Category: SXSW ’08

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SXSW '08 Tuesday

Life After the iPhone

Tuesday, March 11th 10:00 am – 11:00 am

Kate Ryan Sr Content Strategist, Ten Digital
Kyle Outlaw Sr Information Architect, Avenue A | Razorfish
Scott Jenson Google
Karen Kaushansky Sr UX Engineer, Tellme
Loic Maestracci Dir of Mktg, Groove Mobile

iPhone Fun Facts:
-200 patent filings
-$150 million on development
-1 year of work to get ATT deal
-ATT gets 5 year exclusive
-Apple built human head models to test the phone
-SDK will allow VOIP via wifi

Voice in data out easier to say something to get a restaurant vs. typing in a restaurant type or food.
What is comfortable and safe for people using a device while driving?

Google.com must owrk in every small browser on all phones – iPhone browser on all phone – iPhone browser changes all the rules. It can handle everything vs. most mobile browsers.

iPhone is a very big change in how we think of mobile phones.
Music delivery on a phone: UK is looking for web based music
US looking for a client to download an play.

iPhone leads to disruptive mobile industry in both UI and apps.
User experience changes – simple wireframes are gone and companies have to be more creative with the interface.

smartbox.com – phone barcode
Newsbreaker.com – share and report names
Food Ninja – iphone food and restaurant finder

What do you love/hate about the iPhone?
L: many want to interact – works well! HTC doesn’t work as well with the interface.
H: doesn’t do simple phone tasks well (calls, sms, send video)

L: audacity of design – no menu system or scrollbars is amazing! Unlimited data required, simple easy to play around with phone very simple to use.
H: “Web in your pocket” is still hard

L: Visual voice mail (not painful to listen to message 7 of 12)
H: hard o make phone calls (driving)

L: Mobile user experience is great – shutters the myth that phones need to be complicated
H: hardware/software unseperable – open platforms/access better

Design of the iPhone
enable desktop in mobile
Who else is taking design seriously?
Sony Erikson is trying to push things a bit – media UI similar to PSP

Screens don’t take advantage of voice and voice doesn’t take advantage of screens

iPhone stripped things down to core features – many phones have more features than needed – or the features they have aren’t done well.

Other phones to look at:
Sidekick – nice keyboard, but a bit too big – now that MS has them things could change
PSPSlim – use Skype on it

Open Access:
Google android and iPhone SDK gives users the ability to access and develop for the platform. Currently carries control the channel Current phones are a consumer of information. At some point they need to be a producer of information.

Wish Killer Apps
Luggage search application (know if/when it is on the wrong plane)
Shell to get information from – cloud based on where you are (car, desk, living room, etc.)
Infinite battery life!

Continue the conversation at http://lifeafteriphone.ning.com

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SXSW '08

SXSW2008 notes – Targeting Your Web Site: Accessibility Litigation Update

Monday, 10 March 2008 - 5:00PM

Abstract:
Recent federal court rulings in National Federation of the Blind v. Target have dramatically expanded the scope and application of U.S. disability law to business web sites that used to fall outsides the law’s reach. This panel will explain address the legal changes arising from that case:

  • who’s now covered by the law
  • the potential consequences of ignoring the law and disabled users
  • what kind of compliance the law requires

This panel will also cover a number of simple, concrete tips you can take to make sure the business web site you develop can accommodate your users’ needs.

Anitra Pavka - anitrapavka.com
Michael Wasylik - Attorney, Ricardo & Wasylik PL.

Why worry about accessibility?
Standard arguments to begin with…
- Target case: 8 highly paid lawyers vs. good web designers - not even a contest.

Audience:
- Worldwide, those with disabilities is about 10% (650 million)
- world’s largest minority
US:
- 10 million visual impairments

Section 508 (Rehab Act of 1974) - for government and government services

Americans With Disabilities Act of 1990
- Title III applies to private business and requires “public accommodations”
- Although it does not apply to web sites explicitly, web sites are increasingly becoming public accommodations. However, ADA references a physical space.

