Paul Annett fra Clearleft innleder med en historie om den gangen han hadde bestilt en pakke med diverse magikerutstyr til sin butikk, og den ved en feiltagelse ble levert til damene holdt til i andre etasje. Disse damene markedsførte seg selv som ”models – here 4 u… etc” – de tilbød med andre ord tjenester av den heller erotiske sorten.

Have you seen my package?
Paul gikk opp trappen for å hente pakken, og foran den lettkledde damen som åpnet døren fikk han stotret frem; ”have you seen my package?” Svaret var at hun hadde en ”friend” på rommet nå, men om han kom tilbake om en halvtime kunne hun hjelpe ham. Paul gikk ned igjen og fikk aldri pakken sin.

Dette var første gang magien krysset det virkelige liv, sier han.

A little bit of this, a little bit of that…
Den andre gangen var da han viste dette korttrikset. Det har nå fått millioner av treff på YouTube, og folk engasjerer seg i å finne ut hvordan han jukser, for så å fortelle til vennene sine hva de har funnet ut.

- Folk synes de har sett noe unikt, oppdaget en hemmelighet – og de vil fortelle det til andre. Det er her webdesign og magi møtes, sier han.

Steve the Gorilla
Han trekker frem nettstedet til sitt eget firma Clearleft, som tilbyr programmet Silverback (som er en type gorilla). Forsiden på Silverback har en gorilla som står foran hengende, grønne jungelgrener. Når du endrer størrelsen på nettleseren, flytter grenene seg i forhold til hverandre og gir en 3-dimensjonal effekt. Dette synes mange var kult, og tipset sine venner om det – noe som ga en enorm pågang på nettsidene.

Han roper på gorillaen Steve, som sammen med seks utvalgte publikummere, tre tau og metervis med grønne bånd, gjenskaper 3D-effekten fra Silverback-siten.

Magiske eksempler
Så trekker han frem en rekke flere eksempler på design som har spesielle ”magiske” effekter som folk oppdager og forteller videre til andre. Sjekk dem ut og bli inspirert:

Fed-Ex pilen mellom E-en og X-en i FedEx-logoen.

Toblerone – bjørnen foran fjellet (har du oppdaget den før?)

En Aerosmith-logo som ser lik ut selv om den vises opp-ned.

“Trick”-anagramet som blir til “Treat” hvis du snur det opp-ned

Silhuetten til Mikke Mus som du ser hvis du flyr over Disney world i Florida

”Stopp looking at my bottom”-meldingen på juicekartonger

Apples ”Mighty mouse” – det røde lyset under musen viser tegner silhuetten av en mus på bordet.

Moo sticker 1, Moo sticker 2

Tinyurl.com/horsemoves – endring av vinduets størrelse gjør at hesten beveger seg. (”Noen som ser noen praktisk nytte? Nei, men det ser kult ut”, sier Paul)

Modernista.com, som legger sin meny ”over” andre nettsteder som wikipeida m.fl.

Tinyurl.com/zenocean – der lykten til en dykker lyser opp når du skroller fordi han nærmer seg havbunnen

Webleedesign.com – med maling rennende nedover siden ettersom du scroller

Producten.hema.nl – hysterisk produktpresentasjon

Tonnevis med dopapir ikke imponerende
Så forklarer han “the kano model of customer satisfaction”, der y-aksen er kundetilfredshet og x-aksen er utførelse.

I den trekker han tre piler. Den første er Performance needs og går stødig på skrå oppover mot høyre. Som eksempel tar han hotellinnsjekking, der vi blir misfornøyde hvis det går veldig sakte og imponert hvis det går svært raskt.

Den andre pilen symboliserer Basic needs som flater ut ganske raskt. Som eksempel tar han toalettpapir på hotellbadet; hvis det er for lite blir vi svært misfornøyde, men hvis det er utrolig mye dopapir blir vi ikke imponert – vi bare forventer at det er nok.

