SXSW Notes

Tuesday, 17 March 2009 at 5:00PM
Moderators:

Tuesday, March 17th at 03:30 PM
Presenters:
John Slabyk – Obama for America
Scott Thomas – Obama – SimpleScott
Alissa Walker – Gelatobaby

The Designing Change in America panel will discuss the Obama “brand”, it’s birth, it’s evolution, and it’s rise to power. We will discuss the challenges of being in-house designers in a fast-paced political environment and how though challenges informed our process for designing and developing.

State of design for Obama Campaign. Got the gig because they were the first to respond. Many ideas and designs were done more on a question of speed vs. design elements. They just needed to get it to print.

Banners used all the tricks in the book to make it pop on camera (drop-shadows edges etc).

Website used every shade of blue possible and WAY too many typefaces.

John and Scott got introduced to the campaign with a cross between Web/Print and do both sides. There was simply no time for traditional design (not market research or usability). They built an airplane while in flight. The timeline wasn’t strongly considered when working on something that big. They put together and got out flyers every single day. You couldn’t look down the road too far. You were stuck in the middle doing the NOW stuff. They had to show through the website that design is important, and prove themselves.

We need to deliver clear concise messaging focused on the “we” rather than the “he.”
Keep message of hope while dismantling the notion of being aloof. There were crazy long titles for certain events, that ultimately go changed by time right in the field. They had to get to the core of what the function would be. It was hard to make Obama not feel aloof. Hope could be communicated visually without actually using the word “hope.”

Communicate the historic atmosphere by pulling from the imagery of the past. They tried hard to pull historical images or documents and base design off of that. Pull feelings and emotions out of those images. How could these things be used down the road. They’ve created print versions of speeches that are a piece of history – a historic document.

Establish a consistency and balance to exemplify stability and experience. Lock type up in a consistent manner, use simple consistent color palettes, and make sure that stays solid in everything.

A logo was handed off, and there was no brand standards. They noticed that there were things missing in the word mark. The typography didn’t match the logo itself. There wasn’t a solid block. They went about changing it – all caps – adjusted the ends – balanced. It needed to be adjusted to tie it to the rest of the brand. Perfect circle on the “O” rounded the serifs.

The notion of participation was very important to the campaign. They wanted to make sure that it was a 2 way conversation and could download design aspects and being transparent. It’s weird how the election cycle is kind of the olympics of technology as far as what’s possible (watching video on the internet of speeches)

What to do with the homepage – everyone needed/wanted to be on the homepage – how was that dealt with?  The fold was destroyed, and it scrolled for content. Ver. 2 highlighted the personal my.barackobama.com. In the initial stage of the campaign, it was happening live! There was no test server.

Vote for Change – make voter registration easy. It has never been done before since it is so varied over the country. Eliminate the questions and complexities. One question at a time, one by one.

Did you know anything about Barack Obama, and when was your first contact?

A speech four years ago energized John. Was the country ready for this guy? How much do I believe in this? Is it worth the crazy work and less money?

Scott was talking with his mother the night before being asked to give up a year in a half of life. Called, responded, interview the next day, started the next day.

There was never a break – there was meeting all the time. You could get a request at midnight for a graphic needed the next morning. It was a crazy work environment.

When did you realize that the designs were getting great attention?

Change you can believe in banner – typeface author blogged about the use of their font (uh… maybe we should pay for it).

When events were going on, there was no ability to proof something. The political schedule doesn’t allow for time to prepare. It would hit and go live. It was nice to see how things showed up on TV or on a newspaper. It was like real-life proofing since going live was the proof. If it isn’t perfect, get it out there, you can change it if it doesn’t work.

What was the role in change.gov and whitehouse.gov?

Change.gov moved to DC with a couple of designers – what about whitehouse.gov? They did to a small roll in getting it rolling, but they didn’t do the entire thing. Change.gov was a quick thought initially since there were more important things to do.

It is still important as things transition and move into the actual presidency, that the grassroots pieces that made the campaign work, and the web tools and design tools used still need to be part of the process. There is still always room for improvement.