In 2002, Southwest Airlines won a case vs. Access Now, Inc. ruling that the ADA did not apply to their web site.

Rendon v. Valleycrest Prod. Ltd.
Telephone access to the gameshow, Who Wants to be Millionaire was considered a place of acc and telephone service was a service

The Target case would not apply to Amazon or 37Signals since they have no brick and mortar stores.

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SXSW '08

SXSW2008 notes – Client-Side Code and Internationalization

Monday, 10 March 2008 - 3:30PM

Abstract:
This presentation will cover tips, techniques, best practices, and gotchas for designers working with XHTML, CSS, and JavaScript in multiple languages. Special attention will be given to right-to-left and bidirectional content. XHTML + CSS + JS + UTF8 + LTR + RTL = client-side i18n fun

Jon Wiley - User Experience Designer, Google

Google is localized into 117 languages.

Does internationalization = translation? No.

It is enabling your product for localisation. Adaptation of product’s cultural content (including language).

globalization: carries too much baggage to be precise in this context.

translaiton is not transliteration.

Localization is more than translation
- local content
- legal compliance
- marketing is culturally dependent
- keyboards
- currency formats
- date formats
- cultural appropriateness

This session will not focus on those - only markup.

Character encoding
- In the beginning, there was ASCII and it was limited to our character set.
- Unicode attempts to bring all language character set together.
- UTF-8 is what we want to use (vs. UTF-16 or UTF 32) because it is backwards compatible with ASCII. ASCII is a subset of UTF-8

Since there are thousands of Unicode characters then no font has all of them. Test everything.

Possible to present a mix of scripts at one time.

Another advantage of UTF-8 is that it is smaller than UTF-16 except for CJK (Chinese-Japanese-Korean) languages.

No need to use character escapes since special characters are just in UTF except…
reserved chars: > < &
hard to see characters  

Telling the browser what to do in the content-type, meta or css. Priority is given to the meta.

Specifying a languages
You really want to serve in the right language since they need to know how to pronounce the words.
Speciifying a lang does NOTHING to specify encoding and direction.
<html lang="en" xml:lang="en"...
Again, meta and repsonse header can be used, but the html header is best.

Direction:
LTR = left to right text
RTL = right to left
bidi = bidirectional (e.g., Hebrew and English in the same document)

Logical order in the source

visual hebrew: literally coded bacwards

Scripts have a default direction and need not be specified
markup is LTR, numbers are always LTR
spaces and punctuation are inherently directionally neutral and they inherit the surrounding script. exception: pucntuation inbetween two scripts and then it defaults to document spec. This can be handled in markup

Avoid changing direction in CSS because direction is not primarily a layout aspect.

Text expansion
English is a compact language. Small words form English can expand easily to 200%-300% in other languages. This hits the hardest in nav tabs and areas designed to be snug.
Use 40% for a rule of thumb.
Some languages eliminate spaces (e.g., German) and this causes wordwrap issues
Some scripts have wider or taller characters.

Whatch out for abbreviations
they are not as common in other languages

Tools
Google translation service (translate.google.com) can be used for machine checks for text expansion. Do not use this for production because you will get crap.
CSS Janus - script for flipping CSS-based layouts. Table-based layouts do not have this problem. However, this is more difficult in CSS. http://cssjanus.commoner.com/

Javascript
Embedded text will render as written regardless of of direction.

IE actually flips the scrollbar to the other side. FF does not.

There needs to be a bidi acid test.

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SXSW '08

SXSW2008 notes – True Stories from Social Media Sites

Monday, 10 March 2008 - 11:30AM

Abstract:
Social websites are funny places. What stories do you tell over drinks with friends? About the time when someone accidently uploaded the *wrong* folder of pictures to your site? Or the time you had to manage a full-scale user revolt? Several creators and users of such sites will share five-minute stories of funny bugs, features with unintended consequences, and crazy customer emails. This panel will help you understand about first, second & third order effects when designing such social sites. How nothing goes exactly as planned. You will learn about the importance of being agile and responsive to users when things go wrong. This panel will be a chance to learn from others’ mistakes and avoid making the same ones!

