad product with marketing dollars are over

@deborahmackay
Shakil says all sectors will ‘open up’ eventually eg music industry via Spotify

@deborahmackay
Seb Bishop (RED) – The best way sell a product is through personal recommendation.

@KOREuk
“Is privacy a 20th Century concept that the digital generation aren’t worried about giving up?” – David Rowan @WiredUK

@arhomberg
Will the Internet grow beyond shopping, entertainment and games? #InspireLDN

@haiyan
Apps for good: UK school course to teach young ppl to make mobile apps appsforgood.org

@deborahmackay
We ask young people to come up with real life problems and then ask them to design effective tools – Iris Lapinski

@abarrera
“the mess we’ve made with email shows how bad we are at adapting to the new forms of communication”

@arhomberg
Engineering prepares you very poorly for understanding the behaviour of large groups of people Rory Sutherland

@JonnieJensen
What the recent injunction stories show is that technology moves faster than the law – Rory Sutherland

@CBM
“The branded stuff you buy is less likely to be crap than the unbranded stuff you buy.” – Ogilvy’s Rory Sutherland

@simoncast
“Advertising is a form wasteful demonstration to build reputation” Rory Sutherland

@simoncast
“persuasion is poor way of changing people’s behaviour but seduction works” Rory Sutherland

@haiyan
Behavioural change usually precedes attitudinal change. Make it easy for someone to do something and their attitude will follow.

@simoncast
“initial experience colours all following experience. A hotel checkin experience determines the patron’s opinion” – Rory Sutherland

@PaulLomax
Spotify pricing £9.99 for unlimited is a mistake. No frame of reference for value. Needs artificial constraints. Rory Sutherland

@codeish
“The second you make something universally available, it has no value at all” – Rory Sutherland

@PaulLomax
Rory Sutherland: Part of the point of advertising is a visible display of waste. Signalling investment. Like peacocking.

@haiyan
Rory Sutherland: Artificial constraints & comparisons are two big influencers on perceived value of your product by consumers

@raitens
“Our attitudes are products of our actions” – Rory Sutherland

@haiyan
“Angry Birds is not our first game, we made 51 games before that.” – talk about learning from failure

@arhomberg
All but 2 countries in South America have deployed Ushahidi for election monitoring. Less hype, but more impact than twitter?

@JonnieJensen
Crowdmap.com allows anyone to set up a Ushahidi map. What could you use one for in your community?

@brijmalkan
Pothole theory: you only care about the potholes on your street

@Jas
@tariqkrim makes a great point at #inspireLDN “Do any of us remember what happened on Twitter last week, or the week before?”

@matt_thinkux
I agree with tariq krim. Europeans can carry the weight of history on their shoulders. Old = better. Got to break through…

@BIMA
Tariq Krim – ‘The only purpose of technology is to make the world a better place’

@KOREuk
“In the nxt 10yrs, someone will build a competitor to Apple but with the values of the internet” – @TariqKrim

@StrategyEye
“Our first 3 startups before Bebo were failures” – Co-founder, Michael Birch

@tonytlwu
Frugal innovation, value seeking consumers, and global impact: 3 key elements of innovation in India

@KOREuk
“Almost all creativity involves purposeful play” – Abraham Maslow via @TomChatfield

@deborahmackay
Playing with wii and kinect helps us prepare and develop skills and understanding for future technologies – Tom Chatfield

@Dan_Martin
@ajbreuer – “Apple’s scrolling is based on wrong assumption that reading scrolls is always done vertically”

@deborahmackay
In short: thin multiple columns win over a wide single column when it comes to readability – Alex Breuer

@whatterz
The Times newspaper is working on a responsive design to have a consistent column-based reading experience across devices

@arhomberg
@azaaza The secret to achieve behavioural change is to create feedback loops (engineering term for gamification)

@arhomberg
According to @azaaza if Amazon reduces page load time by 100 ms then sales go up by 1%

@deborahmackay
Feedback is needed to change people’s behaviour – Aza Raskin.

@mbohanes
@azaaza – ability to delay gratification as key predictor of later success in life

@ielshareef
@azaaza’s answer to my question about Design Thinking: it’s stepping back and identifying the “right” problem

@arhomberg
Lean methodology is science repackaged as in “formulate a hypothesis and then test it” says @azaaza

@Dan_Martin
“Never underestimate the power of a small group of people to change the world. It’s the only thing that ever has” – Margaret Mead

@matt_thinkux
“If a ux designer had made zelda it would be one big button that said save the princess” – @andybudd – we laughed at the back…

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.

Well Christmas has long since passed and so has the opportunity for a proper yearly review of 2006 (well, it is nearly February after all!).

The start of the year has been pretty busy so far and in a way it’s felt like I’ve still been finishing off 2006 with the recent official launch of a new site I’ve been working on since well before Christmas.

2006 was definitely the year of the web design/developers book for me in which I read all of the following:

• DOM Scripting – Jeremy keith
• Bulletproof Web Design – Dan Cederholm
• CSS Mastery – Andy Budd
• HTML Mastery – Paul Haine (just finished this, so it just sneaks in!)
• Head Rush Ajax – Brett McLaughlin
• Designing with Web Standards (Second Edition) – Jeffrey Zeldman

These books have really helped me in my understanding of building websites the right way using web standards with accessibility in mind and I feel like I’ve been on a massive learning curve up until now.

After spending so much time last year learning about the technical side of my job I think if I was going to have one resolution for 2007 it would be to actually focus on being a better designer this year, concentrating on really developing and applying graphic design principles into my work.

I now really want to focus on producing some great designs where web standards and good practice are embedded in my work while I also really want to make time to re-design this site.

For anyone else thinking they want to develop their graphic design skills I can definitely recommend the one book I will no doubt be reading this year, the upcoming Five Simple Steps: Designing for the web by Mark Boulton.