Prove what you can do… it is always going to be better with good design. The bad design happens because of the situation you’re in. Maybe a speech is happening in a town with a small print shop and a local designer. That’s how some of the inconsistent things get out. Getting a handle on this and keeping things consistent top to bottom is important.

Questions:

• How much of a battle was it to communicate the need for whitespace on your site, and the above the fold mentality?
  -It was a battle, and everyone needs to fight it. It helped that things were moving so fast, it might get ignored – or it’s easier to ignore. Always asked, “Are we communicating efficiently?” What is the solution? What is the best way to do this? It’s not a question about whites pace, but rather a question of what is the best way to communicate? Respect the people you work with and include them in the decision making.
• There was a tremendous distance between the global branding and the materials on the ground, were you aware of that?
  -Yes, absolutely! In many cases, it could have just fallen to the local office for fliers or materials. Hopefully in the future, there is more of a “how to” kind of thing for local product design.

Podcast of Panel (mp3)

Tuesday, 17 March 2009 at 3:30PM
Panel:

• John Slabyk - Obama for America
• Scott Thomas - Obama - SimpleScott
• Alissa Walker - Gelatobaby

Description:  The Designing Change in America panel will discuss the Obama “brand”, it’s birth, it’s evolution, and it’s rise to power. We will discuss the challenges of being in-house designers in a fast-paced political environment and how though challenges informed our process for designing and developing.

twitter:  #designingchange

The graphics were all very adhoc and the typeface was not set when the dudes on the panel came on board.

They represent the head of web and print respectively.

The blue (or grayer in this bad photo) was not included because there was no time.

They were truly building an airplane in flight. They had to show via the web site that it was a primary sales tool for Obama.

Their mission:

1. Deliver clear and concise messaging that focused upon the “we” rather than the “he”. They had a problem of people jumbling all their buzzwords into too long sentences and confusing the brand.
2. Keep the message of hope while dismantling the notion of being aloof. They initially had a hard time trying to keep from being aloof because of the hero atmosphere surrounding Obama.

   

3. Communicate the historic atmosphere by pulling from imagery of the past. This connected teh new with the old.
4. Establish a consistency and balance to exemplify stability and balance. Make the color palette stable and consistent. One of the main problems against Obama was his lack of experience. The wordmark typeface did not match the logo. The logo was precise and round.
   

   The original logotype

   They went to all caps to give the top a less bumpy:  Gotham, Requiem and Liberation.

   

   The altered version

   They had to modify Requium because they found the terminals to be too sharp. The “O” was made a more perfect circle to match the logo. They quickly opened up the logomark so that people could download them and print them and use them. The election cycle works as the Olympics of technology. Facebook was an instrumental.

Before, the web site suffered from an “above the fold” mentality. Everybody’s links were important and they turned that all into an assumption that scrolling is OK. It gave everything space. They made all this on the live, production servers. He shows the example of the little text artifacts that got in as a result of mixing up TextMate and iChat.

SimpleVote example

When did you realize the designs were getting great attention?
Scott Thomas replies that when they say them on TV is when they decided they sould pay for the typefaces. They did not see the placards and signs until it was on CNN. They had no time to test color for different printers. Proofing was done from the television screen. They are now firm believers of changing on the fly.

After the election, it changed to change.gov and whitehouse.gov, what were your roles?

Centralizing services was important, but not centralizing information. They succeeded in bringing about a visual message that permeated the entire campaign and now the presidency. Adhoc branding was to be avoided. (I am looking you, beloved ITS).

How much of a battle was it to fight for whitespace in the “above the fold mentality”?
They say it was a struggle to balance info density and whitespace. This was the first political campaign that had inhouse designers. One of the way they handled it was to shift the discussion away from teh attitude that designers are mere stylists and not more akin to an engineer. I imagine they know their stuff well enough that they had enough gravitas to sell this. Three words:  respect, empower and include.