Rashmi Sinha - SlideShare
Guy Kawasaki (Moderator) - Garage Technology Ventures
and many more.

While interesting, this consisted of stories of quirky stories about social media sites. I tried to take some notes, but, well, it just does not matter. I liked it.

Best thought: Users see your site as a playground - give them play equipment. Complex use cases will kill it.

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Monday SXSW '08

Targeting Your Website: Accessibility Litigation Update

Monday, March 10th 5:00 pm – 6:00 pm

Michael Alex Wasylik, Esq. – ricardolaw.com
Anitra Pavka – anitrapavka.com

Cost of Lawyers vs Web Designers/Coders
-Target Defense Team: 8 highly-paid lawyers from one of California’s most expensive law firm
– Just fixing the site would be much cheaper – worst case scenario: total site redesign and recode
(they may spend millions of dollars just defending this case – how much would it cost to just fix?)

Disability Stats
-In the world: 10% of the worlds population has some disability
In the US
-10 million visually impaired, 1.5-3 million use the Internet
In California
-140,000 visually impaired, 10,000 use the Internet

Section 508 (Rehabilitation Act of 1974)
-Applies primarily to govt. and govt. contractors
-Passed in 1998 to expressly include web sites

Americans With Disabilities Act of 1990
-Title III of the Act applies to private businesses with “Public Accommodations”
-Does not expressly mention web sites

Is your site a public accommodation?
Twelve types listed:

  • inn, hotel, motel, or other place of lodging
  • restaurant, bars
  • movie theater, concert hall
  • auditorium
  • retail sales
  • retail services
  • terminal, depot, or transportation
  • museum, library, gallery
  • park, zoo, amusement park
  • schools or education
  • day care, elder care, or social services
  • gym, health spa, exercise

2002 first case to address Title III’s application to web sites.
“A public accommodation must be a physical, concrete structure”
ADA does not apply to web sites in 2002 – case dismissed

Target Case:
Target stores are “places of accommodation” under ADA
ADA broader than merely limited physical access
Unequal access to Target.com denies the blind the full enjoyment of the goods and services offered at Target stores, which are places of public accommodation

What NFBlind said:
Not accessible to screen readers (JAWS)
Images lack ALT tags
-image maps for navigation
-images used as form buttons
-merchandise images
Inadequate use of headers to structure content
Improper form labeling
Mouse required for major functions

Online only may be covered – amazon.com, 37 signals, Dell – not covered by title III
Brick and Mortar stores that are also online are covered by title III – Borders, Apple

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Monday SXSW '08

Client-side Code and Internationalization

Monday, March 10th 3:30 pm – 4:30 pm

Jon Wiley – Google

Why?
Why does Google have ~117 images for search?
Google’s mission is to organize the world’s information and make is UNIVERSALLY available.

Does internationalization = translation?? NO
Internationalization is the design of the product for many different areas (i18n = internationalization).
Localization is the act of taking your product (which you have already internationalized) and turning it into something appropriate for your particular market.

Localization is more than translation. – involves local content for a particular area – legal compliance – marketing – keyboards – currency formats – date formats – cultural appropriateness

Character Encoding:
It was easy once when there was just ASCII – many others came around but eventually everything came into Unicode.
Specifically want to use UTF-8 (8bit unicode).
Why use?
It is compatible with legacy ASCII content – makes ASCII a subset of UTF-8
Modern OS’s support it (not all platforms/browsers support ALL unicode)
Has all the characters you need
You can present a mix of scripts at once
Smaller than UTF-16 for most content – uses smaller bytes and could take up less space.

Careful wen using markup characters (less than greater than)
when you need hard to see characters ( )

Tell the browser:
in your content type declaration in response header (browsers give higher priority to ct)
meta element
external CSS

Find content in the right language.
Be sure to serve content in the correct language.

lang and xml:lang attribute on html element to clarify language
meta element in the doc header
content language in response header

Text direction:
LTR = left to right text
RTL = right to left text
bidi = bi-directional text
How does this work? It is going to be in logical order.
Markup is LTR. Numbers are LTR. Spaces and punctuation are neutral – they take on the characteristics of the words around them.

Dir attribute in html – dir=”rtl” <p> – there is a CSS attribute but best not to use.

Text expansion:
English is a compact language (compared to other languages)
small words can expand 200-300% in other language. This is usually not good, especially in menus etc where they could break things in other languages. Rule of thumb is =40%.

Tools:
Google translation service (http://translate.google.com) – good for a quick check to test a site – don’t use for production output.
CSS Janus – script for flipping CSS-based layouts – table layouts don’t have this problem – not a total solution (http://cssjaus.commoner.com)

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SXSW '08

SXSW2008 notes – The Art of Self-Branding

Monday, 10 March 2008 - 10:00AM

Abstract:
Who are you? Who cares? With proper self-branding, not only will you find out who you are, you will make the RIGHT people care, opening up a slew of the RIGHT opportunities specifically tailored for you. This session will define branding (it’s not just the logo), talk about the top five things to focus on your brand, and show examples of brands that work — and some that don’t, plus what they could do to improve. Most importantly, this session will help translate that information to your own personal brand. While this session will focus on a freelance or studio perspective, the ideas presented should be portable to any type of professional setting. Maximize marketing potential and get the type of work and respect you deserve.

Lea Alcantara - Owner & Hired Gun, Lealea Design

How to make your personal brand a success.

[No notes. I was there, but this session was a mistake for me. It does not apply to much I am interested in - mostly about branding oneself.]

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SXSW '08

SXSW2008 notes – Core Conversation: Mobile 2.0: Why the Third Screen is Taking Center Stage

Sunday, 9 March 2008 - 5:00PM

Abstract:
As new mobile phones appear in the market with the ability to deliver rich and compelling content there is an incredible opportunity to develop for this new medium. However early forays into mobile content and applications were missing many of the key ingredients necessary for success. As a result content and applications for mobile phones are often perceived as simple hand-me-downs from the desktop. John SanGiovanni, Co-Founder of Zumobi, a new mobile platform for delivering rich content via mobile phones, will both debunk the myth that creating content for mobile phones is a limiting proposition and host a open discussion on the critical ingredients necessary to light up devices with your content (and make money doing it).

John SanGiovanni - VP of Prod & Svcs, Zumobi

[This was a small group in a noisy room around a table. I took notes on paper and I will post them when I get around to it.]

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SXSW '08

SXSW2008 notes – Keynote: Kathy Sierra

Sunday, 9 March 2008 - 3:30PM

“Better than chocolate, better than sex.” Even if nobody really MEANS it, what would it take to craft experiences our users would describe like that? In this new follow-up to creating passionate users, we’ll look at tools that can help take us there (including some fun science). We’ll cover some new, some retro, and some counter-intuitive techniques to take Cognitive Seduction to the next level. Best of all, we can do a whole lot of user wooing without having to change our product.

Kathy Sierra - Creating Passionate Users

What would you like to be really good at, but are not?

Likewise, how do we help our users kick ass at something?

In reviews, would you rather have users talk about the product kicking ass or the company kicking ass? Neither. Correct answer: You should have the users saying, “I kick ass.”

How do we reverse engineer passions so the the user has a hi-res user experience. Allowing the user to feel getting better and better at something?

Big news in neuroscience: neurogenesis and neuroplasticity.

Difference between fantastic and average: It is much less about natural talent and more about practicing - focusing on repetition. (Reference: article from SciAm)

Richard Restak: “We need a rage to master”

Users don’t care about your tool - just what they can do with it.

