I just got home and am about to head to bed and back to normal life tomorrow. Once again, I had a blast in Austin and just wanted to give some blog love to all those that we met and hung out with over the last few days. The sessions are what attract me to the conference but it’s the experience that keeps me coming back. In no particular order…

• John Wiseman (former 76er)
• Shawn Pucknell and Evan Jones from FITC (see you guys in April!)
• Jonathan Snook (fellow Ottawan and all round smart guy)
• Stephen and Ricky from New Zealand’s RESN (congrats on the trophy)
• Dominique Lussier (another Ottawan that unfortunately we didn’t meet until the final flight home from Washington D.C.)
• Caroline from 15 letters (I barely talked to you but I remember where you said you worked… I have a mind like a steel trap)
• David Nunez
• Genevieve from Montreal (of course the steel trap does get rusty from time to time…)

And the countless other people from all over the world who I chatted with… you’re all a huge part of why SXSW is such a worthwhile event.

Oh and how could I forget… mad props to CATSA for confiscating all my toiletries on the way to Austin.  Another national security threat averted!  Glad I could do my small part.

First up, Customer Service is the New Marketing. The panel featured, among others, Nick Wilder of 30boxes and Heather Champ of flickr. I learned a lot from this one. The topic was definitely geared towards offering support for products or a web-based service, but a lot of the basic principles apply to a company like us that’s selling services. A few of the points that really connected with me:

• From Zappos (a huge online retail store) - each new employee takes a 4 week orientation course on the culture of the company. Two of those weeks are spent answering customer service calls - and this goes for the designers to the lawyers to the CFO. It forces new hires to really empathize with the customer from day one.
• 30boxes’ approach is to use web-based forums exclusively for support and offer no support by email. It’s worked for them - in Nick’s former company, Webshots, support was handled by email alone and as a result 50% (yes… 50%!) of all customer issues never got resolved. Now, looking at 30boxes, 50% of all customer issues are resolved by other customers on the forums. Double the success while only spending 4 to 6 hours per week on customer support for an active user base of about 30000. Not bad.
• And a great tip that came from a comment by a Google Reader developer in the audience - monitoring the blogosphere for mentions of your company or product can allow you to deal with complaints/criticism on the blog(s) in a very direct and transparent way. A great way to turn critics into fans.

The second session, entitled Design Aesthetic of the Indie Developer, kind of picked up where the first left off… or at least dovetailed it nicely.  On the panel were Shaun Inman (Mint), John Gruber (various projects) and Nick Bradbury (FeedDemon, Homesite and TopStyle).  Customer support was a recurring theme in this panel, especially when the topic of how these relatively small applications and compete against the big boys came up.  The main advantage that Nick and Shaun pointed out was that indie developers are able to respond much more quickly to their customers - whether it’s fixing bugs, adding features or just general customer support.  Another factor that was mentioned was that the indies generally have more attention to detail, design and aesthetics.  I don’t know if that’s really true or not, but in terms of the panelists in this session I would tend to agree.

Unfortunately today’s schedule ends here. We had to high tail it out of Will Wright’s fascinating keynote to catch our flight back home. That meant missing a couple of afternoon sessions… but more importantly we missed the night’s open-bar parties. That’s the pits.

See y’all in Ottawa.

12 Values Shaping Technology’s Future

The twelve values: Appropriatenes, Assistance, Connectedness, Convenience, Efficiency, Health, Intelligence, Personalization, Protection, Simplicity, Sustainability, User creativity.

After connecting people to content, and connecting people to people, the technology will be moving further to the background.

Rachel Matney (Target) speaks to Simplicity, Assistance, Convenience: there is a lot going on, there is a lot of confusion, there is a lot of stuff: we want to feel in control. Simplicty: when will a dvd player become a grande mocha? People need simplicity in choices. This leads to ambient information and importance of information design. Assistance: how to help users achieve tasks. This leads to artificial intelligence and current technologies doing more for you.  Convenience: requirements to make tools and services to make life easier. These values are easier achieved and more quickly realized.