How did the little things get made (e.g., little invitations little cards, etc.) in the build up to the election?
They had a very good person running interference - that guy is now the CTO of the Obama campaign. They found it hard to say “no” if things got to them and they viewed it as a challenge to see how soon they could get things done.

On a very local level some of the designed stuff was not good and, as a side effect, was that if people saw the Poorly design, but legitimate materials, they did not trust them. They think they should have provided better tools, materials and rubrics for the local people on the ground.

[look for slides online]

Tuesday, 17 March 2009 at 2:00PM
Participants:

Tuesday, 17 March 2009 at 11:30AM
Panel:

• Rachel Weidinger (Mktg Dir & Sr Consultant, Common Knowledge)
• Humberto Kam (Sr Mgr Online Communications, Monterey Bay Aquarium)
• Andrew MacRae (Get Involved)
• Melanie Cheng (Founder, FarmsReach.com), (Pres, Common Knowledge)

Description:  Nonprofits and social entrepreneurs are making access to sustainable food easier with shortcodes, social networks, advocacy tools, and location-based platforms. The founder ofFarmsreach will share her vision for this web platform for local, sustainable food. We’ll discuss the evolution of Monterey Bay Aquarium’s Seafood Watch to mobile access, and the recent launch of their iPhone app. The advocacy work of the American Farmland Trust will be covered, including some surprises about SEM. We’ll share how the Sierra Club’s global warming social network Climate Crossroads is using food to engage users in a challenging issue.

FarmsReach (http://farmsreach.com/)
They provide technical means for geographically matching businesses with local distributors so they can coordinated delivery and place orders online. They exploit the existing delivery routes the farmers already use or they connect the buyers to farmer’s markets for delivery. Basically, they want to align supply and demand to minimize the distance food moves. They are attempting to bring an offline community online. twitter:  @farmsreach

No Farms No Food
There is a lot of people who are keenly interested in healthy, environmental food, but they don’t quite make the full loop connection to the farmer. This project attempts to connect this loop - trying to create a sustainable relationship for the farmers’ food. Strange fact:  search traffic for farmer’s markets is more owned by Yahoo search than Google. There are demographic differences and perhaps a broadband difference in rural areas. His data shows that it is not affluent suburbia driving this, but rural and remote people.

http://climatecrossroads.org/
This is project of the Sierra Club. 1.3 million members. This is a social network with an agenda to get people thinking and talking about climate change. Local food is the “gateway drug” to get people looking at the larger problem. Focused on the US, not international. The site is not heavily Sierra Club branded and it is in beta now. Two primary areas she focused upon:  Actions and Recipes.

Monterey Bay Aquarium - Sustainable seafood movement
What fish should one choose? Half of our seafood comes from wild sea stocks and we are just depleting them left and right. It is esitmate that 1 in 4 animals die as bycatch. Estimate 90% of fish stocks gone by 2050 at current rates. Is fish farming the answer? It depends. Many fish farms feed their fish with wild stock. Saturation of antibiotics is a problem.

Seafood Watch:  seafood guides in the form of pocket guides. AND an iPhone app. I downloaded it as he spoke. Very cool. They have used this app as a springboard toupdate their mobile apps. It is fully integrated into Google Maps. SeafoodWatch.org.

Weird fact:  There is no comprehensive listing of farmer’s markets that is not proprietary. Wow.

Refernced stuff:

• Wiki:  http://savefood.wikispaces.com/
• EcoTrust has a policy mapping project for salmon strategy
• Foodzie:  like an ebay for local foods close to you.
• Sierra Club:  Climate Crossroads
• GoodGuide
• Wattz On (Dave says it is a cool site)
• Eat Well Guide - “Cultivating the Web”
• film:  end of the line
• gvfoods?
• farmersmarketsource.com

All this will be on slideshare.