Den tredje pilen er Exitement needs, som stiger eksponentielt. Gratis wifi på hotellet er et eksempel – det lille ekstra som gjør at vi blir veldig fornøyd og ønsker å komme tilbake.

Men det er en dimensjon til, forklarer han – og det er tid. Det som var ”Exiting” i dag er ”Basic” i morgen. Du må derfor kontinuerlig jobbe med innovasjon for å bli bedre.

Til slutt siterer han Don Norman: ”It is not enough that we build products that function, that are understandable and usable, we also need to build products that bring joy and excitement, pleasure and fun, and, yes, beauty to people’s lives”

Så er det slutt på magien for i dag, og Paul Annett takker for seg.

And just like that – he was gone.

What is the semantic web?

The Internet is designed to be understood by humans, not computers. When reading the word “Apple”, the first thing that comes to mind may be a fruit, an electronics and software company or a record label. Computers have a hard time understanding the difference. The semantic web is a web that machines can understand, by publishing in a language that computers can process and link.

Why is persistent URIs important in a semantic web?

Prince Rogers Nelson, better known as Prince, has been known by various names through his career, amongst them simply a symbol:

Between 1993 and 2000, he was referred to as The Artist Formerly Known as Prince. The problem then is, that if the URIs of pages about Prince should change every time he rebranded himself, all links to those pages would break, and the Google PageRank would drop (since fewer pages are linking to them). BBC is collaborating with Musicbrainz, which has developed a system of unique identifiers for all artists, releases, tracks, labels and discs. This allows for permanent links to artists, even though they change their name. The unique ID for Prince on Musicbrainz.org is 070d193a-845c-479f-980e-bef15710653e, and by using the same identifier, several organisations are able to identify and exchange data about this artist.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/music/artists/070d193a-845c-479f-980e-bef15710653e

http://musicbrainz.org/artist/070d193a-845c-479f-980e-bef15710653e.html

http://www.last.fm/mbid/070d193a-845c-479f-980e-bef15710653e

How user friendly is this approach?

http://www.last.fm/mbid/070d193a-845c-479f-980e-bef15710653e is ugly. It’s impossible to deduce from the URI what page to expect, let alone remembering the address. So, is the use of unique identifiers a step backwards in terms of usability? Last.fm’s approach is to forward the user to http://www.last.fm/music/Prince, which undoubtedly is easier on the eye. However, forwarding is but a temporary solution, and it is said to have a negative effect on the Google PageRank.

Cool URIs don’t change, Tim Berners-Lee

Do we have to make a choice between readability and a semantic web, between humans and computers? Could we envision a web with a dual address system, where semantic links are used and understood by computers only, while readable versions are used and shown to humans?

See also Chris Thorne’s presentation on Slideshare.

“Mobile Search is just growing in importance”.   (Peter Morville, IA Summit 2009)

Browsing and searching are often tightly interwened, and that will most likely only increase. Especially on mobile phones.

We are already overwhelmed by information overload. When surfing on a mobile phone, finding the right information, and being able to process it, can be even more difficult than when surfing on a computer.

In his workshop at IA Summit 2009 Peter Morville adressed  amongst others Mobile Search.

“5 or 10 years from now, we will still start with the search engine”. (Peter Morville)

When standing in the  streets of a new town, craving sushi for dinner, you expect GoogleMaps to lead you to the nearest sushi restaurant  (and it does). But what doesn’t GoogleMaps do for you, that you would wish it would help you with? (Standing there, all confused and helpless). I would like to be filled in with a short-listed menu for the restaurants. (I might not bother to go there if they don’t have what I like). I also want to know the opening hours. (Yeah, it’s good to know where the restaurant or the shop is, but it won’t help me if it’s closed when I get there). What else? Let’s make a wishlist, it’s fun .

An extended ability to take action is crucial on the mobile. Taptu is an entertainment search engine for mobile phones. You can search for all sorts of cool stuff like music, videos and images. They also have an I’m bored section, where you can find out what are the most popular searches on Taptu, see what other people are sharing with friends or check out the hottest searches on Taptu today. This is mobile search and social search combined in a new and funny way.