Andrea Shortell (MTV) speaks to User Creativity, Personalization, Appropriateness: everyone is a producer, everyone wants to share and everyone wants validation (top 8 on myspace).  User driven content and user developed architecture - leading to adaptive architecture.  Personlization means more than just presentation. As it applies to MTV, it allows the user to develop a close relationship with the brand. Appropriateness means aunthenticity. It means communicating in an expected channel. Diversity is a key factor to who the audience is: how they see themselves and their place in the world. It includes ethics and ethnicity.

Timo Veikkola (Nokia) speaks to Efficiency, Connectedness and Intelligence: Nothing compares to the intimacy of pesonal communication: focus in design is people centric (enable public to pick up on convergence and use new technologies) and aims enhance personal relationships. There is a lot of concern with hyper-consumerism (see What Would Jesus Buy) - there will be shift to searching for products that you want. Information starvation - need to find the information you need. People want more control. Shift from tools to companions which will aid in efficiency. Connectedness speaks to a participatory culture. Connectedness also speaks to connectedness of devices and systems. Personal entity in virtual communities leads into using imagery as useful capital and to communicate ideas and is important in establishing credibility and paradigms. Leapfrogging: some cultures are having first introduction to connectedness through mobile - not the web - which will create a shift in behaviour. Intelligence - mobile information needs to be contextual. don’t search, find. Intellignence means sensors, performance, productivity and classification.

Panelists:

• Scott Smith Futurist/Dir Research Applications,   Social Technologies
• Rachel Matney Guest Insight Group Mgr,   Target
• Andrea Shortell MTV
• Timo Veikkola Sr futures Specialist,   Nokia

The first session I attended this morning was Barenaked App: The Figures Behind the Top Web Apps, moderated by Ryan Carson of Carson Systems (discovered his excellent blog) and featured, among others, Michael McDerment of Freshbooks. As I hope our in-house-side-venture-appendage 76labs gains a bit of momentum over the next few months, finding out how much investment (man hours and dollars) that goes into developing and maintaining some of these great web applications really intrigued me. In the interest of brevity and conserving laptop battery power, I’ll list out a few of the nuggets I grabbed from this panel:

• Don’t discount the deceivingly high costs of ongoing maintenance once the application has been developed and launches - costs for running a simple application can easily run into the thousands of dollars per month
• Michael and Ryan both mentioned a principle outlined in E-Myth, that web app development teams require three personality types committed to the project: the entrepreneur, the manager and the technician (that’s the second time the E-Myth book has been referenced here so I hopped onto Amazon and snagged a copy for about $10)
• After launching your app, have a plan to deal with three possible outcomes: failure, marginal success and lots of success. It’s important to be prepared for each scenario.
• When it comes to knowing when to grow (for example: when to upgrade your server, when to add a full time employee, etc.) it’s in your best interest to be more reactive than proactive as it will save you money in the early going. Of course, there are exceptions to the rule and sometimes it’s just a matter of listening to a gut reaction.

Next up: The Future of the Online Magazine. We’ve had the pleasure of developing sites for a few magazines over the years (most notably the 2006 Webby honoree Maisonneuve) and since this discussion featured panelists from heavyweights like: Salon, Nerve, the Onion and CollegeHumor, I knew it’d be good. I wasn’t disappointed as Sean Mills, president of the Onion, had us all pissing our pants for the full hour… well, until our bladders were empty at least. Between my bouts of rolling on the floor laughing, I managed to pick up on a few useful points:

• When it comes to new technology, although all of the panelists’ sites featured news feeds, they appreciate when it comes to their audience RSS is pretty much unknown and the most effective technique for pushing out information is still an old fashioned email newsletter.
• While the direction of the web seems to put more value on user-generated content, nothing beats a talented editorial staff. I can’t remember who it was, but one panelist likened an online magazine without editorial staff to “American Idol without the judges. It just wouldn’t be as interesting…”
• The paid subscription model has gone the way of the dodo bird. Today’s online mags have discovered that with increasing traffic from blogs and search engines, there’s much more money to be made through online advertising… and you get to give away your content for free.
• Merchandising offers an alternative revenue stream that accounts for up to 20% of some of the panelists’ sites revenue (the other 80% coming from advertising).