Tuesday, March 17th at 11:30 AM
Presenters:
Ken Fisher – Ars Technica
Alexis Ohanian – reddit.com
Drew Curtis – Fark.com
Erin Kotecki Vest – BlogHer Inc

BlogHer.com

Largest women’s blogging network. It started by a question at a conference of where are the women bloggers? From that, a flame war started, and BlogHer was created. The Blog Her conference happened in San Francisco. They continue to meet and blog at the site

Fark.com

Comments were added 2000 (Drew needed to learn SQL). Not a huge fan in online communities but it has grown organically after a small nudge

Reddit.com

Started in 2005 in college – too many comments in Slashdot. They just wanted a site that listed cool links. An article was written about it, and it took off from there.

Ars Technica

Comments went up shortly after 1998 as a way to comment email (other people would answer questions instead of Ars staff. Tried to create a place for people to find answers to these tech-y questions. Fostering discussions helped to kill the trolls that were found at many places around the net.

How do you balance your own vision for your community with the actual community? How do you enable communication with your users?

You have a number of voices and you need to take it with a grain of salt if it is actually what the users want, or just a crazy user. You have to balance small sections of complaints with the rest of the folks who actually read and enjoy something. "Well organized minority"

Reddit created sub-sites for different topics (programming). They let the community set up these sub-sites. How do people get in touch with Reddit? Just one guy answering emails doesn’t scale very well (moving to Twitter?).

Blogher – you need to listen and implement as much as you can to engage the community. You need to listen.

Ars – twitter gives you an insight on what is actually happening in your community. Only a certain percentage of the folks are regular participants in the discussions. Created a forum for complaints and feedback. Other members can respond to the feedback, allowing you to take the communities pulse. Providing a place for feedback is usually good for the community.

Comment on how the community really influences itself – does it police itself? Moderation teams? How did you get there?

Blogher – very strict community guidelines so that the bloggers feel safe. Nobody will get attacked and there is no hate speech. You don’t always get that at other sites. The community is pretty strongly self-policed

Fark.com – don’t be an ass! Give your moderation team the tools to police. Nark function to call out inappropriate comments. Narking throws the comment into a queue to be handled by moderators.

Reddit – "reddicate" Once sub-reddits were created, the moderators are given the power to handle issues in those sub-sites, and generally police themselves. It’s pretty hands off

When you run into problem bits of content, what do you do with them? Do you leave them? shame them? Delete them?

Blogher – removed them fully. It is so rare there is no backlash. Things got heated during the presidential campaign, and relied very heavily on the guidelines.

Fark.com & Reddit – leave them, but sometimes revisit and change if necessary. Stuff is removed on fark all the time (5000 people permanently banned from fark now).

Ars – don’t delete or modify unless spam. Sometimes it can be perceived as censorship, and abuse the trust of your community if you silence someone. There is a "law" of cardinal and compulsory rules where they can call people out on certain things. Strike 1 – one week ban, and it gets more severe from there. Why don’t people just come back under a different name? People are very invested in their community and name.

What mistakes have you seen other community participants or managers make?

Blogher – they tell rather than ask – don’t let the community know when change is coming. The community isn’t involved on many of the decisions being made.

Fark.com – a moderator would troll the users. Don’t listen to your readers too much. Most readers are too anal. When you redesign, you get a crazy reaction. When you redesign, most will get over it after a bit of time. When people threatened to leave, a user would record it and throw it in their faces when the DID come back.   

Reddit – the majority of users are silent – never log in. Most never tell you how they feel. You need to trust your gut, and listen to the core users, but think of the people that don’t really have a voice.

Ars – Surveys are fantastic! The results are shared with the community. It proves you were totally wrong or you’re right in your choices and the minority is the most vocal. Started with only 3 forums. Forums are added as needed, not 100 forums at first that look like a ghost town. People think that nobody is there.

Questions:

What are you looking for in a community manager?
-biggest skills you need is patience, level headed. neutral. someone who can multitask.

What has blogher learned about the conferences?
-very community driven on what they want to speak about and hear.

Reddit & Ars part of Conde Nast – any problems with upper-management, pressure?
-They know better than to ask about that – very open discussion.
-People assume that Conde would create issues, with ownership issues. Ars asked the audience what they wanted, and went from there.