When dealing with user interfaces for mobile phones one important issue is to reduce the amount of typing. Thus, iPhone have launched their Voice Search. The application will apparently allow users to speak commands such as “Where’s the nearest pharmacy” into the iPhone and it will be sent to Google’s servers and come back with a search result, according to The New York Times.

Results shall be shown within seconds and apparently will include local information if you choose to allow the application to send your GPS data to Google. Have anyone tried this app, and if so, what are your experience with it? It would be fun to know!

An interesting question which Peter Morville discussed at his workshop is how to access large data sets from a mobile phone? Typically, interfaces for mobile search require keyword text entry, which can be slow on a mobile device and is often not suited for browsing tasks. FaThumb offers a fasetted interface to the mobile screen. This allows users to filter results by navigating a hierarchy of metatadata (facets). Studies done during the development process (pdf, 531 kB) showed that facet navigation was well liked and more effective than text entry for browsing tasks.

The Norwegian company Opera Software is currently working on Fingertouch, a technology designed to make interacting with the Web easier and simpler on touch-based devices. Fingertouch provides visual feedback when you hit a Web link or a form field, and assists you by zooming in on elements so it is clear that they are being focused on:

You can download the new beta version of Opera Mobile for Symbian UiQ here.

People in line for free Nuclear Tacos and Ice-cream

Facts and Figures

• Approximately 300 talks, panels, interviews and bookreadings.
• Over 700 speakers and panellists
• The rumour is that there are mer than 12.000 attendees for the interactive festival (approximately 10 000 in 2008)

So what makes it a festival?

1) Quantity – a lot of everything

• Loads of talks, panels, bookreadings, podcasts, music, tradeshow, events, games, free food, free beer, movies and evening parties with everything from bowling to storytelling.

• The concept seem to be pick-and-choose. There are no obvious tracks or themes and you just walk around and try different things.

• If the session does not you suit you just flip up your computer to update your blog, twitter or leave.

2) Social media and the truly interactive nature

• The extensive use of social media is striking.

• People  state their twitter name when asking questions to the panel, and it is more important than business cards.

• The use of hash-tags is very extensive and the SXSW festival has hundereds of channels where people have posted tweets in relation to an event. The speaker gives out the hash-tag before the session in order to follow the tweet for the session.

• Everybody is constantly texting, tweeting, programming, blogging or following the chat-rooms of the session they are in and nobody is offended. The technology is truly enmeshed with the experience. It is truly an interactive festival.

3) The Americans – Bless ‘em

• First of all. There are loads of people at the convention centre and everywhere else in Austin. It’s the people that makes the festival.

• Another success factor is the American friendliness and enthusiasm. Everybody are friendly and very keen on getting to know as many new people as possible. The Southern hospitality is definitively a key feature of the festival. We have talked to heaps of people and even made some friends

The cons

Ok – we are absolutely sold on SXSW,  but to be fair, here are the cons.

• The program is not an example of bad usability, it is Horrible Usability! Alphabetic listings of sessions by title, and then a timetable with short names that doesn’t start with the same letter … With more than 300 talks to choose for, this makes it very hard …

• The website is not only ugly, it is not especially functional either. Quite embarrassing, in fact.

• Some of the panels promise blood and end up quite anemic. When I go to see a Browser War I expect some disagreement..

Getting into the festival feel

The festival feel did not come the first day. We tried to plan everything and see what we thought was most useful for our work. By the second session, we found the feel. The SXSW is about inspiration and talking to people. Lots of the talks are videoed or made podcasts of, so you’re unlikely to completely miss the gems. So we just started to go to whatever seemed interesting at the moment and went along with people who recommended sessions we had not considered before. We also took the time to blog, twitter and be a part of the interaction in that domain.

Cowgirls 4 Ever

Our advice

1. Go to SXSW next year.
2. Relax, you can’t see and do everything. Just take things as you go along.
3. Talk to people, and join the social activites.

Thank you Austin and SXSW!