Brevity didn’t help. My laptop battery died before the keynote from Dan Rather. Admittedly, I’ve never been the kind of guy to sit down and watch the evening news (CBS or otherwise) but I gotta say… I was a bit starstruck when he sat down for his hour long chat. Even as a very casual viewer, I’m no stranger to Mr. Rather and his important place in American journalism. I suppose I just have a lot of respect for the guy just because he’s been around so long (reporting since 1950!), coming from an age where it seemed like journalists had a lot more integrity, were truly independent, and would have never played the “go along to get along” game (as Mr. Rather put it) that so many of today’s journalists play just to avoid rocking the boat.

After the keynote we headed back to a couple of 30 minute quickies. The first session, Bullet Tooth Web Design: Plan Your Web Site like Pulling Off a Robbery, seemed promising. An interesting analogy for developing a site and two good speakers: Jason Santa Maria and Andy Clarke. I knew I couldn’t get much out of a short session like this, but I thought it’d be somewhat informative. I was wrong… the analogy dragged on and on and on… to the point where it got really tiresome (to me at least). I was waiting for some kind of nugget of goodness but it never came. Sorry guys, didn’t seem like it was really thought through beyond the title.

Immediately following that session was another short one on Design Patterns. Thanks to an old article on Signal vs. Noise, I’ve recently become a fan of designing with patterns but I can’t say I’ve done a tonne of research on what’s available online as far as resources go. I was under the impression that it was more of an approach and not the kind of thing that was standardized and shared… I was wrong. Turns out big names like Yahoo! and eBay (not online) have developed big libraries of design patterns. It makes sense when you think about how common pieces on a website could be “widget-ized” to be re-used again and again and again. The benefits of patterns are that as well as standardizing format and appearance, they help standardize vocabulary so that site pieces can be referred to in a common language.

“That’s not a horizontal linear historical navigation trail… it’s called a ‘breadcrumb’.”

The last session told us how to assemble a kick-ass in-house design team. Emphasis on the in-house. I kind of missed that when I read about it in the programme so I found out a bit late that it wasn’t really targeted at me but there was some good general advice about working in a design team within a bigger organization (reps from Yahoo! and Google sat on the panel… I’m not going to link those two company names.  If you can’t find their sites I don’t know how you even got here).  Unfortunately not much of this panel applied to me.

Convergence Culture: A Conversation with Henry Jenkins

Henry’s blog

What does fandom mean? (20 years ago) it was about remixing and repurposing. (flash forward) same concepts found in web2.0 and convergent culture using social networks and collaborating. models after fan culture.

The internet and fandom. More people find their way into fandom; expansion. Observing and communicating in real-time. Example, Twin Peaks, fan base were early adopters and used online to further develop storylines and characters. Creates a demand for more indepth info, more backstory and more character development.

Fans getting sued for use of copyright material. Likeliness of stopping remixing and collaboration is nil. Publishers need to accept. In fact, this enhances value of the brand and the product. The participatory community is continually threatened by Hollywood. There is bullying from intellectual property holders.

Further, legislation is being passed to protect children by limiting access.  Education from librarians, teachers, parents, and mentors would be far more effective. On top of limited access, youth are also targeted by media owners for copyright infringement. The social area online is under fire by government and governing bodies. Heading to requirement of parental permission for all means of communication using electronic devices. Part of the problem is fear mongering in government and mainstream media.

Online democracy and participatory culture. The language is changing. Democracy needs to be a lifestyle. Photoshop democracy - communicating politics through a language of imagery. The language of fan culture will colour the climate of the upcoming [american] election.

Is knowledge process or product? Wikipedia is a the monument of participatory culture. Need to tap into energy of Wikipedia to develop national policy.