How do you attract people in this landscape?
-People can easily go to both, and not worry so much competitive.
-Having a niche and passion will show, and attract people who are like-minded.

What do you think about anonymous comments?
-If you can’t say something with your name on it – we’re not interested (fark)
-Do you just want a big comment number on your post? 2 quality comments are better than 14 anonymous comments.

Tuesday, March 17th at 10:00 AM
Presenter: Charles Sayers – Sapient

This type of stuff would probably come under the heading of strategy (but not quite as boring). It shouldn’t be approached in a way that makes it a long grinding process. I could/should take 2-4 weeks to get a strategy of any size. Stories for everyone (not just the creatives).

Sapient – largest interactive firm in US. On the consulting side, it’s more about the infrastructure and how to do these things.

The university is made up of stories, not atoms. The brand is actually experience, but you have to figure out how to tell the story. It is the art of storytelling, and a lot of creativity goes into it. There is no formula for creating a brand (everyone is different, culture is different). Have a structure in place is good – some containers to catch the creativity.

Coca-Cola

Ever story begins before it begins. You cannot go in and say you’re going to define a brand – companies will say they already know their brand. The issue is more that they can’t communicate that brand.

Coca-Cola approached to define the brand definition. How do you break apart the company and the drink. They wanted to define the company on its own. They couldn’t talk to stakeholders, they had very short time, and couldn’t talk to anyone about it. Interns were brought in, and communicated very differently (some draw, some photograph, etc.). They all communicated very differently. One intern would doodle constantly. A room was set up called the idea room. You had to leave an idea in there when you leave. Nothing was thrown away, and there was no order. There is no right, no perfect – people are scared of criticism. All ideas are valuable, and there is no wrong. The doodler just went, and got caught up in the passion. The ideas he created prompted other ideas, or the questions when people looked at his material.

What is in the name? If you remove the logo, do you still have the same feeling? Tool called the roll of opposites. You’re different because someone wants to be the opposite of you. Does Coke want to be a vessel where everything is contained, or stream where items move through? Solid or fluid? Heritage or Vitality? A choice needs to be made on these. People don’t want to make choices. This slows things down. The choices are important – dictionary vs. a novel. Someone chose the words to use in the novel.

Clients love context – Who are we like? Say, we want to be like Apple or Target or BMW. You don’t want to be them, but how do you want to be like them?

Force people to think in ways they aren’t used to thinking. Make people uncomfortable, and they’ll be forced to move in a direction. If they’re uncomfortable, they’ll work themselves towards and answer, and know why.

Your stories will have multiple maps. As much as you plan A-B will be different for every person. Create things that cause a lot of reaction to see where people will go with it. You can be aware reactions (positive and negative) to see where people will go.

Role and Positioning – Ask the question "what if?" This is better than "What is?" or "What should it be?" Don’t wait until the end to have a point of view so you can start experimenting on it right away.

Set up a brand room, then let Coke senior executives come in and look at the walls. He started to see things differently than anyone else had seen. The story came out of this experience. The story (room) turned into a book, "Our Manifesto for Growth." Everything in one place helped point and move the company in the right direction.

Autotrader.com

• Who are they?
• How are they different ?
• What position can we own in the marketplace?

If everyone is agreeing to these questions, that is bad. There should be some argument. Find the person who is very angry. You’ll get passion from that person. Conflict is needed in the story.

Who is involved? Facilitator – forces people to challenge assumptions – someone curious,
Visual thinker – someone who isn’t necessarily a great speaker.
Marketing and IT in the room to conflict with each other.
Strategy person – someone rational balanced
Business person

Tool: Everyone goes to the movies. Celebrities have a certain reaction in our culture. People feel they know celebrities in a different way. Pick a spokesperson for our company. When you pick someone, why did you pick them? They went with Christian Slater, and they agreed he was right.