We love you!

SXSW Interactive Overall (6 cows is best score)

Technical content

Presentation

I love the style of her illustrations, which is why I’ve included several in this post. It was a real shame what happened to Kathy Sierra, depriving us of further posts on this blog.

To my delight, Kathy Sierra was in the programme here at SXSW, and that was one talk I wasn’t going to miss.

Sierra talked about the differences between bringing about incremental changes as opposed to making a breakthrough when incremental changes is not giving the desired efffect.

Sierra stated that users need breakthroughs when using a website or an application over time. Her illustrations and arguments for why breakthroughs may be necessary can help you if you need to argue for a significant upgrade, or new implementation. One of her blog articles delves into this in more detail.

A breakthrough can be that they manage to do their job significantly better or achieve something entirely new.

In order to give users the opportunity for breakthroughs, Sierra says to pose the question:

What superpower would you give your users?

What should the text on the superhero suit say? As examples, for Excel users pivot-tables represented a major breakthrough and in Photoshop, channels gave users superpowers. Try this approach for your own website or application, and you can only choose a single superpower.

In the conference, Sierra asked the audience to choose between flight (as in being able to fly) and invisibility. And then argue why we had made that choice to the person next to us. Both Synve and myself chose invisibility, and what it says about our personality I don’t know, but we both used the argument that with invisibility we could sneak around and listen to people without them knowing

Sierra says that many breakthroughs never happen because of a lack of willingness to take risks.

Some applications or websites die because of this, they’ve developed their users as far as they can go with incremental improvements, and need a breakthrough in order that users will still stay interested and satisfied.

Sierra used an audio equalizer as a metaphor for the difference between the incremental and breakthrough approach.

In an incremental approach, you twiddle the sliders, a bit more of this a bit less of that. However, in a breakthrough approach, you make up different names on the sliders, or add sliders.

Sierra pointed to a mini Sierra slider-tool that (I think) a student made, where you can interactively change (or twiddle) the sliders.

Sierra is a much sought after speaker at conferences, but have cut down this activity since the incidents described in the Wikipedia article. However, we thought we’d give it a shot to get in touch with Sierra, if not for our conference this year, then perhaps for some other time.

So we queued up in front of the stage, along with the other starstruck groupies, and did in fact get to the front of the line. And yeah! I shook hands with my heroine Kathy Sierra! And she asked for our business cards!

We stated were we came from, gave her a poster of the Bad Usability Calendar (which she loved!) and asked whether it would be OK to contact her for a possible future speaking engagement in Norway.

Sierra keeps Icelandic horses, so we tempted her with a flight via Reykjavik if it ever comes off, which seemed to remove some of her initial hesitation

It was a good day at the SXSW interactive festival!

The Cowgirls 4 Ever Score (6 cows is best score)

Technical content:

Presentation:

Other presentations we attended

• Browser Wars III: The Platform Wins. Arun Ranganathan (Mozilla), Chris Wilson (Microsoft), Brendan Eich (Mozilla Foundation), Charles McCathieNevile (Opera Software), Darin Fisher (Google). Where was the fight? Wanted to see some blood! At least a light sabre or two … This was more like a tea party.
• Bruce Sterling Session. Bruce Sterling (Wired.com). Interesting talk (not a slide in sight!) by sci-fi author and Wired journalist Bruce Sterling, summing up the state of the industry (and the world too). It got a bit depressive, and some of it was very specifically directed towards Americans. However, it was still entertaining and thoughtprovoking.

Finally! Having attended three previous panel debates, I was hesitant about going to another one. However, the title “Is spec work evil? The online creative community speaks” piqued my interest. Although spec work is not such a well known phenomena in Norway, the market is getting increasingly global, and it may be more relevant than I initially thought. AIGA, the American Institute of Graphic Arts, defines spec work as:

work done without compensation, for the client’s speculation

So what is spec work?

