Friday, 13 March 2009 at 2:00PM
Presenter: Dan Willis - Sapient
Making the argument that the Harry Potter movie site is everything that is wrong with web design. Why? They hide the web native stuff. Everything else is basically print magazine stuff regurgitated for the web- “Print in Disguise”. Headlines are a commodity that lead to linear text. Many newspapers have not realized how to exploit the web-native features. How can your website exploit the web and not just be a print brochure. We still treat web design as print design.
This happened with the transition from still to motion photography. Technologists create the content until artists catch-up. He used Birth of a Nation (1915) by D.W. Griffith as an example of using the techniques developed before in a new way (e.g., cross-cutting is much more effective that transitions in live theater). Hitchcock, for example, takes the close-up and pushes into emotion. Example: Bird’s-eye view used in Fargo.
“One plus one equals three”, or take some of these elements and combine them to create more:
- Random voyeurism
Flickrvision and Found Magazine. We like to look at people vo - Self-aware (but controllable) content
The content is meta-tagged and aware of itself in many different ways - just as referenced in Ambient Findability. Data/content grows beyond the intended purpose of the creator. - User-created content
Fighting the user for control causes them to rebel. Forcing them down paths is problematic because they will rebel. - Ambient awareness
Example: micro-blogging. Over time, something like Twitter allows us to know others in a way we did not before. Each tweet is a dot in a more sophisticated image. - Experiential content
Basically, content is still king, but today content is more than the text and images. Interactive experiences augment the content now and this is the future of what designers will need to create, but the designer needs to share space with the user.
How can we overcome print-in-disguise web sites? Hotel example: Use webcams in the hotel lobby (voyeurism and ambient awareness). Pillow choices linked to sleep research and customer experiences, concierge is expert on good sleep, etc.
In the context of news, metadata links parts of stories so they can be reused. Don’t pollute too many pages with dynamic headlines because you can. Old design, print design needs to evolve and extinction is part of evolution.
Design solves problems and the visual design of the web can’t be answering the same questions as print design. We have, traditionally, compartmentalized our design (information arch, interaction, visual, etc.) like a TV dinner tray. We need to look at it like jambalaya and mix it all together. This begs for a see-saw implementation where everyone is involved in the party, but experts need to know their area of expertise and acquiesce to others, too.
- Organize cross-disc teams; exploit and protect expertise
- Design for specific users and their needs
- Embrace your ignorance. We have not figured out the web, yet.
- Don’t be distracted by business models that don’t begin and end with the user.
- Don’t be distracted by technology.
- Don’t be distracted by failure. Ideally you will fail quickly if it happens and learn from it. Move on.
References made during presentation:
- Presenter’s article: http://www.dswillis.com/sxsw/everything.pdf
- Book: The Experience Economy