Panelists:

• danah boyd USC Annenberg Center
• Henry Jenkins Dir,   Comparative Media Studies - MIT

A late evening last night plus the early daylight savings time made for a less-than-usual bright-eyed and bushy-tailed Steve this morning. I didn’t come here to get sleep though… I can do that at work when I get back.

The first session I attended this morning was a lively discussion debating the pros and cons of user-centred design. Good cases were made by both sides. I have to say, user research is not something we’ve ever done a lot of at 76design. As one of the “con” panelists pointed out, it can be an expensive and timely process - two luxuries we can’t usually afford on a project. I think it’s something we all know is generally a worthwhile activity that will benefit the end product, but it’s just a matter of whether those benefits outweigh the cost.

A recurring idea that came up again and again (from both the pro and con side of the panel) was remembering that you’re not designing products for people but designing for the activities and situations. Instead of defining personas (you know, we have a user named John who is 45 years old, drives a Toyota Corolla, has 2 kids, goes to church on Sundays, buys low-fat cream cheese and so on) write stories about users interacting with your product (John just went to the dentist and needs to file a claim so he goes to the web site to… etc.). The latter method cuts through a lot of the chaff and guesswork that makes personas such an awkward approach and focuses on the actual activity (or series of activity) that a user would complete while using the product.

One good “con” argument (I admit, I’m a bit of a skeptic when it comes to focus groups and researching) that was made this morning and was made last year by 37signals‘ Jason Fried (again, the name dropping continues) was that users don’t necessarily know what they want, so asking them won’t give you the answers that will lead you to the best solution.

Next up, a laid back panel entitled Design Workflows at Work: How Top Designers Work Their Magic. I have to admit, I was seduced by the title on this one but was rather disappointed. First, I wouldn’t have labeled any of the panelists as “top designers”. Good designers, yes. Top designers, no. But that’s a subjective observation. The discussion itself left a lot to be desired as it didn’t seem like much preparation went into the panel. Some good points were raised about the importance of time management and having some fun distractions at work to keep the creativity high, but nothing new that really provided any insight or observations on how designer work flow can be improved.

After lunch, I attended the day’s keynote with Phil Torrone and Limor Fried. The topic du jour was the DIY movement - open source software, hardware and where it’s all heading. Where’s that you ask? Well, Limor and Phil talked about what I suppose you’d call the mashup and remix approach to hardware - everything from hacking into consumer electronics to reprogramming robot appliances to building your own gadgets. Limor showed us that staying true to the free and open source philosophy while running her kit-selling website, Adafruit, offers a viable source of income.

The two mini-sessions I attended after the keynote were: Learning Interaction Design from Las Vegas and The Future of JavaScript. Almost too quick to take any notes but the gist of the Vegas talk was drawing some not-so-obvious parallels between the Vegas “approach” to design and successful interaction design. For instance, MySpace has shown us that strong aesthetic design is definitely not a prerequisite for success. The JavaScript talk was rather technical and highlighted in exhaustive detail some of the new features added in JavaScript 1.6 (Firefox 1.5) and 1.7 (Firefox 2.0, but hopefully to be included in a future release of Internet Explorer 7) rather than talking about the future directions and possible uses of the language.

The final session of the day attracted me with its great name: Uniting the Holy Trinity of Web Design. For those who might not understand what on earth a holy trinity has to do with making web pages, the (original) tri fecta the panel intended to talk about was: HTML, CSS, and JS - but it sounds like they had a bit of a rethink and changed it to: user, development, and business. This sounded promising to me as I thought I’d get a lot more out of a less-technical session, but things didn’t really stay on topic so I didn’t get as much out of it as I would have hoped. Fellow Ottawan Jonathan Snook offered up a few good nuggets about some possible sources for failure in web projects - specifically, when business objectives are in conflict with a users’ needs (for example, a client wants to generate lots of revenue and plasters a site with online ads and totally alienates their audience).

After the day’s sessions, we headed over to the SXSW web awards and chatted with a couple of the guys from Wellington, New Zealand’s RESN Design Studio. Very nice guys who were up for two awards - including best “business: for-profit” site, which they won. Good for them.

Off to the post-awards party to do a little more socializin’…