Basically, a client might put a specification for a design up on a site like Crowdspring, and the providers on Crowdspring (designers or not) will then compete by actually making designs (by spec, hence the term “spec work”). The buyer then decides on which design to use, and that particular provider gets paid. The others, in the words of Anne Robinson, of Weakest Link fame, “leave with nothing”.

Spec work damaging professional designers?

The panel participants expressed widely differing views on this topic.  David Carson took a protective stance with respect to professional designers, wanting to quash spec work altogether, and seeing it as a threat to businesses who use it – stating that spec work is often so bad that businesses who use it may risk going bust.

Carson also said that any self-respecting designer would not submit his designs on spec work sites, as it could seriously backlash and damage his reputation.

Crowdspring

Mike Samson

From the Crowdspring site came Mike Samson, who took the brunt of criticism in this panel. However, kudos for actually initiating the panel discussion all the time knowing he would get a lot of flak. Samson took the commercial position, naturally, defending the existance of spec work and sites like Crowdspring.

He used the classic argument that there is a market for it, both among providers and buyers, and therefore it is a good thing. His more altruistic reflections, on how the competing designers actually discuss designs, teach each other and help each other, didn’t ring completely true, though.

But there is an issue there, that this kind of activity is just an addition to traditional design work practices, addressing a different segment of the market, e.g. small businesses that cannot afford to hire “proper” designers.

It’s here to stay, but it’s not for everyone

Jeremiah Owyang

Jeremiah Owyang, the Forrester analyst and well known blogger, having researched the issue and made avail of some of the services, took the position that spec work is here to stay, so take it or leave it. Even though the designers promoted through spec work sites may represent a lower-tier set, they represent an inexpensive alternative.

Owyang pointed out that the downsides to spec work is of course that the quality on a lot of the work submitted is low and that the client therefore has to expend a significant amount of effort in wading through all the bad stuff before finding something usable. Also, it may be difficult for some clients to separate the good from the bad.

Jeff Howe from Wired moderated the debate. Olivia Mann from AIGA was brought into the panel only the day before the panel in order to present a more balanced selection of panellist. Although AIGAs position on spec work is extremely critical, Mann did not express as ciritical a view, and invited spec work providers within design to tell positive stories about spec work on the AIGA site, e.g. whether spec work had given them as designers additional work and more lasting relationships with clients.

Finally, Jeffrey Kalmikoff, from Threadless (and parent company skinnyCorp) got quite upset when Samson stated that Crowdspring was inspired by Treadless when starting up. Kalmikoff almost shouted that “If you think that you took inspiration from us, it shows that you have no idea what you’re talking about!”

So what does it all mean?

So what is my position on spec work after attending this debate? Well, I didn’t know much about this phenomenon before the panel, so I haven’t had time to think through it. But the panel did a good job in pointing out pros and cons with this way of doing design.

Among other things, the panel brought up the analogy of stock photo sites like istockphoto.com, which started out as a community for photographers, and is now a fully fledged stock photo site for both buyers and providers. I don’t know if I’m now damaging my reputation by admitting that I use istockphoto.com, e.g. to find photos to use in persona descriptions. But I don’t really see the analogy with spec work, as the client comes into the picture after the provider has made the product (the photo) available. Spec work doesn’t work that way.

I suppose I lean a bit towards Owyangs position, the phenomenon is here to stay, at least as long as there is a market for it. I don’t see that there is a way to prevent it, or eradicate it, as long as buyers use spec work.

And who knows, maybe it will actually drive more work to professional (good) designers – when you get fed up with wading through 90% crap, you may be more inclined to hire a proper designer who will actually try to understand what you want to achieve at your site, and with whom you can communicate directly.

Learning the American lingo – this was a kick-ass panel debate!

So yes, lots of heated debate, (near) fistfights, and actual insults were hurled across the stage, barely leaving room for questions from the floor. I thougt this panel was excellent – it brought out the different points of view well, the panellists were stoked and the audience responded to this. It really worked!