What are the challenges? Web domains. How do you communicate what you want through a short (probably taken) web domain? Create differentiation through combination.

Vision – what do you want to be? The heard of the world’s auto marketplace.
Difference – revealing choices, you don’t buy a car, you find a car.
Benefits – best vehicle selection, confidence that everyone will find the care they want or sell the care they have.

What type of leadership do you want? Leader through control (Steve Jobs). Do you really want to lead? Do you want to be known as a leader? Is leadership what you want? Autotrader probably didn’t want to be a leader. Are you the best friend or the leader?

Do you want to lead, or do you want to be the best? Start playing with the differences.
Do you want to be a roll model or do you want to be a friend?

Who is autotrader.com? Your best friend with millions of cars. Regular everyday kind of guy with a really big parking lot.

Monday, March 16th at 05:00 PM
Presenters:
Mark Trammell – Digg
Juliette Melton – Lumos Labs
Nate Bolt – Bolt|Peters
Carla Borsoi – Ask.com
Andy Budd – Clearleft Ltd

Useful Tools:

• User testing – more of a design tool and not a research tool
• Interviewing users – direct questioning, or interviews
• Talking directly to users
• Analytics and specific web testing – loyalty of users coming back to site – the end result
• Customer service feedback – satisfaction level with a product
• Behavior vs. Opinions
• One on one testing – simply watching what faces people make
• Surveys – a good way to access a lot of voices at one time, and the ability to break down demographics or pull out specific quotes.

Useless Tools:

• Eye tracking "seems like science, but not" – BS! – Why aren’t people clinking on this link? You don’t need eye tracking to tell you it is small or out of the way.
• One on one interview is much more useful than what you can get out of a focus group. A brainstorming session with strangers motivated by candy, One-on-one is better. You CAN get useful info out of a focus group if done well.

Concerning yourself with user research? Steve Jobs: "I don’t"

It all comes down to genius design (Ives at Apple or 37 Signals). "We don’t need to do research!" These people know exactly who they’re designing for, themselves, or Steve Jobs. If people (like them) find it useful, then great. We all feel like we have a better insight on our users than we actually do. Apple is actually doing research in the background, they’re building prototype after prototype and testing internally, so that testing IS happening, just not in the public. If you define research as any sort of internal testing, it counts. Flickr started as a game site and turned into an incredible photo site based on what users wanted out of it.

Remote Testing:

Observing someone through some sort of remote test (from another location). Lab testing is BS. "Imagine you’re buying something at this soulless computer in a white room with a 2-way mirror."

How do you poll users?

Silverback is a nice app to record the user as they are interacting with your website. It captures video of their facial expressions.
How do you pull in the things that are wrong into the research? Research can be boring – getting people involved can be easier to make it more exciting (food/drink?!?). There is sometimes an empathy with a user who is struggling.
Sharing the feedback of the test, or the decisions made off the results.
If you have to bribe your designers/developers to care about their users, they are not good for your team. They should WANT to be involved.

Ah Ha Moments

Starting with paper prototypes, we learned that it was not the right way to go. Getting it early was helpful.
Even though customers trusted the company, but not a certain product over a competitor. Hearing it actually come from users, with evidence, it make it around and created change.

Quantitative vs. Qualitative Research

Quantitative: A/B testing on a group statistically important (inside)
Qualitative: "This one user said" gives the story behind it. (ammunition)

How do I pay for this?

You have users, just find some people and ask. Some of the best research is cheap/free research.
Silverback
Surveymonkey

Agile Testing

MS put this together for Age of Empires game. They schedule time between tests to actually fix the issues between the tests, and over a few days, you get things fixed from group to group. Right Methodology

Biggest Mistakes Made

• Testing for less time in the UK vs US
• Biggest failed study with kids from Chile/Mexico none of them speak english
• Getting people you know for user testing (don’t fit the people who really use the site).
• Only drawn bloog once in a usability test (oops)

Monday, 16 March 2009 at 5:00PM
Panel:

Monday, 16 March 2009 at 3:30PM
Panel: