Category: Sunday

Sunday, 11 March 2007 @ 1700

Cameron Adams, Web Technologist, The Man in Blue
Sally Carson, Interaction Designer, Yahoo!
Dustin Diaz, User Interface Engineer, IMVU
Jonathan Snook

Business – User – Development : The three areas that you need to bring together to get designs to work

If one of these three things fails, the site will fail.

Each of these three needs to know what the other is up to in order to get buy-in.

From the designer’s POV, “naive” questions can get you answers to uncover political currents.
Be ready with facts to support your reasons for your desires.</common-sense>

Generalists may seem out of fashion so specialize, but you need to understand how it all fits together.
Web designers are often becoming “T-shaped people” – broad knowledge, but a depth of knowledge in some areas.

Generalists will become far more important as we move forward.

Small teams are good teams.

Team bonding – Agile development makes people want to contribute.

Making people happy
Agile and extreme programming gets other minds to interact with that are focused upon the exact same issues.
Quick meetings – standup meetings make for fast, focused meetings (“…if this meeting goes longer than fifteen minutes then you are doing it wrong”)

Sunday, 11 March 2007 @ 1605

Kevin Hale, Co-Founder, Infinity Box Inc

I did not mean to go to this presentation, but it was a great history lesson in Mongolian strategy. Oh, well.

Sunday, 11 March 2007 @ 1530

Patrick Lauke, Splintered
Ian Lloyd, accessify.com

The first part of this was Ian Lloyd merely talking about the tools afforded at accessify.com. I am downloading something so I do not want to move from any point where the wireless is actually working.

Page heading and document outline are useful in the WebDev Toolbar

Use semantic markup even if it is not, to your knowledge supported by an accessibility tool.

Javascript is not necessarily evil. To check, again, the WebDev Toolbar allows you to turn off js.

alt text:  normal stuff.
Basically, download the WebDev Toolbar for Firefox and use it.

graybit.com – turns your site into greyscale – pretty cool.

Firefox plugin – Color Contrast Analyzer
Tool: FAE

Unobtrusive accessibility: doing the right thing without your boss noticing: hidden skip links and form labels and table headings

Sunday, 11 March 2007 @ 1400

Brian Fling, Dir of Strategy, Blue Flavor

[I am sorry about the poor notes. I was taken in by his cool slides and an attack of ADHD.]

His presentation can be found here: http://www.blueflavor.com/sxsw2007/

Check out:

• Resource for mobile web development
  http://pc.dev.mobi/
• Mobile ready report
  http://ready.mobi/
• Mobile Design Community
  http://www.mobiledesign.org/

Mobile web will explode because of LBS (location-based services).
This contextualizes the web to a much higher level.

3 Cs of the mobile web: Cost, content and context

Clickstreams: where on a mobile page will the user go based upon clicks

different screensizes – about 500 different devices sold in the world

Do not design for smart phones or PDA – they are such a small part of the market, currently.

In his presentation, he meant “design vertically” when he says “design horizontally”.

Mobile web standards
XHMTL-MP (Extensible HTML – Mobile Profile) – this is the new WAP (old WAP:bad, new WAP:good)
XHTML and MP are VERY similar – standard tools can work with it.
Wireless CSS is more complicated, but his standard advice is to keep it simple
He recommends doc styles over style sheets because of flashing of the page during loading.

Recommendations:

• only about 5-7 links per page. This gives you more than enough access keys
• keep forms to a minimum
• focus on five devices: treo, razr, nokia 40-series, ,
• mobile stylesheets can detect devices with the handheld attribute

Testing devices remotely:  deviceanywhere.com

Sunday, 11 March 2007 @ 1130

Elisa Camahort, Pres of Events & Mktg, BlogHer
Dawn Foster, Dir of Community & Partner Programs, Compiere
Annalee Newitz, Freelance Writer
Erica Rios, Internet Project Mgr, Anita Borg Institute For Women and Technology

[After leaving the previous panel, I came to this one in progress…]

Myths/Issues:
Lack of support:

• A major part of choosing an OS solution is the quality of the online community: documentation and peer support.
• You can actually see a contributors code work before hiring them.
• Many times you might be able to purchase support piecemeal for OS.

Code inclusion violations:

• Just know the license under which the code is released.