The Cowgirls 4 Ever Score (6 cows is best score)

Technical content:

Presentation:

Other presentations we attended

• When Worlds Collide: Human Centered Design Meets Agile Development. Maria Giudice (Hot Studio) & Alon Salant (Carbon Five). Pretty basic, and not a good format with everybody crammed into small room, and no presentation facilities. Plus the major misconception that human centered design needs to take 6 months and be a waterfall process … Needless to say, we left …
• Video Blogging: Turning Wine into Gold. Interview and Q&A with Gary Vaynerchuk (Wine Library TV). Truly entertaining and over-the-top session, with nuclear energized entrepreneur. More of a sermon than a session – his message is to be passionate about what you do: “If you live for your weekends and holidays, your shit is broken!”

If you have any questions about any of the presentations we attended, or about the South By South West Interactive Festival in general, drop us a line. Or just follow us on twitter – http://www.twitter.com/khamnes & http://www.twitter.com/synver.

Synve waves to her computer

Scroll through your video libary by waving your hand in the air. Press fast forward by spinning your hand faster and faster og copy documents by rubbing a screen. These types of interactions have for a long time been confined to the research labs or the science fiction movies. Gabriel White from Punchcut talked about the challenges we face when we try to develop this new techology into great interaction for the ordinary users. I had a great time during his talk yesterday and my head has been buzzing with ideas ever since.

Gestural UI

Gestural UI is the use of body or hand movement to control what happens on a device or a piece of software. Though this is really not something new, the rise of new products for the mass marked, like the iPhone,  has opened up a new area of great possibilites for interaction designers. What I enjoyed about this talk was that he looked at the premises for making gestural UI work.

White points out two main problems that are critical in developing successful gestural UIs for the masses.

Affordance

An affordance is a quality of an object, or an environment, that allows an individual to perform an action. (Wikipedia).

The most important issue according to White is how people and devices communicate intent.  White pointed to two different ways to do this- declarative and implicit. With declarative intent the interface explicitly tells us what it wants us to do. An example is when an ATM asks you to press a button. Implicit refers to when we behave in a particular way and the devices react. Most touch- screens are still in a declarative mode of directions. Some devices like the Wii who depend on gestures still use explicit ways to express intent.

Language – what does shake mean?

Creating a common language for gestural UIs is according to White another critical issue to solve. Lets look at what shaking can mean on your iPhone.

• Urban spoon app (iPhone app to find a restaurant)- Shake your iPhone and get a new type of restaurant suggestion.
• Facebook app – Shake to reload
• Answer incoming call
• Friendbook app – Shake to exchange contact info. +++ Many more

It is obvious that this has great potential for confusion and  the success of gestural UI in our everyday appliances is dependent on a common language. White stated that we need to explore the possibilites of interaction and narrow it down to a clear vocabulary.

Embodied mind and gestural UIs

During Whites talk I got loads of ideas and thoughts. One of them was about the embodied mind. In cognitive psychology the principle of the embodied mind is that how we think is shaped by aspect of the body.  It also points out the problems of having a brain developed for a natural and spatial environment and using it in the very abstract digital world we live in. There is little mapping between pushing a little red knob or ctrl+alt+del to remove something.  What striked me during the session was that gestural UIs can be a great possibility for improving this mapping. In other words give us an interaction with technology that more resembles how the human brain works. Lack of mapping increases complexity and the risk of errors.  Thus, this can potentially be used to minimize errors and accidents, reduce training time etc.

Cowgirls 4 Ever Score (6 cows is best score)

Technical content:

Presentation:

Other presentations we attended

• Social Media Nonprofit ROI Poetry Slam. Panelist were Beth Kanter – Beth's Blog, Danielle Brigida – National Wildlife Federation, Wendy Harman – American Red Cross – National Headquarters and David Neff – American Cancer Society. Evaluation: Really cool and well executed panel on rhyme! Even the judges were making poems. They even gave me some good practial tips on measuring ROI. The room vas unfortunately to big and they should have had a smaller room and served beer. The great show deserved better audience.
• Emerging Trends of Mobile Technology. Rob Gonda – Sapient and Juan-Carlos Morales – Sapient Interactive. Evaluation: The panel made some interesting points but they seemed a bit unorganized and their slides were not too good.
  