Book reference: Four-hour Work Week

1) Use Telepathy
Monkey’s brain fired sympathetically based upon the actions of the researcher - mirror neurons. You are not thinking what the other person is thinking - only simulating the activity. But the simulation resolution depends upon YOU. Motor neurons fire based upon the observer’s experience. If I have more experience of the watched activities then my simulation is more hi-res. For visualization, the way you visualize is important - the POV needs to be first person.

2) Serendipity
Our brains are pattern matchers. We are wired to see patterns. We need to bulid in randomness to create serendipity.

3) the Dog-Ears design principle
Example: the real-world physics of the iPhone - the bounce at the end of a scroll. it is about how things move. think about real physics

4) Create Joy
Think about joy. It is crucial to the user’s brain. Playfulness. (Lookup: Amy Jo Kim and Liz Danzico)

5) Inspire First-person Language
What can I do to inspire users to talk about themselves instead of the company or product. for example, Amazon reviews have a lot of “I”.

6) T-shirt First Development
What does it say that someone is one of your users (wearing your t-shirt) and they announce it to the world. What is it saying about them.

7) Easter eggs
User’s like them. Book: A Smile in the Mind

8) Tools for Evangelism
Get users to woo other users. Give them a means to do it. If they are passionate they just need a means. (See Twitter in plain English by CommonCraft). Gve people a way to explain what may be considered a waste of time.

9) You are a…
(activity: look someone in the eyes) Via evolution, this freaks us out becuase there is a predator reaction from staring. The fear of speaking to/facing others causes stress and it will inhibit thoughtfulness. Managing stress allows users to engage by managing fight or flight.
products to check out: Stresseraser and

10) Exercise the Brain
Example: Brain Age. the exercise that best helps your brain performance is real physical exercise. Optimizing your body for mental focus.
Help improve their body

11) Give them superpowers quickly
example: Electric Rain (user must do something cool within 30 minutes”)

12) ???
Expert really do know more. Example: Chess masters have the ability to pull from a massive number of patterns recognized from an actual game
Learn to do knowlege acquisition and representation
Bruce wilcox
paterns, paterns o best practices

14) Make your product reflect feeling
Tey to imagine how they are feeling - confused

15) Help reinvestment of mental resources into new problems
siggy magnuson
non-experts vs. experts ???
did not grok this one
Help users focus upon what is salient for the acquisition of expertise. Attention offsets: acknoledge that a fun thing is not the primary focus.

16) Create a culture of support
Recreate the hero’s journy for the user so they can become mentors for new users. Make them into a mentor long before they are experts. No dumb questions. No dumb ansswers either. this will encourage people to support one another. teach them how to ask and answer.

17) Do NOT insist on “inclusivity”
Example: jargon is good. passionate users toak differently. You may want to separate the new and expert users, but don’t for

18) Produce Seductive Opacity
mystery - Anticipation - curiousity
diane ackerman from deep play quote.
the digital world has raised the value of the tangible - the package. Example: the smile on the Amazon package. Unboxing as porn.

19) Atoms are not old-skool afterall
example Etsy and Make. digital products are not appealing to our physical senses. that is why networked, tangible devices are so popular. Petted rabits had lower choloesterol
Chumby

19.5) Special guest: Gary - the wine guy
His site encompasses all of what she is talking about.
(briansolace.com)

20) She never mentioned a number 20, but I felt obligated to have one.

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SXSW '08

SXSW2008 notes – Zuckerburg Keynote/Interview

Sunday, 9 March 2008 - 2:00PM

Abstract:
One of the tech industry’s most intriguing story-lines over the last two years is the incredible growth of FaceBook from college networking tool to global giant. Hear the founder and CEO of this company talk about where the company is now - and where he plans to take it in the future.

Sarah Lacy (Moderator) - Author/Journalist, BusinessWeek/Yahoo!
Mark Zuckerberg - CEO, Facebook Inc

Wow. Um…painful.

I did not learn much, but I watched an interview go south in short order. Zuckerberg did not really say anything substantial.