Lack of security:

• [insert standard arguments here]

Cost of making it usable/customer service is a hidden cost:

• This sticks. Free software is free as in freedom and not free beer to paraphrase Richard Stallman.
• There need to be financial resources dedicated to OS solutions.

OS is anti-capitalist:

• On the contrary, there is a VERY healthy dose of capitalism fueling OS.

OS as an ethical choice:
“Microsoft is in the Dark Ages of their evil…Google is the new evil, but they use open source so maybe they are a good, new evil” – Newitz

OS is the public library of the software realm. It is all about access to use and contribute. Particularly to groups that have systemic barriers otherwise.

Sunday, 11 March 2007 @ 1130

Bryan Veloso, Avalonstar
Jeff Croft, Web Designer, World Online
Veerle Pieters, CEO/Graphic/Web Designer, Duoh! nv
Kelsey Ruger, Dir Tech & Creative Svcs, The Moleskin

Playing Unreal Tournament at work focuses your design acumen.
Veerle has a great accent.

[I left this panel because it was lame (at least in the beginning) as they were just talking about what they personally found to be good work environs – not methods, tricks, hints, etc.]

Sunday, 11 March 2007 @ 1000

Ben Combee, Sr Software Developer, Palm Inc
David Richard, Pres, Design For Use LLC
Adam Zbar, CEO, Zannel
Jeff Beckham, Sr Business Mgr-Strategy, AT&T
Denise Burton, Principal Designer, Frog Design

Design considerations: control, branding, standards, and trust

Figure out how .mobi works. Do they just proxy sites or host unique copies or is it merely another domain?

User expectations: From device environment to environment, users expectations change and are dependent upon which direction they are traveling.

Since input limitations differ from device to device, try to minimize the amount of data the user needs to input. For example, pull as much (or assume) information from context. Example: Steve Jobs sending the image to the friend he is on the phone with.

Asking for information should have immediate and visible value for the user. If you ask for a mobile number, the user should know why and how this information will be benefitting her/him.

Europe and Asia are ahead of North America on this.

Sunday, March 11th 5:00 pm

Gina Trapani
Molly Ditmore  Molly Bloom
Matthew Haughey  MetaFilter
Annalee Newitz   Freelance Writer
Penelope Trunk  Brazen Careerist 

Shouldn’t my work sell itself? I don’t want to become a spammer.

If you want to be able to support yourself, you need to make the intellectual leap that what you look like and present yourself matters. You don’t have to go over the top, but you still need to have some sort of plan. You need to be a sales person – don’t call it sales, it is networking. You need to be able to get your work in front of the ppl that need to see it or need it.

It is hard (as a nerd) to go up to ppl and sell yourself or your stuff. It’s hard because it is you vs. selling some other company product that isn’t you.

Really important in marketing yourself – “The Elevator Pitch” – What do you do?
Concise carefully practiced statement about what you do. What is it you do – not what you don’t do. Your mother should be able to understand it. Practicing it is important.

Takes time to get your name out there.

Just as important to be a good listener as it is to talk about yourself – don’t be the creepy person that just keeps talking about their website. Avoid backash.

random cool site: http://www.videosift.com/

You need to find that level where it isn’t simply self-promotion, but finding places relevant to post your stuff. Rule of thumb: more than one or two venues is probably too much.

Getting to the right ppl is the most important.

Play a little hard to get – some allure to being busy.

Important to chose jobs that take you on the right career path.
You don’t have to put EVERYTHING on your resume. The crap stuff doesn’t need to show up.

Much fear and hunger when starting. Create a plan for the inbetween. Think about goals and find a way to balance it out and who you need to market to to do that. Where do I want to go with this and how do I spend my time? 2 yrs 5 yrs

If you can’t get that dream job, do it yourself. Create your own site and create that track record.

50% of your time should be promotion and marketing – need to be patient.

Need to be ready for rejection.

Sunday, March 11th @ 3:30 pm 

Steven Champeon   CTO,   hesketh.com Inc 

Antisocial networking – dealing with online abuse

http://hesketh.com/presentation/sxsw/2007

Spam: uncolicited bule e-mail
About CONSENT not content – i don’t care who you are, i didn’t give you permimssion to send to me
Better title: messaging abuse
Did I ask for this?

Why does it matter?
10 to 1 spam to legit email
splogs also rising
419 scams

Whose to blame?
criminal gangs virus writers
pornographers
illegal pharm
mainsleaze – commercial mailers

Where does spam come from?
botnets
static networks
companies w/bad list management (oops)
open proxies and relays

At any moment in time there are 10’s of thousands of botnet computers out there

Trackback and Comment Spam
trying to get message out
piggyback on your openness
can deliver payloads
creates barrier to entry for newbies

What to do
secure your computer
spam filter
content filter (doomed to fail)
ISP outbound filters
lawsuits – criminal charges against spammers

don’t abandone email addresses or blogs

Sunday, March 11th @ 2:00 pm

Brian Fling   Dir of Strategy,   Blue Flavor 

http://www.blueflavor.com/sxsw2007 (presentation slides available)

http://mobiledesign.org

Why Mobile Web?

Mobile Web: The collective term for wesites designed for viewing on a mobile device. Websites are published and accessed via the Internet just like a regular desktop website.

How big is the mobile web?
mobile subscribers = 1/3 of the planet
mobile web access = 1/5 of the planet
more ppl have access to mobile web vs. actual desktop web

By 2010 1/2 of planet will have access to mobile web
60% of mobile users use their device to access the internet at least 1x/month

“Mobile will revolutionize the way we gather and interact with information in the next few years – mobile has the ability to meet any people through any medium”

LBS – location based services
the ability for a mobile device to provide info that is relevant to it’s physical locations via GPS
Prepare for truly contextual web.

Creating a Mobile Web Strategy

-Cost – if you don’t develp your mobile site responsibly the user could get stuck with a big bill to view your content
-Content – issues like navigation image size pg weight are very important

Mobile Information Architecture
keep it simple!
-limit categories to 5
-limit links to 10
-no more than 5 levels deep
-at least one content item/catetory
-prioritize content

Clickstreams for users are required by many mobile service providers and very important for mobiel design

Mobile Web Design
more compatible (simple) to richer experiences (pretty)
More complex you get the fewer devices you can support
Best place to live is right in the middle (xhtml & css)
provide good user experience and suport max number of devices

many more barriers to get to your site on a mobile (device ui -> app ui -> gatewate design -> content design_

Many screen sizes – find the medium leve and design to it

Three types of phone – feature phones, smart phones, pda’s
feature phones have largest market share – do NOT design for smart phones and pda’s

pay attention to directional orienation – down often times goes scroll down and select next link

“The canvas migh not be as robust, but there is still a need for designers.”

Understanding Mobile Web Standards
XHTML-MP – subset of xhtml basic and html. Used as a primary markup language for WAP 2.0 protocol

XHTML-MP and XHTML are virtually indistinguisable
predominant language for mobiel web
possible to use standard tools to create pages
transition to mobile web is easy
supported by all mobile service providers

Wireless CSS
wireless CSS suppports most CSS attributes, but not ALL of them
more advanced styling techniques won’t likely work across multiple mobile browsers
keep your CSS as simple as possible
use document styles vs. style sheets

WC3
Mobile Web Best Practices
MobileOK
Device Description

“One Web” principle of making the same info and services to users regardless of the device used. – This is a very misunderstood, misused and commonly debated concept.

Getting Started w/XHTML-MP
correct encoding (slightly different)
use well-formed code (check mobile web browsers)
avoid tables for layout
put navigation into content body
use accesskey in primary navigation (phone number buttons)
use ordered lists for navigation (helpful w/accesskeys)
doc styles no external styles – because of the order that things are loaded on a mobile device (don’t have to wait for style to load)
link phone numbers <a href=”tel:1234567″>
forms tricky – must dictate what type of data goes into a field

Mobile Publishing
options: mobile stylesheets or create a mobile specific site
-mobile styles aren’t always the way to go because it relies on hiding content that the user needs to download anyway

Devices and Browsers
500 devices sold each yr.
over 50 mobile browsers

Focus on Five devices and you’ll be fine
Nokia series 40 – Razr – LG/Samsung freeby phone – Treo or smartphone

Publishing methods
mobile-specific URL
detect mobile device automatically & redirect to location
use mobile TLD (.mobi)
SMS query that returns a url called WAP push.

Device Detection
keep it simple! only one mobile spec – then ramp up if necessary

Testing
desktop test – best place to start
Browser tools (UA switcher)
Emulators
http://deviceanywhere.com

http://mr.dev.mobi – very helpful site giving info about sites and if they comply etc.