• The Seven Rules for Great Web Application Design.
  Robert Hoekman Jr – Miskeeto LLC. Evaluation: Really just basic usability rules. Not especially interesting, unless you were a total novice to the field. The presenter seemed a little bored.
• Making Web Widgets Accessible: Tools and Techniques. Panellists: Michael Cooper (W3C), Shawn Henry (W3C WAI), Catherine Laws (IBM), Thomas Logan (HiSoftware), Richard Schwerdtfeger (IBM). Excellent people, I’m sure, but not very enthusiastic, so they lost me (KH).
• Microformats: A Quiet Revolution. Panellists: Tantek Çelik (tantek.com), Leah Culver (Six Apart Ltd), Karsten Januszewski (Microsoft), Glenn Jones (Madgex), Jeremy Keith (Clearleft). Good panel, interesting topic, great examples. Check out the wiki.
• Collaborative Filters: The Evolution of Recommendation Engines. Pannellists: Anton Kast (Digg), Scott Brave (Baynote Inc), David Maher Roberts (The Filter), Jon Sanders (Netflix), Erik Frey (Last.fm). Educational, great line-up.

If you have any questions about any of the presentations we attended, or about the South By South West Interactive Festival in general, drop us a line. Or just follow us on twitter – http://www.twitter.com/khamnes & http://www.twitter.com/synver.

Dan Willis, Sapient

Dan Willis from Sapient lured us to his talk with the catchy title “Everything you know about webdesign is wrong”. He stated that web design today is still not a design discipline in its own right. He went on to postulate “the grammar of trancendent web design”. We liked this! Read more about the talk and check out our “Cowgirls 4 Ever”-score! On our first day of the SXSW Interactive Festival, we started out listening to Dan Willis from Sapient. Willis talked about how film making transcended fromt a theatre format (where the viewer had a really good seat) into a medium of its own. This occurred around 1915, and the techniques that really changed the medium were cross-cutting, close-ups and bird’s eye views. This consituted a new “grammar of film”.

Willis postulated that current web design is basically “print in disguise”, and gave numerous examples to build this argument. He predicts that at some point in the future (possibly as we write this), a new “grammar of web design” will describe a web design discipline that has come into its own, transcending print design. He proposes five elements to this grammar:

• random voyeurism (example: flickrvision)
• self-aware, but controlled, content (i.e. content with metadata)
• user-created content
• ambient awareness (e.g. twitter)
• experiential content (not about content types like audio, video, text, but about the experience of the mix as a whole – “the experience is the content”)

Although this grammar is tentative, it is not too far-fetched, as we already see these elements in web design today. So the ingredients within the grammar are not new, but proposing these elements of web design as a grammar, and drawing the parallell to the shift within film making is interesting.

Willis also offered some opinions on the role of visual design, expressing that visual design is a means to an end – “it is what it does”. Design is problemsolving, it’s not about being pretty. So although some of the “print in disguise” websites look pretty, they are not effective in achieving a result on the web because they do not promote the “web native” stuff.

Where Willis let us down a bit was at the end, where his offers for practical application of this grammar was at best sketchy. However, the overall content was interesting and his presentation form was both engaging, professional and entertaining. Willis’ slides are available online: “Everything You Know About Web Design Is Wrong”

The Cowgirls 4 Ever Score (6 cows is best score)

Technical content:

Presentation:

Other presentations that we attended:

• Paul Annett (Clearleft): ” Oooh. That’s clever! (Unnatural Experiments in Web Design) “. Evaluation: Good value in technical content, and excellent entertainment value.  Best presentation so far! Slides can be found at

• Brian Brushwood (ScamSchool):  “Social Engineering: Scam your way into anything or from anybody”. Evaluation: High entertainment value, but completely incomprehensible why this presentation was in the interactive program at all. Not his fault.

If you have any questions about any of the presentations we attended, or about the South By South West Interactive Festival in general, drop us a line. Or just follow us on twitter – http://www.twitter.com/khamnes & http://www.twitter.com/synver.

The first thing you would probably think is; “this is impossible”. We don’t blame you. What would it be? A Facebook for peace? An online game to get Palestinians and the Israeli to become friends? To be honest, we really don’t know if it’s possible. We don’t have the answer. But, do we dare not to try?

We turned the question around: Why could this work? We don’t think we can make something that actually stops a war. But, can we make the reconciliation process easier and make it less probable that a new conflict will escalate?

The web is a perfect medium for communicating across borders. People in a conflict area would probably not like to meet face to face, but could they interact through the web?

The costs of a web solution could be quite low compared to the possible importance of the outcome. How many lives must be saved to call this a success?

Even if politicians and others have the most power on paper, the strength of the social media is to get people engaged and to move the masses. Already in 2006 Time Magazine made YOU (We) the person of the year. So let’s live up to it!

We believe that with the following ingredients this will be possible:

• The skills of the best interaction designers in the world
• A competitive environment where the winners will be celebrated
• Arctic surroundings – but you won’t freeze
• Motivation to change the world

UX Challenge was a crazy idea to start with. Jay Morgan, Even Risbakken and me did some brainstorming at IAsummit in 2007. I remember the faces around the lunch table varying from “ok, let them talk..” to “this is a great idea”. Now, it is reality and we have got tons of positive feedback. Let us give it a shot! Can we make a difference? www.uxchallenge.com

That’s the introductory paragraph to my book, Killer Web Content, that I published two years ago. It’s still very relevant today – in some ways more than others. I’m finding that many organizations are realising what a huge mess their websites – particularly their intranets – have become.

I’m working with large organizations that are already implementing plans to delete at least 50% of the content on their websites. This “filler” content was published without any clear idea of whether or not it would be truly useful to customers. The Web is bulging with this filler content. It’s clogging up search results and making navigation more difficult.

Most organizations have a greater capacity to publish than they have to review and remove. The result is that over time the website gets bigger and bigger and the amount of old, out-of-date content grows. New, useful content becomes a smaller and smaller proportion of the website.

Okay, so how do we fix the mess? Here are 6 steps:

1. Treat content as an asset, not a cost: Killer web content makes more sales – far more. This is not an opinion. I have seen sales double and treble based due to improvements to the quality of the content. So, treat content as a valuable asset, not some menial chore you give to a junior member of staff. Quality content gets more quality students to enrol in your university. On an intranet, quality content improves employee productivity.

2. Start a potty-training campaign: Too many organizations are doing too many we-wes on their websites. The worst possible web content is that which begins with the name of your organization. Please, they’re at your website;
they know who you are. Even worse is when a sentence begins with a horrible phrase like: “we are delighted to announce …” Nobody cares. Nobody cares that you’re delighted or excited. Cut the waffle and the fluff. Get to the point.

3. Focus on your links: From a brief analysis of the English versions of some Norwegian websites I find the same basic problems occurring with link writing. I’ve worked in 35 countries and poor quality links are the number one problem I find everywhere. Links are the essence of the Web. The link is the one thing that makes the Web so different from print, TV, radio, and all other media. A link is a promise. It’s a signpost. Too often a link promises something you can’t easily find once you get to the page.

4. Focus on search words: A good web writer will always do research on the words their customers use when searching. They will identify the most popular words used and then build the web content from these words.

5. Focus on tasks: Content is not an end unto itself. People come to your website to do things. They’re in a hurry. They want to complete common tasks. If you want a successful website then manage the tasks, not the content or technology.

6. Test, test, test: The very worst way to design a website is to put five smart people in a room and let them brainstorm. The longer you leave them the more ridiculous the website will become. (It might win graphic design prizes but only the most awful websites win those.) The best websites relentlessly test and then improve their top tasks. The worst websites “launch and leave” their websites. The best websites focus on continuous improvement of the customer’s top tasks.